ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on the aspects related to the labour market for civil servants, and describes the organisation and content of training for the civil service in The Netherlands. The market for civil servants trained in Public Administration is highly customer-driven and, therefore, flexible. In discussing the supply side of the market for civil servants it is important to make a distinction between pre- and post-entry education and training. Having discussed the context of management development (MD) it is obvious that training for the civil service is a crucial element of MD policies. The Dutch civil service has undergone profound changes over the last two decades. In order to fully understand the exact nature of these changes in the Dutch public labour market it is necessary to pay attention to the political-administrative environment. In the early 1990s efforts to reduce the government workforce merged with those to transfer public services to the private sector in an attempt to improve efficiency.
