ABSTRACT
While the private sector may set the pace in rethinking the workplace, the public sector is no less poised for change. This is especially so in the UK and the United States where civil servants have never been popular - unlike France, Germany or Japan where Government service is a high status profession. In France in particular, a common educational background and high degree of crossover between senior executive posts in Government and the commercial world have meant that there is not the same distinction made between managerial styles in the public and private sectors, and the Civil Service is a less obvious whipping boy. In Britain, the 1980s were an especially acute period of bureaucrat-bashing - whatever Margaret Thatcher’s regard for individual top mandarins, her overall dislike of public servants was almost palpable.
