Introduction -- The PSMA: a study in stalled system-change -- HR management and people management: a difference with a distinction

This paper argues two theses: first, that the public service, in its continued effort to modernize and renew its general approach to human resources management, has focused largely, if not exclusively, on a technocratic and process-based conception of what it means to manage people – a conception arguably radically at odds both with best practice and sound theory; second, that public service leadership has failed to develop and implement the sorts of the conceptual frameworks, never mind the concomitant tools and guidance, required to manage deeper change, such as the change that was supposed to arrive in the wake of the Public Service Modernization Act (PSMA). Along the way, I shall also explain the difference between human resource (HR) management and people management, a distinction that bears on these two theses in an important way.