With the aim of helping move research from rhetoric to empirical reality, this article reports results of a national survey of city managers on attitudes towards and actions taken to implement principles of reinventing government. A large majority of managers support key principles of reinvention. A smaller proportion of managers has taken actions to recommend adoption of reinvention programs in their budget proposals to council. Managers' action‐taking is influenced by certain characteristics of city managers, their communities, and their governments, including managers' attitudes and experiences, slack resources, and region.

Th is article examines the funding of two key components of state government total compensation: pensions and other postemployment benefi ts (OPEB), the latter consisting primarily of retiree health care. A brief overview of the economic, political, and legal environments of state pensions and OPEB is followed by an analysis of the unfunded liabilities for these respective benefi ts. Regression results suggest the importance of state management capacity, per capita income, and public employee density in understanding diff erences in the states' pension and OPEB funding performance. Additionally, employers' level of pension contributions, legislative professionalism, and fi scal constraint are signifi cantly related to pension funding, while political ideology and levels of state pension funding are signifi cantly related to OPEB funding. Th e article concludes by discussing the tensions that states face in attempting to balance the fi scal imperative of funding retiree benefi ts liabilities with the human capital challenge of attracting and retaining a professional workforce. Failure on either could be costly to state government.

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This article reports the results of a major survey that was distributed to the members of the International Personnel Management Association and the Section on Personnel and Labor Relations of the American Society for Public Administration. The intent of the survey was twofold: to gauge the respondents' perspectives on the relative importance of various personnel techniques, activities, and values, and to assess their projections concerning the changes that will occur during the next decade. In addition to providing an interesting snapshot of the perceived state of modernization within public‐sector human resource management, the results reflect a considerable degree of agreement concerning the expected direction of further changes. Themes arising from the reinvention movement, as well as the technological revolution, dominate the response patterns. The implications of these perceived alterations in the field of human resource management are discussed, and potential problem areas are identified.

Reinventing government is a cross-national movement that has important, and potentially negative, implications for the career civil service. This article examines the global development of the reinventing government movement, arguing that it represents at least in part an attack on bureaucratic power and the career public service Each of its principal themes—including debureaucratization, decentralization, privatization, and managerialism —poses challenges to important public service values We argue that reinventing government, contrary to its most ardent proponents' rhetoric, threatens to undermine the important role played by public servants in modern democratic governments The broad implications of this argument are explored.

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