In many nations, human resource management —personnel or civil service in the old terminology — has changed profoundly in the past decade. From a theoretical perspective, the management of public employees and the institutions of the public service have moved from being treated as atheoretical and mechanistic add-ons to the machinery of government to new identities as powerful institutions in their own right, from bland personnel systems to highly valued human capital management endeavors, and from neutral bureaucracies to primary targets of policy change and reform.