This article reviews a set of studies depicting how public officials (agents )in French public utilities have reacted, in practical terms, to customer-focused reforms. These reactions are differentiated in terms of the agent's position in the production cycle: maintenance of infrastructures; commercial positions; and service providing functions. These examples from the French experience are used in a more general methodological discussion. The representation of progressive diffusion of new public management values is contrasted with a representation of change that is triggered by the adjustment of workers' practices to new management rules.