| Summary: | The paper, pursuing a socio-historical approach and mixing this with qualitative (ethnographic) research, asserts that the liberalisation of the postal service confirms the coexistence of market and public service logics, with tensions relating to the management of these contradictory requirements being largely transferred onto workers, notably financial advisors who are having to achieve certain commercial objectives while improving general access to banking services. A survey of these particular employees reveals concrete modalities for resolving the tensions that they face. One finding is that they have different ways of reacting to what is being construed as a new management tool. A socio-historical reading of these changes to the French postal service enhance understanding – within a context shaped by the European market’s liberalisation process – of how the rhetorical justifications that management is using to legitimise the change to a limited liability company status serve, paradoxically, as a structural way of preserving public service.
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