In the age of the Anthropocene, in a context of systemic, health, economic, social, political and environmental crisis, France's public services are more than ever in search of performance and quality of service at the lowest possible cost. In this quest, it does not yet seem to have succeeded in overcoming or putting an end to the New Public Management model (Boltanski, Chiapello, 1999, Matyjasik, Guenoun, 2020). Despite the various reforms aimed at modernizing the way public services operate, an anthropic phenomenon is at work, producing entropy, a source of hidden costs (Savall & Zardet 1989). Hybridization affects several areas of the civil service. In managerial terms, it concerns administrative simplification and public service quality, the renewal of practices, and the autonomy and accountability of public policy managers. The hybridization of public management, whether organizational or institutional, is a source of role tension, dysfunction and hidden costs. This contribution is based mainly on work carried out by researcher-practitioners in a variety of public organizations. We have opted for a mixed, multi-site scientific approach, with different forms of hybridity, in order to assess the possibilities of moving towards more responsible management. These cases are an action-research project involving a pension and occupational health insurance fund and a family allowance fund, a qualimetric study involving Tourist Offices set up as EPICs (Public Industrial and Commercial Establishment) and a local authority (town hall) with 797 employees in France. The study focused on the difficulties encountered by local managers in performance management, and in particular on the need for situational awareness in the decision-making process.
