Dalla retorica del NPM al cambiamento in concreto: il caso di un centro di smistamento postale

During the last decades a process of public service reform has been run; it consists in tendency to the use of marked-oriented mechanisms in the public administration management (New Public Management). If, theoretically, the adoption of NPM seems to be simple and without any problem, the fulfilment of the change is, actually, difficult and ambiguous, especially because employers have to put into practice the reform. The paper is about the case of the privatization of the post service. The rhetoric of postal privatization is based on the passage from a red-taped, hierarchical and patronage-relationship model to an horizontal, flexible and meritocratic one. However, from the analysis of a sorting office emerges that the employers live the process of change in a uncertain and contradictory way, and consider the main organizational innovations as a process of downgrading.