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Since the First World War efforts to reform bureaucracy in the French ministry of Finance have repeatedly referred to the management model of business as a benchmark. However, resistance from the French legal system has meant that attempts to import companies’ management methods into the sphere of public administration have progressed only slowly and in a haphazard manner. In 1968 at the height of the boom which followed the end of World War II an initiative for the “rationalization of budget choices” (RCB) was launched by the Ministry of Finance itself and this program led to the most significant phase of adoption of management practices by public organizations over the course of the century.