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The cases of two French local governments are analyzed to understand the erratic processes of fashionable HRM ideas since the early 1990s. We mobilize the literature on managerial modes, in particular that developed in Scandinavian institutionalism on the new management public. Our main contribution is to describe the role played by identification. The alignment of identification between leaders for an organizational ideal positively influences their commitment to a project of dissemination of HRM ideas. The alignment of identifications can also be broken and explain erratic processes of fashionable HRM ideas in these public organizations. Finally, we propose an original presentation of the lifecycle model of management fashions. We thus contribute to the literature on public sector HRM.