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The article proposes two successive approaches of the works of sociological research on public administration and public companies which, since the end of 1980s, in France, introduced a fine analysis of civil servants’ activity. The first approach considers the way these studies tried to connect micro descriptions of agents’ activity and a more macro vision of public intervention, and brings to light the diversity of approaches. The second approach puts, in counterpoint, the accent on the empirical convergence of the led observations. It reveals in several domains (the relation of service, the qualification of legal situations, the mediationin suburbs and the coordination of territorial public action) an autonomy of these agents correlated directly in search of efficiency. This leads to formulate the historic hypothesis of a movement, in this time, of the place granted to work, understood as an act of inflexiblea djustment to the prescription, in public action.