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The field of social action and social services has a complex relationship with the concept of “public service.” Initially separated into two groups of organizations—governed by legislation relating to the public and private sector respectively (the latter including voluntary organizations)—, this dualism is now superseded by the development of an administrative policing process aimed not directly at administrators, but at their activities confined within the categories of “establishments” and “services.” Public services and the private sector organizations that depend on them have both undergone convergent mutations. This is due to the new focus on the “service user” and to the development of methods of management that introduce a form of functional syncretism between public activities and those of the market. These changes currently in progress lead to questions about the ways and means of producing a “common good” that will still be shared between both the public authorities and those intermediary groups that target both general interest and social utility.