Abstract
Along with international trends various management-driven reform initiatives have been introduced throughout the last decade. Drawing on first empirical results of a recent survey among top bureaucrats, this article analyses executive perceptions of public management and leadership challenges and experiences against this background. The paper concludes that while the general idea of a managerial reform agenda gains increasing salience, the implementation within the German public administration still is rather limited. However the survey also reveals an increasing openness of executives towards leadership and management topics and the strong need for an increasing focus on personnel development.