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Competency management has become a new trend in the public sector. There is some doubt, however, if competency management is really something new or whether it is just old wine in new bottles. Academics seem to be more sceptical about its novelty than practitioners. This article attempts to combine theory and practice. Some theoretical aspects of competency management are explored and definitions, reasons for implementation, novelty and implications for the HRM function are discussed. The theory is then confronted with two cases of competency management in the public sector. The first deals with the appraisal system in the Flemish administration and the second with the HR‐policy towards public managers in the Dutch civil service. The research material for the case studies was collected during a research project on international perspectives for HRM in the Flemish government.

What had begun as a respectable stream of information about Asia during the sixteenth century became a virtual flood during the seventeenth. Literally hundreds of books about Asia and its various parts were published during that century, authored by missionaries, merchants, mariners, physicians, soldiers, and independent travellers. At least twenty-five major descriptions of South Asia, appeared during the century; another fifteen on mainland Southeast Asia, about twenty devoted to the Southeast Asian archipelagoes, and sixty or more to East Asia. Alongside these major independent contributions stood scores of Jesuit letterbooks, derivative accounts, travel accounts with brief descriptions of many Asian places, pamphlets, newssheets, and the like. Many of these were collected into the several large multivolume compilations of travel literature published during the period. In addition, several important scholarly studies pertaining to Asia were published during the seventeenth century - studies of Asian medicine, botany, religion, and history- as well as translations of important Chinese and Sanskrit literature.