International Journal of Training and Development 5:3 ISSN 1360-3736 Designing training interventions: human or technical skills training? Eugenia N Petridou and Charalambos T Spathis Training is seen as the key instrument in the implementation of Human Resource Management policies and practices in both the private and public sector. The choice of the type of training, focused on human or technical skills, is crucial in designing the training process. This field study investigates the personal and occupational characteristics of 444 public managers, candidates for human and technical skills training. A classification model is proposed which allows the selection and weighting of the candidate trainees’ personal and occu- pational differences in order to participate in one of the two types of training. By means of the stepwise logistic regression method, gender, age, education, attitudes towards training, managerial level and job tenure have been identified as the significant variables associated with type of training. Introduction Public service modernisation has been a recurrent theme in developed countries worldwide over the last two decades. Since the early 1980s, the efficiency and effect- iveness of the public services in many countries have been damaged by unresponsive expenses, inability to deal with new challenges and deliberate resistance to change (Georgakopoulos, 1997; Peters and Savoie, 1994). Competitiveness in the public sector has been pursued by an ‘efficiency strategy’ strengthening the management capacity in government operations. Emphasis has been placed, on the one hand, on reorganis- ing public management through new technologies and institutional reforms, and, on the other, on replacing the bureaucratic culture in government services by a manage- ❒ Eugenia N. Petridou, Assistant Professor, and Charalambos T. Spathis, Lecturer, Department of Economics, Division of Business Administration, Aristotle’s University of Thessaloniki, 540 06 Thessaloniki, Greece.  Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2001, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA. Designing training interventions 185