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The roles and expectations of managers in the Australian vocational education and training (VET) sector are changing under dynamically complex conditions. The adoption of a more 'open' national training market as a government policy initiative has led to significant changes within VET providers and significant challenges for VET managers. This paper explores how particular 'policy technologies' are playing out in VET providers and their implications for managerial and organisational identities. Drawing on questionnaire, interview and case data, the argument is made that VET managers are located in a complicated nexus between public policy, business strategy, and educational practice: senior managers connect policy to strategy; frontline managers connect strategy to staff. As the central node in this nexus, strategy offers ways of securing identities that are specially valued in VET. Identification with strategy concepts is more evident for senior managers than frontline managers. Accordingly, frontline managers are faced with significant challenges as regards 'self work'. More broadly, spaces exist that provide the terrain for elaborating new organisational identities (and new managerial selves). ‘Cooperatives' and public sector/private sector partnerships constitute some of these spaces and each is analysed and discussed.