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This paper aims to attempt to empirically investigate the impact of privatization on the performance of central public sector enterprises in India. Further attempt is made to explore whether privatization is a necessary or sufficient condition for improvement of performance of central public sector enterprises.

The scope of the study is limited to financial and operating performance analysis of 206 central public sector enterprises in India. Multiple regression analysis has been used to determine the magnitude and direction of relationship between dependent and independent variables and identify variables other than privatization which affects performance.

The study found that financial and operational performance of firms has improved significantly due to privatization. Further, firm-specific factors and other parallel reforms adopted by enterprises have significantly influenced their performance. The established regression model is highly significant with F-ratio of 31.825 at 99% significance level. The degree of explanation of the model is robust with adjusted R² at 0.956 implying that only 4.40% of explanation in the dependent variable cannot be explained by designated independent/explanatory variables.

The study would be useful to public policymakers to reach to a policy view on whether further disinvestment/privatization of central public sector enterprises need to be continued, and if so, then to what extent and direction.

This study aims to investigate the impact of the 2013 privatization of Nigeria’s energy sector on the technical performance of the Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) and its workforce.

This study used a questionnaire-based approach, and 196 participants were randomly selected. Analytical tools included standard deviation, Spearman rank correlation and regression analysis.

Before privatization, the energy sector, managed by the power holding company of Nigeria, suffered from inefficiencies in fault detection, response and billing. However, privatization improved resource utilization, replaced outdated transformers and increased operational efficiency. However, in spite of these improvements, BEDC faces challenges, including unstable voltage generation and inadequate staff welfare. This study also highlighted a lack of experience among the trained workforce in emerging electricity technologies such as the smart grid.

This study’s focus on BEDC may limit its generalizability to other energy companies. It does not delve into energy sector privatization’s broader economic and policy implications.

The positive outcomes of privatization, such as improved resource utilization and infrastructure investment, emphasize the potential benefits of private ownership and management. However, voltage generation stability and staff welfare challenges call for targeted interventions. Recommendations include investing in voltage generation enhancement, smart grid infrastructure and implementing measures to enhance employee well-being through benefit plans.

Energy sector enhancements hold positive social implications, uplifting living standards and bolstering electricity access for households and businesses.

This study contributes unique insights into privatization’s effects on BEDC, offering perspectives on preprivatization challenges and advancements. Practical recommendations aid BEDC and policymakers in boosting electricity distribution firms’ performance within the privatization context.

With a sample of 22 banks, this study examines the significance of the news contents about the privatization of two public sector banks in India. New information does impact the stock markets. This study provides evidence on how the privatization of public sector banks impacted the returns of the Indian banking sector.

This study employs the standard event study methodology with the market model for estimating the normal returns.

The statistical results indicate that while the private sector banks experienced positive average abnormal returns on the event day, the cumulative effect of the announcement is negatively significant for both private and public sector banks. The statistical results also provide evidence of information leakage, with significant results before the announcement date. The shorter event windows analysis exhibits significant positive returns in the 5-days [−2, +2] window for the private sector banks and the entire sample, signifying a positive short-term impact on the private sector banks.

The event study literature captures the impacts of many events. However, to the best of our knowledge, the impacts of the privatization of the Indian public sector banks have never been examined using the event study methodology. Hence, this study anticipates being the first-ever study to fill this gap and extend the available literature in finance. In addition, although we provide Indian evidence, future studies may be oriented to capture cross-country impacts.

Port competition attracted much scholarly attention in Northwest Europe during the 1980s. Following the rise of powerful economies in East Asia, particularly during the 1980s and 1990s, port competition has become an important phenomenon with the top five container ports in the world being located in the region. This paper aims to overview major port competition issues and outlines and analyzes the main alternative methodologies that researchers have employed to address them, referring to 70 items, mostly papers but including a few books and reports

The purpose of this paper is to examine the decision to contract school meal services and the associated nutritional and financial impacts on school districts. Given the increase in the use of competitive contracting of public school meal services and the critical role that school meal services play in public health, this is an important subject to investigate.

A case study was performed using one US school district with privatized food service. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with school food service decision makers. Other data collection included the analysis of public documents such as the school district’s budgets and financial statement reports (the cost per lunch and breakfast meals, the cost for labor, contract, transport, supplies and food expenses) and school food service policies (contract policies). Supplementary data pertaining to district social-demographic profiles and full-time equivalent enrollment figures were also collected from state departments.

Analysis of interviews revealed that positive financial motivations and impacts were dominant factors related to contracting food services in the district. A significant finding was the relatively short turnaround in the district’s negative financial situation as a result of contracting out the food services. These findings provide valuable insight and support for rural school districts in similar negative financial situations seeking to contract out food services.

Many studies have examined contracting out of technical services, such as transport and waste management, and social services, such as correctional services and health; however, there is a lack of studies documenting the effects of contracting out of school meal services.

Building on the literature of hybrids in the context of public organizations, this paper aims to discuss under which conditions hybrids can adequately provide “critical services”, a subset of public services characterized by their simultaneous exposure to externalities, socio-economic cohesion and legitimacy concerns.

The authors collect indications from two stylized examples, prisons and defense, to develop propositions as a step toward assessing the potential role of hybrids as alternatives to direct public provision or full privatization in the delivery of critical services.

This paper examines the conditions under which hybrid arrangements outperform the polar cases of public bureaus and full privatization in the delivery of a specific subset of public goods that the authors identify as “critical services”.

The authors suggest that there might be comparative advantages in relying on hybrid arrangements rather than the usual solutions of fully private or fully governmental provision. However, they also submit that these advantages are conditional to the capacity of hybrids to reconcile competing interests to achieve socio-economic cohesion, to combine capabilities dispersed among partners to benefit from positive externalities and to satisfy legitimacy concerns with respect to the role of government.

Since 2009 Swedish municipalities may apply the Act on System of Choice (LOV) in, among other things, eldercare. About half of the 290 Swedish municipalities have chosen this within home-care services for older citizens, thus creating conditions for a welfare mix where private and public providers compete. Some of these municipalities later made decisions to abolish LOV. This article aims to analyse the arguments put forward by municipal politicians to abolish LOV and discusses if the case of abandoning LOV represents a case of re-municipalization.

Qualitative method was used to analyse decision protocols and media materials from 20 Swedish municipalities that had abolished LOV in home-care services.

The article shows that politics and ideology seem to have only a limited significance in abolishing LOV. The most important arguments found in the empirical materials were instead pragmatic and related to the transaction costs: in smaller municipalities about the weak position of private providers and in larger municipalities about reported cases of welfare crime and extensive needs to control and review. In smaller municipalities, LOV was replaced by public monopoly and in larger municipalities by other types of procurements.

With its focus on eldercare in party-dominated municipalities, the article adds knowledge to the literature on drivers of re-municipalization but also discusses possible delimitations of the concept of re-municipalization.

The paper traces the development of employee ownership in the UK since the 1980s. It proposes that employee ownership is a function of macro-level contexts and micro-level decisions, with the latter framed and guided by the former. The macro context comprises the regulatory framework and the provision of incentives to adopt employee ownership. The paper shows how the evolution of these has led to a steep increase in employee ownership in the last eight years.

The paper draws on several sources of empirical data to chart the development of employee ownership in the UK since the 1980s and to identify the current features of employee ownership. Two firm-level surveys conducted in 2015 and 2020/21 are supplemented by qualitative case study data collected in the early 1990s. An annual census of all employee-owned firms facilitates a comprehensive overview of the current state of UK employee ownership.

It is found that there has been a steep increase in the number of UK employee-owned firms since 2014 after several decades of uneven growth. This is attributed to the introduction of new incentives and to refinements of the regulatory framework. Over the period, there has been a shift from hybrid employee ownership, combining direct and indirect forms, to indirect ownership associated with the employee ownership trust model.

The paper provides an original history of employee ownership in the UK using rich and unique data, along with the most comprehensive picture of current employee ownership to date.

Since enacting Act 8630/93, Brazilian port activities have been going through significant modifications, changing from the public port service management to the landlord model. Act 12815/2013 enforced a new regulatory framework increasing Port Authorities' dependence on the Federal Government. Since 2019, the Government has attempted to elaborate a Port Authorities' identity based on the private port governance model inspired by the Australian and United Kingdom ones. This paper assesses Brazilian's Port Authorities management models from 1993 to 2020 and considers the Australian, the United Kingdom and Antwerp port governance models as benchmarks.

This paper adopts a two-step methodological approach, namely a combined desk and field research methodological approach and considers three essential resources: government legislative acts and published data available online; ports' data and information issued by governments' agencies, academic papers and national and international ports' websites; and a semi-structured questionnaire survey targeting the leading associations representing port users, foreign trade and stevedoring companies.

The outcome shows that the solutions to overcome the existing Brazilian Port Authority governance problems remain in the Federal Government's hands by (1) removing its control through bureaucracy, (2) preventing the party-political influence following in the public ports and (3) decentralising port management by chief executive officers named by Port Authority Councils.

This paper does not explore the regulatory frameworks underlying the “Lease Terminal” and “Private User Terminal”.

This paper assesses the management models that led Brazilian's Port Authorities from 1993 to 2020, comparing them with the UK and Australian private service port and Antwerp landlord model.

A deteriorating security situation and an increased need for defence equipment calls for new forms of collaboration between Armed Forces and the defence industry. This paper aims to investigate the ways in which the accelerating demand for increased security of supply of equipment and supplies to the Armed Forces requires adaptability in the procurement process that is governed by laws on public procurement (PP).

This paper is based on a review of current literature as well as empirical data obtained through interviews with representatives from the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration and the Swedish defence industry.

Collaboration with the globalized defence industry requires new approaches, where the PP rules make procurement of a safe supply of defence equipment difficult.

The study's empirical data and findings are based on the Swedish context. In order to draw more general conclusions in a defence context, the study should be expanded to cover more nations.

The findings will enable the defence industry and the procurement authorizations to better understand the requirements of Armed Forces, and how to cooperate under applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

The paper extends the extant body of academic knowledge of the security of supply into the defence sector. It serves as a first step towards articulating a call for new approaches to collaboration in defence supply chains.