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There are striking similarities between publicly-held government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and investor-owned public utilities. Each firm enjoys large scale economies that give a significant competitive advantage over other companies, possesses a dominant market position that it may be able to exploit to earn profits above competitive levels, and has a strong incentive to enter new markets when the life cycle of its core markets constrain its ability to increase profits. The recent behavior of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac indicates that the government must impose more stringent economic regulation on those GSEs in order to be sure that they achieve their public purposes.

Proper and effective control through audit is necessary in the case of public enterprises as the funds invested in them do not belong to those who manage the affairs of these enterprises. That is why it is important that their financial operations are subjected to severe scrutiny. Examines the problems of audit control of public enterprises, which would indicate an insight into the legal framework of audit accountability and the deviations emerging there from in actual practice. Government auditors do not have sufficient appreciation of the commercial nature of the public enterprises, and too detailed and continuous audit dampens the initiative of enterprising managers, forcing them to adopt a more cautious approach and restricting the scope of delegation of powers. In some cases the Comptroller and Auditor‐General is the sole auditor, and in other cases he performs the superimposed audit in addition to the audit by the professional auditor. Therefore, finds that audit control over public enterprises varies from case to case, and the CAG should interpret this power according to the need of situation, and there should be external efficiency audit for public enterprises.

There is no general theory of public enterprise, and the miscellany of separate theorizations on the subject has created a conceptual quagmire. Examines the rather confusing state of the research on public enterprise performance and behaviour. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it seems that in certain circumstances (as in the case of Singapore) public enterprise can be quite efficient, as well as an effective form of national competition.

In this article an arrangement of concepts intended as a framework for analysis of a public enterprise system is portrayed. This conceptual structure delineates a broad array of ideas in the general context of the dichotomous policy approaches of government intervention versus laissez‐faire and, on an organisational basis, between the meanings of “public” and “enterprise”. The result is a taxonomy of elements of public enterprise, delineating particular aspects of a public enterprise system. Finally the author suggests a practical way to operationalise the model, by selecting one key expression from the set of dichotomous terms which was deemed to be a proxy for the general meaning conveyed in the conceptual structure. This one expression, centralisation/autonomy, lent itself well to the design of a questionnaire survey to “test” a given public enterprise system. The Singapore system was tested in a pilot exercise.

Public sector enterprises show distinct differences in structure, management philosophy, and perfomance when compared to private sector enterprises. This becomes more evident when one compares the performance of developed – versus developing‐country public enterprises. In particular, they are a dominant force for the socio‐economic and technological development of developing economies. In recent years, public enterprises have enlerged as important income contributors and a potent technology source to developing countries through their active internationalisation efforts. After two to three decades of home country‐based operations, public enterprises have begun to enter and operate in international markets, due to the impact of home country push and host country pull factors. The purpose of this article is to examine the internationalisation process of public sector enterprises from developing countries. In particular, their structures, operational methods and procedures, organisational behaviour and strategy formulation issues important to operations in overseas markets are examined for orderly decision‐making purposes. Public sector enterprise development for international markets is studied conceptually as well as analytically, and a number of effective strategies with contemporary examples are discussed.

This paper addresses the social value of commercial enterprises that are jointly owned by a government and private sector investors and where the shares are listed on a stock exchange: thus, “listed public–private enterprises” (LPPEs). The theoretical part of the paper addresses how differences in ownership patterns influence the behavior and performance of LPPEs.

We develop a conceptual taxonomy, drawing on the empirical evidence on the behavior and performance of public–private hybrid enterprises and on the application of agency theory to that evidence. The taxonomy discussion predicts how different ownership patterns affect enterprise productive efficiency and the ability of governments to achieve social goals through LPPEs. We review the empirical literature on government enterprise ownership and on the concentration of private share ownership to deduce how these matter for owner and managerial behavior and productive efficiency. We review the literature that considers the informational content that listing of an enterprise's shares on a stock exchange can provide to enterprise owners, managers and other domestic audiences with a policy interest. We employ a social welfare perspective to derive policy implications as to when the LPPE governance structure is most appropriate.

We show how the monitoring and performance weaknesses of state ownership are offset by some private ownership, particularly when combined with listing on a stock exchange. We demonstrate the effects of different governance structures on enterprise productive efficiency. We find that the LPPE structure is particularly appropriate as an alternative to nationalization or to full privatization and regulation of natural monopoly public utilities, and as an alternative to full private ownership and taxation of non-renewable natural resource extractive enterprises.

This paper explicitly addresses the question of why and how the combination of government ownership, private investor ownership and listing on an exchange is socially valuable in providing information on productive efficiency to governments.

There is no general theory of public enterprise (PE), and the miscellany of separate theorizations on the subject has created a conceptual quagmire. Advances some hypotheses gleaned from the literature on the PE concerning confusion in the PE′s objective function, investment tendencies and cost of capital, “fairness” as international competitors, influence of the societal environment, and other major theoretical issues. Hypotheses are modified to accommodate the Singapore experience with PEs. Singapore represents a rare phenomenon – a case of a successful PE system.

Argues that conceptually, privatization entails changing organizational status from public to private and from a monopoly to a competitive situation. In practice, the outcome may be different. Many privatized utilities conform to neither the traditional notion of the public nor the private enterprise. The broad dichotomy of the public‐private model of enterprise classification no longer provides an adequate insight to the workings of organizations in today’s environment. The new challenges emanating from the increasingly complex nature of modern environment require a new philosophy of organizational classification ‐ a reconceptualization of conventional paradigms. Based on the UK’s privatization experience, offers a framework for identifying and delineating the boundaries of an emergent organizational type ‐ the national enterprise. It is suggested that a clear articulation of the national enterprise concept might be useful to governmental strategists in planning the process of transforming state‐owned enterprises.

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.

In some political and economic situations, it may be desirable to have a company that operates with a legal structure that is midway between the two extreme poles of the private sector (i.e. privatisation) and the public sector (i.e. nationalisation). In such situations none of the existing legal forms for private or public enterprises creates the institutional conditions necessary for a profitable, collectively owned enterprise. A possible solution to this problem is the participatory legal form of a group of affiliated public service organisations.

Taking a case study on the crisis-beset Berlin Brandenburg Airport Company (BER) as an example, the author examines how the proposed alternative legal form for collective enterprises could have improved the legal and institutional framework of the airport company.

The problems that arose with Berlin Brandenburg airport had multiple causes. Had the airport company adopted the legal form of a group of affiliated public service enterprises, it might have been better able to deal with many of its problems because the organisational structure would have been more suitable. The case study demonstrates that the improved governance framework offered by a group of affiliated public service enterprises could have reduced the likelihood of the large scale, spectacular failure of the project that occurred.

A company that operates as collectively owned property is midway between the two extreme poles of private property and state property. In political and economic situations where such a solution is sought the question arises as to which legal or corporate form will provide the best conditions for successful management. The current lack of suitable available legal forms may be a factor in preventing the number of companies in collective ownership from increasing. The article points towards this gap and introduces the legal form of a group of affiliated public service enterprises, i.e. a collectively owned state consortium of social community interest enterprises.