Search results

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue and outline its major themes and challenges, their relevance and the research opportunities the field presents.

The paper reviews prior literature and outline’s the need to analyse challenges for corporate governance and accountability of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as a precursor to introducing the contributions to this special issue.

Corporate governance, accounting and accountability of SOEs are crucial and growing topics in public management and other research disciplines. Public service provision and budget consolidation cannot be realized effectively and efficiently without powerful governance and management of SOEs. However there are significant corporate governance challenges and important empirical research gaps in comparison to other fields. Broader theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, accountability mechanisms and sector/context are identified and discussed and encouraged in future research.

This paper aims to stimulate interdisciplinary research on emerging issues affecting governance and accountability of SOEs considering their growing importance in the society and their changing nature.

Effective mechanisms and good practices may contribute to better performance of SOEs. Findings may help politicians, administrations, board members, auditors, consultants, scholars and the media striving for improvements around the world.

The paper condenses theoretical and empirical findings to highlight the relevance of this field and important research gaps. The special issue offers an empirical examination of interdisciplinary literature and innovative experiences of SOEs to strengthen public service motivation, board composition and roles, trust and control, transparency, public value and to enhance the ability to manage, steer and monitor contracts, performance and relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent public sector entities in Austria, Germany and Switzerland apply sustainability reporting (SR) guidelines in line with the global reporting initiative (GRI) to respond to societal pressure. It further assesses the kind of data reported in order to illuminate whether well-balanced share of economic, environmental and social information are provided.

This study provides an empirical analysis of SR based on a documentary analysis of external reports by public sector organisations (PSO) included in the GRI’s database for the years 2012-2014.

PSO applying the GRI guidelines comply to a relatively great extent but show considerable variations and a clear imbalance of information reported concerning the three pillars of sustainable development.

The paper offers insight into GRI reporting practices by PSO in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Additionally, a country and sector comparison was conducted. As previous studies mostly focus on SR in private corporations, the results contribute to advancing research on SR in the public sector where PSO increasingly have to demonstrate their (sustainable) contributions to the public benefit.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to theory of hybrid organizations, with particular regard to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and their ability to contribute to sustaining value pluralism in the public sector.

The paper offers a qualitative case concerning ongoing performance management reforms in the corporate governance of SOEs in Sweden, which is analyzed using theory on valuation and evaluation.

It is found that the number of non-financial values is reduced with reference to categorization. Attempts are made to change the perception of the potential value conflict at hand between financial and non-financial missions by adding a number of neutralizing “meta values” such as transparency and efficiency to the performance language in use. There is a risk of mission drift as a clear hierarchization of values, prioritizing financial values, is created and sustained in “investment teams.” Processes, standards and dialogues are all dominated by an economic logic despite formal aspirations to balance the values at stake. The few remaining non-financial values are translated into economic language aiming for a commensuration of the performance of the different missions. In addition, the ambition of the public policy assignment may be further reduced by de-coupling.

The paper suggests a novel approach to hybrid organizations in general and SOEs in particular when exploring how the values underlying complex missions are configured in “value work” performed by government officials in Swedish government offices. Such analyses of value work in the micro-practice of hybrids offer a more fine-grained understanding of organizational dilemmas that are commonly acknowledged, but more seldom explained in empirical detail.

The purpose of this study is to present two heuristics for researchers to identify different types of boards in public sector organziations, and thus enable exchange of research findings and comparative research.

Based on existing knowledge, two typologies are presented. The first typology discerns four archetypes of boards, and the second typology distinguishes six board roles. The use of these typologies is briefly illustrated with findings on supervisory board in Dutch ZBOs.

Application of the two heuristics is possible and should preferably been done in combination as formal competencies and actual practices of boards do not always coincide. In the Dutch case, boards take on more than one role often exceeding their formal position. On the other hand, examples can be found where boards are overruled and stripped from their formal powers. Combining the two heuristics renders more comprehensive insight into what boards are and do.

The two heuristics show that there are different types of boards. Researchers can use these to carry out comparative research. Practitioners and policy makers can use them, for example, when designing appropriate governance structures in public sector organizations or applying international guidelines to specific types of boards and organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the conceptualisation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as a mode of governance in marketisation via the perspective of historical institutionalism.

The paper is based on a qualitative case study of the marketisation of Danish passenger rail from the 1990s to date where marketisation has been set on hold since 2011 due to the activities of the SOE.

The paper shows that market governance was layered on the hierarchal governance of the SOE that was later turned into a hybrid governance mode through corporatisation. This layered set-up provided the state with a double governance grip that drove marketisation until 2011. However, the SOE as a hybrid created ripple effects between the market and the hierarchy that hampered the marketisation. The hierarchical governance turned towards centralisation and market governance was put on hold. The hybridity of the SOE was endogenously displaced via closing down of commercial activities, leading to a re-conversion of the SOE towards the hierarchical mode.

The paper contributes to the discussions about hybridity and re-centralisation in post-NPM era. It presents a case on how hybridity is altered and evolves in SOEs as a hybrid mode of governance between hierarchy and market in marketisation and how this can lead to re-centralisation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how performance measurement systems (PMSs) might be designed in order to empower managers of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) towards an active work role.

The study is based on a conceptual approach that combines insights from prior research on performance measurement with that on dimensions of psychological empowerment. An exploratory case study is used to further develop propositions for the design of an empowering PMS. Data from in-depth interviews with six managers of diverse SOEs located within a German city enables the tracing of underlying causal mechanisms.

PMSs that are designed according to the principles of goal clarity, balanced goal difficulty, autonomy-enhancing measurement, and a broad goal scope can positively influence the four dimensions of empowerment: meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact.

The study’s propositions can be used to enhance the governance of SOEs through a particular design of PMSs. This research thus responds to the call for a new generation of governance mechanisms within the complex setting of SOEs.

Current research on PMSs is extended through the construct of psychological empowerment. Thus, an existing governance mechanism is further developed towards being more effective for use in the context of SOEs.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the predictive power of each dimension of public service motivation (PSM) on job performance (JP) in a Taiwan sample.

The present study adopted a cross-sectional approach using a large-scale questionnaire survey in Taiwan (N=2,239). Participants from six utility sectors in two infrastructure-relevant ministries (Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) and Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA)), with heterogeneous sectors, were recruited, including representatives of the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA), Chunghwa Post (CHP), Taiwan Power Company (TPC), CPC Corporation, Taiwan (CPC), Taiwan Sugar Corporation (TSC), and Taiwan Water Supply Corporation (TWSC). The sample consisted of 2,239 public employees from six public utilities.

Although the results suggest that the PSM observed in western society also exists in the Taiwanese public utilities context, the self-sacrifice (SS) and the compassion (COM) dimensions were unconfirmed. The research found that for all utilities SS was significantly negatively correlated with JP, while attraction to public policy making (APP) and commitment to public interests (CPI) were significantly positively correlated with performance. Moreover, CPI was the only dimension of PSM that consistently predicted employees’ JP across utilities.

First, the authors tested the theory using a limited sample of public employees from Taiwanese public utilities. The cross-sectional design does not offer a clear cause-and-effect relationship as examined in the current study. Data collected only from public utilities in Taiwanese sample may cause concerns for the generalisability of the present findings to other settings. Second, the data do not address the timevariant effects of PSM. Third, the current empirical findings are based on Taiwan’s public utilities. The observations should be interpreted with caution. A broader sample of employees would make the empirical results more generalisable beyond the country-specific findings.

Researchers should unpack the PSM and JP concepts and strategically explore subdimensional relationships, but these results offer new insights into the influence of such subdimensions on the link between PSM and JP. PSM in public utilities has great potential to enhance JP through high levels of CPI and APP. Furthermore, public utilities management staff should acknowledge the value of PSM for JP and, if applicable, praise it with substantial rewards.

The relationship of the PSM to JP in public utilities is much less studied, especially in Asian countries. Moreover, no study on employees in public utilities has previously used a Taiwan sample.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between trust and contract in the context of externalized local public services provision.

A multi-theoretical framework is used to analyse different combinations of control mechanisms (i.e. trust and contract) with reference to three cases of externalized water service provision in Estonia consisting of inter-organizational relationships between local governments and water companies with different ownership structures (public, private and mixed public-private).

The relationship between trust and contract, which can either be substitutes or complements, or eventually erode each other, is contingent upon the capacity of interacting individuals (and related organizations) to keep interests aligned in water services provision.

The relationship between trust and contract is analysed by considering the interactions between key actors within the underlying governance setting.

The purpose of this paper is to make an empirical-based conceptualization of the contemporary domestic state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as domestic institutional market actors (IMAs) in the marketization of public service delivery.

The paper is based on a qualitative comparative case study of the SOEs in passenger rail in Denmark and Sweden from 1990 to 2015.

The paper shows how marketization results in a layered institutional set-up of public service delivery based on both competition and monopoly where the SOE becomes what we call an IMA bridging sectorial challenges. In Sweden, this role has a new public governance form as the monopoly over time is fully dismantled. In Denmark, over time marketization is put on hold due to problems with the SOE as a market actor, but the SOE is nevertheless safeguarded in a new Weberian model as a sector coordinator.

The paper contributes to the recent literature on SOEs and marketization with an original and novel conceptualization of contemporary SOEs in public governance.