Search

This paper investigates privatization policy in mixed oligopoly when partial privatization changes a technological difference between semi‐public and private firms. It shows that when the degree of privatization is partial, privatization is insufficient. Furthermore, privatization is more likely to be insufficient as the market becomes more competitive. If the cost efficiency gain is captured by decreasing the degree of privatization, privatization is insufficient regardless of whether entry by private firms is restricted or free. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the optimal privatization policy in a polluting mixed duopoly when environmental taxes are used. Firms adopt clean technology to reduce emissions. We consider the situation of exogenous tax and find that (i) partial privatization is always optimal under low marginal damage, while full nationalization may be optimal under high marginal damage; (ii) the optimal privatization level always increases with tax rate under low marginal damage, while it may decrease with tax rate under high marginal damage. As an extension, we consider the endogenous tax situation and show that full nationalization may be optimal under sufficiently high marginal damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces the theoretical perspective on gradual institutional change to the corporatization literature. This is achieved via a longitudinal case study on the institutionalization of the Danish state guarantee model (SGM) for transport infrastructure based on archival document studies of seven infrastructure projects and 31 interviews with elite actors and experts. The article explores with a detailed analysis how the gradual change mechanisms of layering, conversion and displacement coexist, are interrelated, and are coevolving over a long period. It contributes to the corporatization literature presenting the SGM as an alternative to public and private partnerships and government agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the optimal privatization policy when firms endogenously choose their strategic variable. The level of privatization is shown to determine: (i) the choice of strategic variable, whereby an asymmetric equilibrium could emerge (either Cournot–Bertrand or Bertrand–Cournot); (ii) the stability of equilibrium when the partially privatized firm and the private firm choose quantity and price respectively as the strategic variable; and (iii) the level of welfare, whereby Cournot–Cournot and Bertrand–Cournot games could lead to a greater welfare than the Bertrand–Bertrand model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to investigate the impact of downstream foreign licensing on upstream privatization policy in a vertically related market, in which a public firm and a domestic private firm supply exclusively to downstream domestic and foreign firms, respectively. We show that downstream licensing occurs when the cost differential between downstream duopolists is small, and the optimal strategy under licensing is upstream partial privatization. In addition, downstream foreign licensing facilitates upstream privatization. We further show that downstream licensing improves (reduces) local welfare when the cost differential is large (small). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the optimal privatization policy in a mixed duopoly where the private firm may have environmental awareness. It finds that if the marginal environmental damage is low (high), partial privatization is optimal and its optimal level increases (decreases) with the degree of the private firm's environmental awareness. However, if the marginal environmental damage is moderate, full nationalization or full privatization can be optimal and the optimal privatization level does not depend on the degree of the private firm's environmental awareness. This study highlights the role that environmental pollution and private firms' environmental awareness play in determining optimal privatization policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facts about the increased corporatization of medical care in the United States are offered here in order to trace their impact on patients and their care. The culture of medicine, as it has been impacted by a corporate ethos, is also addressed, including aspects of physicians' training that make it difficult for them to empathize with their patients' struggles, and the gradual evolution of practices that view patients as isolated, impaired "organ systems" targeted for siloed treatments. Narratives from patients who report their encounters with an alienating system are discussed from a perspective that focuses on patients' resulting self‐experience. Finally, three cases of chronically ill patients who engaged in psychoanalytic treatments in the context of their experiences with "not care" are examined in depth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the nature of today's corporatized health care system in the United States, offering examples of the psychological toll it takes on clinicians at all levels. It details corporate practices that disenfranchise practitioners from exercising their clinical judgment and from offering input to system administrators about problematic patient care experiences. It discusses the sense of frustration, resignation and moral injury that can permeate their work lives and disrupt their sense of effectiveness and well‐being in this context. Following this background is a psychoanalytic analysis of narratives from two physicians about their corporate health care experiences. Two case studies follow, in which a nurse and a physician entered psychoanalytic psychotherapy to process the destructive psychological impact of their work environments. A third case illustrates the negative impact of automatized insurance practices on one psychologist and her patient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we expand upon our use of the cocoon metaphor for understanding and working with organizations from a psychodynamic perspective. Conceived as both defensive and generative, cocoons are relational phenomena that manifest throughout organizations and risk being mistaken as dysfunctional entities in need of dismantling. To illustrate the utility of the cocoon metaphor in conceptualizing organizational problems, we present a case study of a hospital restructuring following its acquisition by a for‐profit health care system and driven by efficiency and cost‐savings. The resulting disruptions across operating divisions created a set of problems that necessitated the help of an outside consultant. Engaging members of the organization in the task of solving their own problems entailed recognizing their (inter)subjective experiences and behaviors as more than just defensive hiding, or aggressive attacking, but also as holding the potential for new ways of working and relating. It also entailed showing leaders how to replace environmental impingement in the form of "looking for mistakes" with what we call, borrowing from Marion Milner (1969), a "waiting watchfulness" that fostered understanding of the emotional world inside, outside, and at the boundaries of cocoons to promote organizational learning and meaningful change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a model of privatization and divestiture of a vertically integrated public monopoly. The framework is used to derive general conditions of how mixed companies might be used to promote efficient outcomes without assuming either an ideal social planner or superior cost performance of private enterprise. The conditions suggest that efficient public policy towards mixed (public‐private partnership) companies depends on basic cost and demand conditions. The results indicate that: (1) a vertically integrated private monopoly can be more efficient than any combination of mixed companies when there is a sufficiently flat linear (elastic) demand curve and relatively greater (upward sloping) marginal cost for the downstream sector; (2) an upstream public and downstream public firm can achieve the first best outcome when the downstream firm has constant marginal costs; and (3) a partial privatization of the upstream firm achieves higher welfare than taking that action for the downstream firm. The intuition behind the propositions is provided using standard features of cost and demand. While the implications for public policy regarding privatization and divestiture in infrastructure sectors are not definitive, the results underscore the importance of understanding cost and demand conditions when developing and implementing public policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent health care reforms in England, combined with financial austerity, have accelerated both corporatization and commercialization in the English National Health Service (NHS) and this has encouraged greater public sector entrepreneurialism (PSE). We advance this argument by examining the meaning and experience of corporatization in this sector, illustrating our argument with qualitative data from a specialist hospital at the forefront of this trend. We demonstrate how the policy and practice of corporatization is entangled with increased commercialism and how this shapes more entrepreneurial conduct from staff. Framed in terms of the recursive relationship between organizational dynamics and individual behaviors, we focus empirically upon the shifting epistemic boundaries associated with increased corporatization, describing the dissonant effects of these shifts upon individuals, their attempts to compartmentalize, and the ethical dilemmas that result. Through this case we draw conclusions about the emerging impact of corporatization, commercialization, and public sector entrepreneurialism across public services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Public Administration is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Public corporations have been constantly in the spotlight, with some commentators arguing that they can help governments provide better public services, and others insisting that their governance is simply too complex. Despite this ongoing debate, few studies have researched public corporation performance. The present study offers empirical evidence of the effects of various forms of corporatization on public service costs. In particular, it examines public service costs incurred under four different forms of governance: public agencies, public corporations, mixed public corporations with minority public ownership, and mixed public corporations with majority public ownership. The analysis considers eight types of public services in 874 Spanish municipalities between 2014 and 2017. The empirical results show that services provided by public corporations are no less costly than those provided by public agencies. In fact, the services offered by mixed corporations with government majorities tend to cost more than those provided by public agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The corporatization of public services by moving services previously provided in‐house into various types of arms‐length corporate forms of organization is becoming an important trend at multiple levels of government. Although the use of such corporate forms to deliver public services is not a new phenomenon, evidence on the impact of corporatization on public services provision is only slowly emerging. In this symposium, we aim to advance our understanding of the theoretical and practical implications of corporatization through empirical analyses of its dynamics in a range of different settings. In this introductory article, we begin by explaining what is meant by the corporatization of public services and the different forms that it can take, before summarizing the existing evidence on the governance, accountability, and performance of corporatized public services. We then describe the articles included in the symposium and conclude by outlining a future research agenda for studying corporatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporatization—arguably as important as privatization regarding public service reform—remains an under‐researched topic in Public Administration. In this paper, we explore the extent to which the implementation of different types of corporatization strategies can be explained by the ideology of the ruling party in the Spanish public healthcare sector, selected for study because this sector was subject to reform, particularly, decentralization and marketization. To do so, we use count‐data regression models to analyze secondary data from the 17 Spanish regional governments for the period 2003–2017. Our estimates reveal that right‐wing controlled regional governments exhibit a clear preference for corporatization strategies that actively involve the private sector, such as Public–Private Partnerships and Public Finance Initiatives. Further analysis suggests that left‐wing governments are positively associated with the implementation of corporatization strategies that do not involve the private sector, such as the creation of Public Enterprises and Public Entities. These results are robust to a variety of alternative specifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporatization implies disintegration of public authority, leading to not only structural but also cultural differentiation of government, transforming it into a fragmented and hybrid governance system consisting of an authority and multiple autonomous or semi‐autonomous operators. This article addresses corporatization at the local government level in Norway, exploring if and how this change in formal structure triggers the emergence of separate cultures in the operator entities. Described as an institutionalization process, new norms, cognitions and identities seem to develop in these entities, creating a sense of 'us' (the municipal company) and 'them' (the municipality), thus strengthening the regulative separateness through normative and cultural‐cognitive elements. Findings from our multiple‐case study indicate that this process may be relatively fast and strong, transforming local government into a system comprising various hybrid types, especially segregated and assimilated types. The stronger the structural differentiation is, the stronger cultural differentiation seems to be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out an archival account of events leading up to the mass agencification of the British civil service by the Thatcher administration (1979–1990). This account holds lessons for contemporary understandings of the ideological roots and institutional structures of corporatization. When Thatcher came to power in 1979, she wanted to make government "efficient" through the adoption of "business‐like" practices. We show that this project was grounded in her Methodist upbringing and the emerging neoliberal economic theories of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Thatcher's efforts to instill a "market mentality" were met with stubborn resistance from a bloc of Ministers and senior civil servants. We find that Thatcher used agencification to break this resistance. Agencification removed Ministerial control over service delivery and saw "business‐like" managers placed in charge of the newly created agencies. This curtailed the workings of democracy. Like Thatcher's agencification, corporatization today imperils democracy in pursuit of "efficiency." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporatization, the conversion of state‐owned enterprises into semi‐autonomous, legally independent entities, has gained in popularity internationally since the 1980s. This review suggests that usage of the term has become entangled with other definitions of corporatization, and other organizational reforms associated with new public management, and appears consequently to have lost its distinctiveness in many contemporary studies of corporatization. Through a scoping review of literature on corporatization of healthcare organizations internationally, we develop a typology of four perspectives on corporatization (as managerialism of medical work, as institutional level reform to encourage market‐like behavior, as corporate governance implications of legal independence, and as private sector colonization) and analyze the specific processes, impacts, and mediators associated with each approach. This typology can aid conceptual clarity in future research on corporatization and orient practitioners to particular management and policy questions within the complex field of reform signified by this term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing literature argues that privatization tends to lower the output of the mixed‐ownership firms in the manufacturing. Nevertheless, since manufacturing has closely linked to producer services recently, by incorporating producer services into the analysis, this paper investigates the impacts of partial privatization of the mixed‐ownership firm in the manufacturing sector on output, unemployment, and social welfare in developing countries in a three‐sector general equilibrium model. The main conclusion is that partial privatization would lower unemployment and raise output conditionally if the profit of producer service firms is zero in the long run. Besides, the welfare impacts of partial privatization in the short and long run are considered. Compared with the existing literature, this paper provides a new perspective and derives some new results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper accounts simply for the link between higher education and the productive economy through educated workers. We study a model of vertical successive monopolies where students/workers acquire qualification from a University then "sell" skilled labor to a monopoly which itself sells its final product to consumers, linking through quality the education sector to the labor and output markets. We determine the optimal share the State should keep in the University to compensate for the market imperfections, while taking into account the inefficiencies of public management. The resulting partially privatized University fixes the tuition fees so as to maximize a weighted sum of profits and social welfare. We derive the optimal public share under the hypothesis that the State may subsidize the tuition fees/University losses, then under the constraint that the University should make a nonnegative profit. We prove that in both cases, the State should keep a substantial share (higher under the first hypothesis) in the University, unless public management is too inefficient in which case the University's management should be completely private. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study revisits the endogenous timing game in a mixed duopoly by considering the situation in which a welfare‐maximizing government sets the optimal degree of privatization for a partially privatized firm. We present the following results. First, in quantity competition, the government sets the degree of privatization for the partially privatized firm to be positive or zero depending on the equilibrium in the subsequent observable delay game. The observable delay game has multiple equilibria and the firms choose either of two Stackelberg equilibria. Second, in price competition, the government chooses to fully nationalize the partially privatized firm, leading to a unique Bertrand equilibrium in the observable delay game. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the most recent data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey for China, this research shows that ownership structure significantly impacts firm performance and firm characteristics. Our results show the importance of getting to grips with government regulation, as the time spent by senior management dealing with government regulation is the most significant independent variable. Another key finding of this article is that China has excellent economic institutions conducive to doing business. It is far easier to conduct business in China than in the other BRIC countries. We conclude that partial privatizations of state‐owned enterprises on their own are unlikely to bring substantial efficiency gains. Reforms must also include better incentives and monitoring of management. Our findings are robust and consistent with various controls, alternative measures of firm performance, and different estimation methods, including quantile regression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A triumvirate of corporate interests now controls the American healthcare system: the corporations which manage health care "delivery" in our hospitals and clinics, the insurance companies who decide which medical visits or procedures they will cover for which patients, and the pharmaceutical industry, which manipulates the cost of our medications to maximize their profits. These new practices have been adopted as part of a "lean" corporate business model that favors marketing, "efficiency" and the bottom line over all else, including actual patient care. It is of great interest that the corporate management models adopted currently by America's healthcare corporations and corporate chains closely resemble the business model adopted by the Boeing corporation as it developed its fateful Boeing 737-Max aircraft. [Extracted from the article]

The UK Financial Conduct Authority has developed and implemented policies targeting individuals for regulatory non‐compliance in the post‐2008 crisis period. This article develops a tripartite framework that differentiates between individual–firm, regulator–individual, and regulator–firm interactions to capture the complexity of these enforcement proceedings. Drawing on interviews with stakeholders, administrative decisionmaking observations, and documentary analysis, it outlines the process of individualizing responsibility for non‐compliance and finds that this approach poses evidential and investigative challenges for the regulator as a result of individual and corporate responses. The evidence shows that individuals are more likely than firms to engage in an adversarial response to an investigation rather than to settle. At the same time, through an inverse process of "corporatization" of the enforcement proceedings, firms may employ resources and strategies aimed at obscuring individual responsibility or binding together more closely the corporate and the individual case. The article concludes that the prospects of a successful outcome in investigating individuals depend not only on regulators' activities but also on corporate responses and on which managers are considered assets to the firm and which may be thrown to the wolves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early transition literature linked a large number of firm failures with the inability to overcome the pre‐transition misallocation of resources, that is, the inadequate capital–labour ratio. We look at the link between misallocation and firm survival using a rich firm‐level dataset of over 1,600 manufacturing plants established in a centrally planned economy after 1945. Our duration models include the standard Olley–Pakes misallocation measures as well as a firm‐level measure of the counterfactual level of capital that takes into account the present‐day market allocation and productivity. We show that while privatization is positively related to firm survival, misallocation (a) was more of a firm‐level than sector‐level phenomenon and, more importantly, (b) it, in general, did not have a sizeable effect on the actual firm survival nor it had an impact on the outcome of privatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been growing debate over the corporatisation of schooling, specifically the managerial practices of expanding charter school networks in the USA, often referred to as charter management organisations (CMOs). By definition, CMOs are consistently high‐performing, well‐financed networks of small schools operating in urban spaces, which adhere to a very specific 'no excuses' (NE) model of education in serving primarily students of colour living in poverty. This article is an autoethnographic account of my work as a leader in a CMO, which I theorise as a neoliberal project. We know very little of how neoliberal policies and ideologies are enacted in daily school life. I consider how the ethical responsibility of an educator is positioned within the daily practices and lived experience of leaders and educators working in a CMO. In focusing on my own ethical tensions, the article captures how this corporatised model of schooling influenced my values as an educator, my conflicted sense of social justice and the emotional labour of enacting a model of schooling founded on surveillance and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Practitioners often expect service delivery by municipally owned corporations (MOCs) to differ substantially from delivery by municipal bureaucracy. However, research into the circumstances under which municipal corporatization is effective is scarce. We investigate determinants of MOCs' performance based on a questionnaire sent to all Dutch MOCs, finding no evidence that many expected predictors of performance matter for performance. Key factors driving MOCs' performance relate to size, resource access, and the interaction between their multiple principals. We suggest that in studying local corporatization, researchers should look less at traditional principal–agent conflict and more at intermunicipal coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of companies by local governments to provide public services—referred to as "corporatization"—is an example of systemic public entrepreneurship that is popular across the world. To build knowledge of the antecedents of public sector entrepreneurship, the authors investigate the factors that lead local governments to create companies for public service delivery. Using zero‐inflated negative binomial regressions to analyze secondary data from 150 major English local governments for 2010–16, the authors find that governments with higher levels of grant dependence and debt dependence are more involved in the creation and operation of companies, as are larger governments. Further analysis reveals that very low and very high managerial capabilities are strongly associated with more involvement in profit‐making companies, while local government involvement in companies is more prevalent in deprived areas. At the same time, government ownership of companies is more common in areas with high economic output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the use of accounting in managing the co‐existence of different institutional logics in a German higher education institution (HEI), and its impact on the HEI. The study is of particular interest as the HEI analyzed pursued its own corporatization through a re‐organization from a state into a foundation university. We show that this corporatization through the adoption of new public management related ideas leads to institutional complexity arising from the co‐existence of extant state and emergent business logics. Our study suggests that HEIs may deploy particular accounting practices shaped by business logic only superficially, so as to satisfy stakeholders such as governmental authorities in order to enhance their legitimacy following a self‐imposed reform, while the operation of the HEI remains rooted in state logic. Specifically, the findings suggest that in the case of actual changes to the budgetary process arising through the corporatization and an emergent logic, failure to replace abandoned accounting practices shaped by a previously dominant logic with equivalent practices adhering to either extant or emerging logic(s), may put the organization at risk. Overall, our study contributes to a better understanding of the dangers of an organizational response to institutional complexity, referred to as reactive decoupling, in the management of institutional complexity and points to its negative impact on organizations' hybridization capability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical evidence on the effect of managerial autonomy on the performance of state‐owned enterprises (SOE) is surprisingly scant despite autonomy being a preferred reform instrument over partial privatization in many countries. Using longitudinal data on performance contracts of state‐owned enterprises in India, this paper finds that managerial autonomy is associated with significant increases in enterprise profitability and efficiency. Further, using India's unique reform experience where both managerial autonomy and partial privatization were pursued side by side, the paper finds that while the positive effects of autonomy continue post‐partial privatization, the effects of partial privatization on performance are ambiguous. Specifically, once autonomy is controlled for, partial privatization has a positive effect on SOE profitability only after it crosses a critical level of government disinvestment. The findings suggest that organizational reforms such as granting managerial autonomy can be an important policy instrument in improving SOE performance particularly in cases where governments are unable to make substantial disinvestments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses teaching and mentoring sociology graduate and doctoral students, focusing on collective new interests, public funding for universities and students and imposition of quality assurance processes. Topics include corporatization of university governance, social science disciplines and professional development opportunity.

Under the assumption that a public firm provides goods or services to two markets and that a private firm provides goods or services to one market only, this study examines whether public firms should be privatized. It also investigates how the production quantity of a private firm changes when its degree of privatization increases. We find that when the market share of a duopoly market is large (small), partial privatization (nationalization) is socially preferable. We also find that the quantity produced by the private firm does not always increase along with the degree of privatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how the partial privatization on the public firm affects the R&D risk choice in a mixed duopoly market. It mainly finds that: (i) the partial privatization of the public firm leads to a decline in the optimal level of R&D risk chosen by the private (or public) firm, and the higher the degree of privatization the lower the optimal level of R&D risk; (ii) for the public firm, the partial privatization policy always causes the private optimum to be lower than the social optimum; (iii) for the private firm, whether the private optimum is higher or lower than the social optimum depends on the partial privatization level of the public firm. When the degree of privatization is small (large), the private optimum is higher (lower) than the social optimum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: In 1984 the Irish postal service was corporatized from the Civil Service as An Post – a new commercial state‐owned enterprise. Focusing on the period 1984–2014 we examine the performance of An Post in the context of changes to its capital market status, competitive environment and internal organisation. Our analysis finds that during an ongoing process of commercialization the company recorded steady improvements in economic performance measured by both labour and total factor productivity. This trend of improvement ended in 2007 mainly due to the wider economic recession and increased levels of indirect competition from sources including electronic substitution of traditional mail. Looking forward, the scope for further improvements in productivity appears limited due to indirect competition and the requirement to provide a universal service. The future financial viability of An Post looks uncertain given the scale of challenges around these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: This paper provides an overview of the major State‐Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in Greece with the aim of identifying the key features of the dominant paradigm and the critical turning points in its evolution. The process of SOEs’ reform is analysed with reference to corporatization, restructuring, privatization and liberalization policies. Drawing on theoretical and empirical evidence, the paper explores the impact of these reforms on the ownership, governance and public mission of SOEs, also addressing their current social and economic role. The hypothesis of a ‘paradigm shift’ is tested within the changing context of government intervention, market structure, management relationships, public service and control and accountability of SOEs. The case studies include 15 major enterprises in key economic‐industrial and utility sectors. The paper concludes that over the past two decades the SOE sector has shifted towards new governance and organizational patterns that have substantially affected the traditional SOE paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay addresses the changing face of the university. It is based on my presidential address at the 2016 meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annals of Public & Cooperative Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article assesses the impact of New Public Management (NPM) reforms in the public sector from a cost consciousness perspective. Using an action-research methodology, we analyze the intensity of the external pressures that influence the institutional logic under which public sector organizations manage their costs. The field work shows that even after decentralization, public sector organizations appear unable to move their costing function from expense control to cost management unless external pressures motivate managers to complete the reform. We propose that the probability of success of reforms is increased when organizations are subject to strong pressures that could take the form of individual incentives or external threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students and teachers have much in common. The possibility for solidarity and an activist alliance between students and contingent faculty is possible because of their shared position of exploitation by corporate-style management. In order to create a strategic alliance between students and faculty certain conditions must be present: visionary proposals such as free higher education and the abolition of contingency must replace concessions and 'fine-tuning'; political equality between students and teachers must replace paternalism and patronage; aggressive rhetorical strategies that place our struggles with the frameworks of corporatization and austerity should replace status-quo unionism. Participatory democracy and organizing must be taken seriously as the only way to revive representative structures. In order to realize our goals and principles, we need an action plan and a counter-narrative. We can build our political capacity by knitting together existing political forces into an effective community of interest dedicated to the public good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1910 the world had almost half a million corporations, only one-hundredth of today's total. About one-fifth-with over half of corporate capital-were publicly tradable, higher portions than today. Most publicly quoted corporations traded in Europe and the British Empire, but most close (private) corporations operated in the US, which, until the 1940s, had more corporations per capita than anywhere else. The 83 countries surveyed here differed markedly in company numbers, corporate capital/ GDP ratios, and average corporate size. Enclave economies-dominated by quoted (and often foreign-owned) companies-had the largest average sizes, while other nations had more varied mixes of large quoted corporations and close company small and medium enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Malaysia's Islamic judiciary has undergone noteworthy transformations in recent decades, especially in the new millennium. Two distinct periods of ethnographic observation in Malaysia, separated by a quarter of a century, afford comparative-historical perspectives on the same (but ultimately very different) Islamic court and on an illustrative case heard there in 2012. Building on Pierre Bourdieu's work on juridical fields, these perspectives allow us to contextualize and thus better understand various discourses concerning Islamic law (syariah), Islamization, bureaucratization, and corporatization encountered today in different quarters of Malaysian society and globally. They also allow for a clear view of how these discourses and the social forces relevant to them play out on the ground, in the context of an increasingly corporate Islamic governmentality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, a survey is provided of the privatisation of government-owned enterprises in Australia since the 1980s. In particular, the article evaluates the evidence that has been compiled on the success or failure of privatisation in enhancing efficiency in various industry sectors. In terms of efficiency improvements, some privatisations have been a clear success. In other cases, however, most of the improvements in efficiency took place after corporatisation, rather than following privatisation. In most cases, improvements in efficiency were also probably due in varying (and sometimes substantial) parts to regulatory reform, increases in competition and technological change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the changing trends of the medical practices and their role in contributing to the improvement in the public health and health services in Australia. Topics discussed include development of general practice as a specialty and specialized medicine, challenges faced in providing patient-centred care independent of government funding and interference, and fears of corporatisation and concerns about the future of general practice in Australia.

Governments all over the world are drawn toward establishing enterprises that they own but that also allow them to delegate operational matters to others who they hope are better equipped to handle them. Here, Muhammad Naveed Iftikhar, who has served as Governance Specialist, Economic Reforms Unit (ERU), Ministry of Finance, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad, shares how this is playing out in Pakistan. We expect many Board Leadership readers will find much to recognize and learn from. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annals of Public & Cooperative Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Annals of Public & Cooperative Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Annals of Public & Cooperative Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Annals of Public & Cooperative Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The use of external consultants in government management and policy realms has drawn increasing attention in many countries including Canada. Studies were undertaken internationally in the 1990s and 2000s as legislatures and their accounting arms became concerned with the hidden costs of 'corporatization' of the public service and tried to expand benchmarking measures for government efficiency to include external consultants. Accounting for these increases in expenditures on consultancy, however, remains a challenge given the state of governmental financial and personnel reporting. The data on which existing reports have been drawn are very weak. This article examines results using a new dataset compiled from Proactive Disclosure reports in order to help clarify the situation of policy and management consulting in Canada at the departmental level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]