Suwanabol, Issara
Description
The main objective of this dissertation is to inquire into public
enterprise systems of the Third World in order to understand their actual
behaviour of the policy processes related to public enterprises. This
research project is a comparative study and the area selected for the case
study concerns the country members of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore
and Thailand.
The study is divided into four parts: (1) the...[Show more] introductory, which
reviews the previous literature in this field and questions whether concepts
and theories of public enterprise originated in the West are applicable to
the Third World environment and conditions; (2) the country studies, which
provide administrative development, organisational structure and processes,
and the profile of policy makers in each public enterprise system; (3) the
case studies, each with various aspects of public enterprises, namely
decisions, and motivations for public or private enterprises, the internal
management, and the expansion of the public enterprise sector, and corruption;
(4) the conclusion, which summarises the findings and attempts to
formulate some generalisations in regard to public enterprises in the Third
World.
It was found that all public enterprise policy issues, particularly
those traditionally debated by earlier writers (such as reasons for public
enterprises, their institutional frameworks and processes, and their
autonomy vs control), cannot be viewed in isolation from their specific
national and organisational environments. The major weakness of previous
concepts and theories of public enterprise, usually emphasising structural aspects, arise from their failure to recognise the significance
of such variables and their impact on public policy content and outcomes.
Thus, in many respects these theories are not relevant of the Third World
environment and conditions which sharply differ from those of the
Industrialised West where such theories originated.
Public enterprise can be viewed as an integrated subsystem of the
whole political and socio-economic system and a complete system in itself
with a number of subsystems, in which policy participants convert inputs of
various resources into outputs. The most important variables in a public
enterprise system are political and socio-economic contexts, formal institutions
and processes, and policy participants, each of which relates to the
others and to public enterprise policy, but their type and degree of influence
are different.
The real motivations for public enterprises are often related to
politics, i.e. the manoeuvre to gain political and economic control or to
balance power, not other publicly stated reasons dealing with social and
economic development. Ideologies affect the proliferation of public
enterprises in some countries, but their impact has been increasingly
insignificant. In contrast, political systems appear to be unrelated to the
size of the public enterprise sector, but they greatly affect policy content
and outcomes of all policy issues, including types and scope of activities,
institutional forms and processes.
Legal arrangements, according to the previous theories, are designed to
create efficiency and effectiveness: public enterprises are to be efficient
and effective only if they are out of politics and if a balance between
autonomy and control is created. It was found that such arrangements are
very much influenced by political considerations. Further, the actual practice tends to depend on the degree of influence each individual and
group possesses and exercises because legal forms and processes are not
institutionalised. Nevertheless, the performance of Third World public
enterprises is not as deleterious as claimed. Despite excessive political
interference in the management, they still manage to maintain some degree of
flexibility, profitability and public accountability, largely because of
some political arrangements, i.e. intra-ruling group fighting, foreign
influences, and the need for mass support.
The term national profitability is suggested to replace the ambitious
goals of efficiency and effectiveness because it includes economic efficiency,
social profitability and "political profitability", the last of which is
significant in the Third World environment.
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