Privatization and the internal environment

Abstract

Privatization is occurring at various levels of government in many countries around the world. So extensive is the reform programme that the term “reinventing government” has taken on a fashionable gloss. To date, privatization and market testing programmes have been advocated with surprisingly little exploration of the internal changes that are likely to be necessary if performance is to improve as expected. Explores the type of internal changes that are likely to be necessary if privatization is to have a beneficial impact on performance.

The Fragmentation of a Railway: A Study of Organizational Change

“…Parker (1995a, p. 45) points out that ‘surprisingly little research has been undertaken into what happens within organizations when they are (being) privatized’. He adopts a contingency approach under a number of headings to analyse contrasting or stereotypical organizational characteristics appropriate to public and privatized organizations.…”

“…He adopts a contingency approach under a number of headings to analyse contrasting or stereotypical organizational characteristics appropriate to public and privatized organizations. We augment the Parker (1995a) headings with a number of additional organizational characteristics that may be important in determining or analysing organizational change. These are categorized within the Laughlin framework and set out schematically in the leftmost column of Table II.…”

“… abstract This paper considers pathways of organizational change within British Rail (BR) during its long period of commercialization culminating in privatization. The Laughlin (1991) and Parker (1995a) frameworks are used to demonstrate how a new interpretative scheme supplanted the previous interpretative scheme within BR between the 1970s and privatization in the mid‐1990s, leading to a fragmented organization. BR did not survive and privatization of Britain's railways remains controversial.…”

“…Metarules; mission or goals; culture, beliefs, values and norms. One expectation of a privatized organization is that its metarules will switch from a political or public interest emphasis to a commercial one (Parker, 1995a). Following Kikulis et al (1995), we adopt sector‐specific descriptors or typologies (Gouldner, 1954) for the interpretive schemes, particularly the metarules, characterizing the decades with the descriptors ‘social railway’, ‘business railway’, and ‘profitable business’ to plot this shift in emphasis.…”

The Uk Railway Privatisation : Failing to Succeed?

“…Tirole (1992) points out the efficacy of organisational culture in decision-making. Successful privatisation of any state organisation is likely to entail major changes not only to management and organisational structure, but also to organisational culture (Parker, 1995). However, due to the persistence of organisational culture, changes to it are likely to be difficult requiring multiple changes to different aspects of the organisation, and to entail unforeseen consequences (Tyrrall and Parker, 2004).…”