State-owned enterprises: in search for a new consensus

ABSTRACT

The objective of this study is to identify whether there is a contemporary consensus on the role of SOEs in different countries on selected issues, through the view of experts around the globe. We conducted a survey to formulate prospective forecasts of the evolution of the role of SOE and to summarize the state of knowledge. Here we present a selection of the results obtained, with an emphasis on identifying consensus on SOE governance and conflicting goals. Because of that, the qualitative approach adopted in this paper is a natural complement to the more quantitative ones. We find that guaranteeing autonomy from state authorities and transparency in SOEs management are the most important challenges that public firms currently face.

KEYWORDS:

• State-owned enterprises
• governance
• performance
• expert survey
• companies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. It is expected that the experts’ specialized knowledge, as well as the strategy of sharing partial results with the panel, will facilitate reaching richer and more precise conclusions than those that could be obtained either by a reduced research team or by a public opinion survey based on a random sample of the general population. The Delphi method can be productively used to explore these topics among a large and geographically diverse panel of International Organizations and government experts, as well as managers of SOEs across the globe, from which we plan to extract context-specific opinions.