Contractualism, Decentralised Management and Autonomization: A Critical Analysis of Value for Money and Democratic Governance in State Owned Enterprise Reforms in Ghana.
Creators: name: Zaato, Joshua Jebuntie
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2013

description: This study grew out of the observation that contemporary research on State Owned Enterprise (SOE) governance and reform evaluation is reductionist and, accordingly, tends to adopt a restrictive approach that narrowly limits organizational performance to economy, efficiency and effectiveness (3Es); marginalizes heterogeneous environmental contextual factors, such as economic, political, social and cultural; and circumvents the critical governance imperatives of accountability, transparency, equity, fairness and rule of law. To examine the limitations of this approach, a multi-case study was made of the reform and restructuring of three SOEs in three different policy sectors in Ghana: the Ghana Water Company Ltd., the Ghana Post Company Ltd. and the State Insurance Company Ltd. Data was collected in Ghana in 2010 through organizational surveys and face-to-face personal interviews involving 20 policy makers, bureaucrats, regulatory agencies, and civil society organizations. In addition, an analysis of organizational performance and financial evaluation reports, annual budgets and audited accounts provided an objective basis on which to determine performance management and measurement efforts of reformed and restructures SOEs. The findings speak simultaneously to the empirical, theoretical and conceptual aspects of SOE governance and reforms within a developing country’s perspective. Empirically, the dissertation considers the broader range of issues — such as the bias of the financial or neo-liberal value for money (VFM) indicators, or both — that are often used to define SOE governance and performance. Theoretically, it goes beyond both mainstream neo-liberal theories and their narrow financial considerations of “letting the managers manage” to propose ways of addressing the “making the managers manage” component of SOE governance. Conceptually, it delineates the neo-liberal ideological context within which the debate over SOE reform has arisen, and it offers an account of the impact of contingency factors and the concerns and experiences of policy makers and practitioners, especially from a developing country’s perspective. The resulting findings support the hypothesis that VFM indicators and democratic governance imperatives are mutually inclusive in the SOE reform process and that one must not be achieved at the expense of the other. It concludes that real VFM, therefore, should and must include governance imperatives in the reform process if reform objectives are to materialize. Practitioners, scholars and students of public administration can find copious and excellent stories about, and case studies on, SOE governance and reforms. Yet it is difficult to find readily comparable stories and cases within one country, while reform stories that are told from the perspectives of developing countries experiences are rare. This dissertation contributes to addressing this important gap in our knowledge and understanding of administrative reforms in developing countries.