Political Control and Managerial Survival in State‐Owned Enterprises

Abstract

This article explores the impact of political determinants on the survival of managers in state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Drawing on theories of bureaucratic delegation, it is argued that preference divergence between principals and agents as well as among principals is a major driver of managerial turnover. More specifically, the partisan affiliation of SOEmanagers with the government, the opposition, or individual ministers can serve to explain the length of their tenure. The analysis employs Cox proportional hazard regressions to test these hypotheses on an original data set of 1,671 managers serving in 87 public corporations in Austria between 1995 and 2010, thus presenting one of the first large-n analyses of political appointments in a parliamentary system. The results strongly support the proposition that partisan affiliation drives managerial survival.

Exploring the determinants of internal audit: Evidence from ownership structure

“…This paper highlights foreign ownership, state ownership, dispersion of ownership, and the influence of a single powerful shareholder as potential ownership structure-related determinants that affect the use of internal audit. These determinants are based on prior studies (Aggarwal, Erel, Ferreira, & Matos, 2011;Carey, Knechel, & Tanewski, 2013;Collier & Gregory, 1999;Connelly, Hoskisson, Tihanyi, & Trevis Certo, 2010;Ennser-Jedenastik, 2014;La Porta et al, 1999;Leuz et al, 2010;Shleifer & Vishny, 1997;Thomsen & Pedersen, 2000).…”

The watchdogs of ‘Washminster’ – parliamentary scrutiny of executive patronage in the UK

“…Such arguments have been developed in recent scholarship that has focused on the way in which governments throughout the world have maximised their patronage capacities to assert control over the delegated semi-state (e.g. Kopecky, Mair and Spirova, 2012;Ennser-Jedenastik, 2014), which in turn underlines a crucial distinction between 'patronage as corruption' and 'patronage as governance' (Flinders and Matthews, 2010 Whilst unexplored in the context of parliamentary democracy, a number of scholars have analysed legislative oversight of executive patronage in the context of presidentialism. In the US, the findings of the independent review of the appointments process (Twentieth Century Fund, 1996) were reiterated by several scholars, including Aberbach and Rockman (2009), who found that the complexity of the appointments process, the activism of Congress, and the political polarisation that often occurs across the separate branches of government had served to congest the system and encourage executive gaming.…”

“…Ennser-Jedenastik, 2014;Kopecký, Mair and Spirova, 2012;Kopecký and Scherlis, 2008;Park and Kim, 2013).…”

Steering and Monitoring Model of State-Owned Enterprises

“…Despite wide-ranging privatisation programmes, SOEs are still and will be an important part of many economies, especially in developing economies (La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, & Shleifer, 1999;Ezzamel, Wilmott, & Worthington, 2008;Vagliasindi, 2008;Ennser-Jedenastik, 2013). According to the United Nations, SOEs in high-income countries constitute an 8% share of GDP and a 13% share of investments (Ernst & Young, 2010).…”