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Understanding the causes, dynamics, and consequences of corporatization: An analysis of local government evidence in England and Germany

  • This dissertation explores corporatization–the provision of public services by publicly-owned companies–as a specific public management reform that has strongly been endorsed in the last decades. However, despite the significance of corporatization in public administration and the controversy over its viability as a strategy for enhancing public service provision, there is limited empirical research on its trajectory and associated effects. This dissertation fills this important gap in the literature by examining the causes, dynamics, and consequences of corporatization. It challenges the claim that we are witnessing a resurgence of the state in recent years, resulting in a pendulum shift from the private to the public sector. A mixed-methods approach is employed to analyze three original datasets from English and German local government contexts. Theoretical perspectives rooted in rational choice are complemented by those accounting for irrational ambiguity to capture the unique ambidexterity of corporatization. After clarifying the theoretical background in Chapter 1, this exploration unfolds across three empirical chapters. Chapter 2 investigates what drives corporatization. It reveals that ownership structures in corporatization have become increasingly complex and political–rather than economic–incentives may explain shifts toward indirect municipal ownership. Chapter 3 examines what causes corporatization to reverse. It shows that a return of services to the core local government after a company closes is less likely than other forms of service provision, while the type of service is the factor that matters most for termination decisions. Chapter 4 analyzes how local governments experience and cope with reverse corporatization. Local governments and their employees evidently and mutually impact the return process, which can induce private sector-informed change within the bureaucracy, albeit with limited transformative power. Ultimately, this dissertation finds no clear evidence of a pendulum shift toward the local public sector. This conclusion follows from conceptual and empirical differentiation and depends on how corporatization is framed, as well as on the specific country, service type, and dimension of public influence considered. It also suggests that the notion of the pendulum shift needs reevaluation. For practitioners, this holds several implications that encourage optimism about reform, and advise against an arbitrary approach to diversifying costs.

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Metadaten
Document Type:Doctoral Thesis
Language:English
Author(s):Maike Rackwitz
Advisor:Gerhard Hammerschmid, Tamyko Ysa, Kai Wegrich
Hertie Collections (Serial Number):Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School (04/2023)
Publication year:2023
Publishing Institution:Hertie School
Granting Institution:Hertie School
Thesis date:2023/06/22
Number pages:194
DOI:https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5044
Release Date:2023/07/20
Notes:
Parts of the dissertation have been published:

Chapter 3. Termination traits of local government corporatization
This is an original manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Public Management Review on 26 April 2023, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2023.2204323

Rackwitz, M. (2023). Fraught with tension? A machine-learning approach to termination traits of public corporations in English and German local governments. Public Management Review, 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2023.2204323
Notes:
Shelf mark: 2023D004 + 2023D004+1
Hertie School Research:Publications PhD Researchers
Centre for Digital Governance
Licence of document (German):Creative Commons - CC BY - 4.0 International
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