ABSTRACT
Some common themes seem to emerge from the diverse country experiences in privatisation. The first common theme that emerges from most country experiences is a recognition of the ‘administrative/ political’ constraints deriving from public ownership upon aspects of enterprise performance. Second, and related to the first theme, there is a tendency to talk about ‘management’ as if it were a factor of production – good management skills and techniques. Business schools, particularly those operating in an instrumental US tradition, tend to advertise their capability of transforming students into managers through the acquisition of techniques, skills, and knowledge. Organisation is needed, at a fundamental psychological level, to make sense of apparent chaos—the child’s organisation of perception, of experience, etc., through learning and education. This chapter looks at the issue of ‘distributional implications’, building from the viewpoint that privatisation is a means to an end, not an end in itself; the end depends on the cultural and social context.
