ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the idea of net benefits rather than ownership, since that more accurately represents the conceptual essence of public enterprise. The employees have political strength enough to attract the government’s support to their generous wage and staff-number claims, overtly or covertly, and the directors, for various reasons, are too weak to resist them. The qualification of the concept of accretion of net benefits to non-private beneficiaries is simple, viz., that net benefits do exist in the first place; in other words, that a surplus is raised by the public enterprise. The accountability requirement is closely linked with the element of public decision discussed in the preceding section and has to be established in relation to the criteria that underlie the relevant public decisions. The concept of social accountability has both a positive and a negative connotation.
