Corporatization of public services
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Author | Rhys Andrews,Judith Clifton,Laurence Ferry |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12848 |
SYMPOSIUM ARTICLE
Corporatization of public services
Rhys Andrews
1
| Judith Clifton
2
| Laurence Ferry
3,4
1
Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University,
Cardiff, UK
2
Facultad de Ciencias Econ
omicas y
Empresariales, Universidad de Cantabria,
Santander, Spain
3
Durham University Business School, Durham
University, Durham, UK
4
Rutgers Business School, Rutgers University,
New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
Correspondence
Rhys Andrews, Cardiff Business School,
Cardiff University, CF10 3EU Cardiff, UK.
Email: andrewsr4@cardiff.ac.uk
Abstract
The corporatization of public services by moving services pre-
viously provided in-house into various types of arms-length
corporate forms of organization is becoming an important
trend at multiple levels of government. Although the use of
such corporate forms to deliver public services is not a new
phenomenon, evidence on the impact of corporatization on
public services provision is only slowly emerging. In this sym-
posium, we aim to advance our understanding of the theoreti-
cal and practical implications of corporatization through
empirical analyses of its dynamics in a range of different set-
tings. In this introductory article,webeginbyexplainingwhat
is meant by the corporatization of public services and the dif-
ferent forms that it can take, before summarizing the existing
evidence on the governance, accountability, and performance
of corporatized public services. We then describe the articles
included in the symposium and conclude by outlining a future
research agenda for studying corporatization.
1|INTRODUCTION
Governments across the world create and use publicly owned or controlled corporations and companies to provide
public services. However, while privatization has received significant attention from scholars, the “corporatization”
of public services has been largely neglected. Such “corporatization”occurs when public and social services—which
were previously organized, produced, and delivered directly by the state through government entities at the local,
regional, or national levels—are transformed into a legally separate corporate entity and usually made subject to com-
pany law. As a result, corporatized public services are assumed to benefit from the organizational autonomy needed
to “replace politics with professionalism”(Bourdeaux 2008). However, the decoupling of service provision from
political control raises the prospect of democratic deficits, which should be of the utmost importance to public
administration researchers and practitioners concerned about the quality of public governance (Grossi et al. 2015).
Although the practice of corporatization can be traced back to ancient times and came of age in the post-war
period, governments' efforts to corporatize public services—especially utilities in sectors such as telecoms, energy,
Received: 28 March 2022 Revised: 31 March 2022 Accepted: 2 April 2022
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12848
Public Admin. 2022;100:179–192. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm © 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 179
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