The governance of public enterprises

The implementation of policy objectives poses a dilemma: the policy maker either relinquishes control over the direction of policy to other groups involved in the process, or courts a breakdown in the process if the original initiative must remain intact (Linder & Peters, 1987:469). [...] Public enterprises travel along the life cycle at a speed that is directly related to the power of the firm and inversely related to the characteristics of the institutional setting. [...] In this model, the cycle is not deterministic: the stability of the cycle varies with the nature and state of the outside coalition and the degree of resource dependence of the public enterprise. [...] Province- building, the state-building of provincial governments, is most commonly associated with the post WW II expansion of social policies, the growth of the welfare system and the development of the educational system. [...] A more turbulent era in the history of the public utility starts in the 1980s when the government hoped for more economic rationality for the organization.