Business Forum articles from January 1994

Business Forum archives from January 1994

The politics of privatization.
January 1, 1994... In organizations, and particularly in governments, a crisis is the tocsin for a call to action. It was the crises that faced Mayors Daley and Rendell (Chicago and Philadelphia)--who tell their stories in this issue of BUSINESS FORUM--that...

Privatization: American style.
January 1, 1994... "Privatization" has become a public sector buzzword, a motherhood-and-apple-pie principle of American public management. It is impossible to pick up any major newspaper without seeing an editorial that advocates privatization or a story that...

Chicago city government: smaller in size but greater in performance.
January 1, 1994... People all over the world have understood the basic principles of free-market economics for thousands of years, yet only in the last few years have governments recognized the role of competition in lowering costs and improving efficiency. I...

The Philadelphia competitive contracting story.
January 1, 1994... President John F. Kennedy was once asked how he became a war hero as captain of the PT 109. Kennedy's answer was simple: "They sunk my boat." When I took office in January 1992, Philadelphia was sinking fast. Our government faced a cumulative...

Overcoming public employee opposition to privatization.
January 1, 1994... Privatization is a political process. Despite evidence of sizable cost savings, public officials often face strong opposition to privatization and competitive contracting. A 1992 Reason Foundation survey of the 24 largest U.S. cities showed that...

Policy and management requirements for privatization.
January 1, 1994... Lessons from International Experience Governments throughout the world, especially in developing nations and in the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe, have been trying to implement privatization policies for more than a decade. The...

Learning lessons from privatization in Latin America.
January 1, 1994... "I'm looking for the Brazilian Lee lacocca to save CSN . . .," Brazil's then-infrastructure minister, Ozires Silva, told Roberto Procopio de Lima Netto back in March 1990. "Would you accept the challenge?" One can easily forgive Lima Netto's...

Privatization: the long road to success in Argentina.
January 1, 1994... During the 1970s, Argentina plunged into a public finance crisis. After 30 year of growth in public expenditures, the fiscal deficit had grown to more than ten percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and the public debt had reached an...

Pitfalls in privatization in Kazakhstan.
January 1, 1994... One of the major shifts in economic across the globe in the last decade involve the transition from state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to private enterprise. Perhaps no region has felt the effects of this transition more acutely than the nations of...

Privatization in Russia.
January 1, 1994... When the Russian government first introduced the so-called "privatization cheque" as a key element in its privatization program, the concept seemed to make some sense. But now that the voucher program is under way, many are questioning its...

Building support for privatization: Russia and the United Kingdom.
January 1, 1994... Privatization can create wrenching cultural change that results from the transfer of public business to private ownership. To manage this change, governments must gain the support of as many groups as possible. They must encourage supporters and...

The rush to privatize in the Asia-Pacific region.
January 1, 1994... Privatization redefines the role of the public sector. Since the early 1980s, privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) has become the cornerstone of the economic policies of the Asian countries. As in the rest of the world, privatization...

The privatization issue of freeing internal markets.
January 1, 1994... Must Things Get Worse Before They Get Better? The process of privatization is complex. Although privatization originally mean a shift from public to private provision of goods and services, the term privatization now is widely used to mean the...