Abstract
This study analyses the variables that influence the role of SoEs in South Africa to fulfil the mandate that they were established for. State-owned enterprises (SoEs) play a pivotal role in the delivery of goods and services, poverty reduction, employment creation, and are critical mechanisms to assist the state to achieve sustainable economic growth of South Africa. Recent literature on SoEs in South Africa has revealed that these SoEs have become inefficient quasi-government organisations characterised by corruption, debt burdens, impunity, poor leadership, weak financial reporting, excessive politicisation, chronic underperformance, maladministration, poor accountability systems, and insufficient performance monitoring. SoEs in South Africa are hampered in their efforts to achieve the mandate that they were established for and their broader role, which is to align to the country’s national policies and support the government’s initiatives aimed at spearheading economic development. There exists an extensive set of modern organisational theories in the Public Administration literature that attempt to understand, explain, and predict the phenomenon of SoE performance in a corporate organisational environment. Of pertinence, for this study, are the agency theory, stakeholder theory, actor-network theory, and the bureaucratic theory. This dissertation employed these theories as a theoretical framework for an examination of how the SoE apparatus of governance may be improved in order to realise its desired developmental goals. The study followed a qualitative approach and used unobtrusive research techniques methods to analyse these phenomena. The study found that failure to embrace and to effectively implement national policy objectives, corporate governance, good governance, and New Public Management principles are central to the failures of most South African SoEs to fulfil the mandate that they were created for. The fact that some of South Africa’s major SoEs still fall short of fulfilling their mandate emphasises the need for an examination of how the management of South African SoEs can be improved.
M.Com. (Public Management and Governance)