corporatization

Corporatization is the process of transforming and restructuring state assets, government agencies, public organizations, or municipal organizations into corporations. It involves the adoption and application of business management practices and the separation of ownership from management through the creation of a joint-stock or shareholding structure for the organization. The result of corporatization is the creation of state-owned corporations (or corporations at other government levels, such as municipally owned corporations) where the government retains a majority ownership of the corporation's stock. Corporatization is undertaken to improve efficiency of an organization, to commercialize its operations, to introduce corporate and business management techniques to public functions, or as a precursor to partial or full privatization.

==History== The move towards neoliberal economic reform and New Public Management public service reform in the 1980s led to privatization of public functions in many countries. Corporatization was seen as a half-way house on the road to privatization. These state-owned enterprises are organized in the same manner as private corporations, with the difference that the company's shares remain in the ownership of the state and are not traded on the stock market. Corporatization is today often seen as an end in itself in order to introduce autonomy in organizations, hoping that this brings efficiency gains.