Privatization of Public Enterprises in Emerging Economies: Organizational Development (OD) Perspectives

Privatisation has the potential to increase the efficiency of organisations, reduce government budgetary costs, broaden direct ownership of productive assets, and reduce the role of government influence on organisations. Research has however indicated that despite the good potential for privatisation, some privatisation efforts fail. Taking the view that too much attention in the privatisation literature has been focused on economic and/or political reasons for failure, the current paper integrates the existing literature in the Organisational Development (OD) field and proposes that OD interventions should be used to aid in effecting privatisation. To close this apparent gap in research, this paper represents an attempt to widen the scope of the existing research and literature by presenting the role of OD interventions in privatisation design and implementation. The Burke-Lit win model is recommended as a robust framework for diagnosing the need for change and for the planning of privatisation interventions in emerging economies. Example of how different dimensions of the model maybe used as a tool for assessing the need for change, and for planning and implementing change from a multidimensional and multilevel systems perspective, are also discussed