Andreas Bergh
Senior lecturer
Municipally owned corporations in Sweden : A cautionary tale
Author
Summary, in English
IMPACT: Municipally owned corporations (MOCs) exist across the globe and have become increasingly common. They are motivated by the need for flexibility, a desire to cut costs and to increase efficiency. This article summarizes Swedish experiences with MOCs. It shows that the stated motivations are not necessarily wrong, but that relying heavily on MOCs may have unintended and adverse side-effects. Such side-effects include blurring the role of local politicians, increasing corruption risks and giving rise to complex organizational structures within local governments. Ultimately, transparency and democratic accountability may suffer because of an excessive reliance on MOCs. In particular, councillors, mayors and MOC chief executive officers will benefit from reading these results, and ask themselves what kind of MOCs their municipality should operate, how many MOCs are appropriate to run, and also how members of MOC boards need to be educated.
Department/s
- Department of Economics
Publishing year
2023
Language
English
Publication/Series
Public Money and Management
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Topic
- Business Administration
Keywords
- Accountability
- corruption
- delegation
- local government
- municipally owned corporations
- New Public Management
- principal–agent problems
- Sweden
Status
Inpress
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0954-0962