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As seen in Eastern European nations and former Soviet Union mass privatization is an intense political process that requires strong leadership from the top as well as bottom-up political support from workers, managers, and the population at large. Given that North Korea's productivity is likely to be in less than that of other former socialist nations, simultaneous restructuring and reform programs are essential. This makes mass privatization all the more critical. The primary goal of mass privatization plan should be to create well-functioning market economy, which is best achieved by selling off SOEs as quickly as possible. Other economic and social concerns should not detract the government. In sum, it is important to establish an economic reform agenda early; otherwise, the window of opportunity available in reforming transition economies might be lost, which will only make the reform process much harder to implement in future date.

This paper argues that Korea, which has long been dominated by the state in many facets of its socio-economic and political activity, is undergoing a fundamental change from a "developmental state" to a "third party government", and the pace of the transformation has quickened since the economic crisis of 1997. Distinguishing features of this transformation have been the pervasive sharing of responsibility for the delivery of publicly-financed services and the exercise of governmental authority with a host of what Salamon (1995) called "third parties" which include local governments, quasi-autonomous (regulatory) agencies, quangos, non-transformed the way it provides many vital and peripheral public services by privatizing or contracting out to private agencies, but also substantial changes have been made as to how it makes policy by forming a more "inclusive policy network" rather than the usual "exclusive network". By examining the changes in both the scale of government activity one can detect a fundamental transformation in the way the state operates in both the policy formulation and implementation stages. The changes brought by these three factors require a new thinking on terms 'public management' and "public responsibility" in Korea. Privatization of public services in a board sense, the utilization of advisory committees, and the growing influence of NGOs have caused the public and private sectors to have multiple and overlapping responsibilities. Throughts must to be given to how public values and probity can be preserved while maintaining and improving safeguards against increased opportunities for bureaucratic and political behavior. (Int Rev o Publ Admin/DÜI)

We examine POSCO's success based on the internal and external managerial incentive structure. By internal incentive, we mean institutional foundation under which the interaction between the principal (the government) and the agents (the managers) takes place. This involves examining the political economy of state intervention and how the state employed credible policies intended to end 'politicized' relationship with state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Extrnal incentive structure relates to various exogenous market forces that discipline managers and owners in terms of corporate performance. Combined, they determine the extent to which SOEs face 'hardened budget constraints' and in the case of POSCO, the state was able to enforce credible policies that hardened the budget constraint.

This article examines the current state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector reform programs used in Korea and suggests an alternative course. Although privatization gained considerable momentum, its privatization policy was compromised due to conflicts in its goals. There is a real need to realign the role of the SOE sector in the economy which involves radical restructuring of its present system through the control rights privatization of state monopolies. We argue that the current internal management reform policies designed to affect internal and external incentive of SOE managers are unlikely to succeed due to the politicized nature of the process. This leaves full divestitures of state monopolies as only viable option rather than soft reform measures that are currently being employed.

AbstractSocial enterprise and government interactions have become an increasingly prominent theme in the literature on social entrepreneurship, due in part to the pressures confronting the welfare state and the rise of precarious work. This analysis is motivated by the efforts of the government of South Korea to incubate social enterprises since 2007. The constant scaling of the South Korean government's monitored social enterprise certification scheme had led to the registration of approximately 3440 social enterprises as of May 2021. This study documents the interorganizational network behaviour of these enterprises relative to the public sector, corporate sector, and civil society and the social economy. A cluster analysis approach is utilized to analyse network data obtained from a self‐administered survey of 103 government‐certified social enterprises operating in South Korea. We find that a sizeable number of government‐certified social enterprises have diversified networks, as opposed to public sector‐centric networks, although such social enterprises are in the minority. This study references social innovation cluster theory to argue that the aforementioned scheme has attained a partial degree of success in facilitating the emergence of social enterprises with diversified networks.However, the majority remain quasi‐governmental implementers of government contracts and, generally, do not engage in networking.

Purpose
This study aims to assess the alignment of South Korea's government-certified social enterprises (GCSEs) with prevailing social enterprise (SE) models, notably the entrepreneurial nonprofit, social cooperative and social business models delineated in the "Emergence of Social Enterprises in Europe" (Defourny and Nyssens, 2012, 2017a, 2017b) and the "principle of interest" frameworks (Defourny et al., 2021). Thereby, it seeks to situate these enterprises within recognized frameworks and elucidate their hybrid identities.


Design/methodology/approach
Analyzing panel data from 2016 to 2020 for 259 GCSEs, this study uses tslearn for k-means clustering with dynamic time warping to assess their developmental trajectories and alignment with established SE models, which echoes the approach of Defourny et al. (2021). We probe the "fluid" identities of semi-public sector SEs, integrating Gordon's (2013) notion that they tend to blend various SE traditions as opposed to existing in isolation.


Findings
Results indicate that GCSEs do align with prevalent SE frameworks. Furthermore, they represent a spectrum of SE models, suggesting the versatility of the public sector in fostering diverse types of SEs.


Originality/value
The concept of a semi-public sector SE model has been relatively uncharted, even though it holds significance for research on SE typologies and public sector entrepreneurship literature. This study bridges this gap by presenting empirical evidence of semi-public SEs and delineating the potential paths these enterprises might take as they amalgamate various SE traditions.

Purpose Public sector institutional entrepreneurship efforts may contribute to addressing social challenges by creating an enabling regulatory environment that promotes social enterprise formation and fosters complementarity between the public sector and social enterprises. The outcomes of such public sector institutional entrepreneurship are explored in this study. To assess the outcomes of such public sector initiatives in South Korea, the perspectives of executives (n = 40) of government-certified social enterprises are assessed.Design/methodology/approach Several research methodologies were combined, including purposive sampling with an 11-point Likert scale, hierarchical clustering and principal component analysis. The literature on government–nonprofit relations as well as public sector institutional entrepreneurship was leveraged.Findings This research results indicate that the enabling regulatory environment with entrenched funding and incubation mechanisms produces mixed-to-positive outcomes if framed with reference to public sector–social enterprise complementarity. The authors identified three perspective-based ideal types that have differential views of isomorphic regulatory pressures, the efficacy of incubation and scaling programs, participation in policymaking and other aspects of public sector patronage.Originality/value This study contributes to relating the literature on public sector institutional entrepreneurship and government–third sector relations by empirically assessing how social enterprises attracted by government demand-side signaling to become certified as social enterprises encounter and perceive an ostensibly enabling regulatory ecosystem, with its derivative policies and mechanisms, crafted by the public sector.

AbstractThis study utilizes Q‐methodology to assess the perspectives of 37 executives of government‐certified social enterprises in South Korea on their organization's relationship with the public sector in terms of the complementary‐supplementary‐adversarial conceptual frameworks of Toepler et al. and Young and the literature on co‐production. The perspectives of social enterprise executives that participate in co‐production arrangements represent an underexplored domain. Our findings contribute to the framework of Toepler et al. by empirically gauging the effects of, in particular, an enabling regulatory framework and public funding relative to the tensions represented by potentially excessive regulation. Although the focus on a single context limits the generalizability of the study, it provides insights on the nuances and complexities of public sector patronage while highlighting that such patronage is generally seen as being more complementary than adversarial. Our findings contribute to efforts to empirically gauge perceptions of co‐production arrangements.