Governments in Business : An Empirical Analysis of the Strategies and Success of Government Linked Corporations in Singapore

Extensive political-economy research on state owned enterprises (SOEs) generally concludes that these organizations perform poorly relative to profit oriented organizations. Possibly as a consequence, business oriented research has paid little attention to SOEs. This study demonstrates that Singapore’s SOEs, on the other hand, have been able to match non-SOEs’ standards of performance, and attributes this success, in part, to significant consistencies in the strategies implemented by these SOEs. The main strategies common to Singapore SOEs have been (1) A strong focus on profitability, (2) Striving for market-based performance benchmarks, (3) Regionalization, (4) Diversification, (5) Collaboration in general and with other SOEs, and (6) Support for national objectives and policies. The combination of these strategies, with the provision of significant managerial autonomy by the government, has allowed these SOEs to achieve relatively high levels of success. Few aspects of these strategies or of the management of SOEs are unique to Singapore, suggesting that under the right circumstances, SOEs can necessarily achieve high levels of performance