Testing The Applicability Of A Privatization Model On State Owned Enterprises In Namibia

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to explore and determine the factors that leads to the success and failure of the State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in Namibia with a view to develop a privatization model that could be used as a pilot for future privatization effort within the Namibian context. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect primary data from 31 respondents who occupied management positions within the various departments of the 12 selected economic and productive SOEs. In this study, a Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23 was used to analyze the data. The results of the study have several implications for Namibia in the sense that the privatization of the SOEs would lead to improved operational efficiency within the state enterprises. Therefore, the factors that leads to the success of the SOEs were identified as follow: service experience, organizational learning and operational efficiency. On the other hand, the study also identified the factors that leads to the failure of the SOEs as follow: poor corporate governance, low levels of risk management and lack of enterprise sustainability. In both the developed and developing countries, privatization has become key reform program for the publicly owned state enterprises. The purpose of such reform programs is aimed at achieving greater operational efficiency within the SOEs which would help contribute to economic growth and development by reducing public sector spending through the elimination of subsidies. Finally, this study recommends that any consideration for privatization of the SOEs in Namibia, would require a strong political will and positive participation of all interest groups such as the civil organizations, employees of the state enterprises as well as the general public.