Who runs state-owned enterprises? – stakeholders' influence perceived by top executives, supervisory board members and civil servants: evidence from Poland

Relevance of the paper to the panel topic: The paper considers the management board members, supervisory board members and government officials perception of stakeholders’ influence upon State Owned Enterprises (SOEs). The... [ view full abstract ]

Relevance of the paper to the panel topic:
The paper considers the management board members, supervisory board members and government officials perception of stakeholders’ influence upon State Owned Enterprises (SOEs). The study focuses on the relationships between various groups of stakeholders of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), including the politicians (i.e. minister and vice-ministers of Treasury), managers (i.e. SOEs’ top management teams) and administration (i.e. officials – civil servants). Thus, it contributes to the literature on the Governance and Management of State-Owned Enterprises.
Significance of the research:
This paper mainly refers to stakeholder theory. It also responds to the calls to study SOEs in more diverse contexts. Although SOEs operate in countries with different institutional, cultural backgrounds, and with different corporate governance systems, extant literature on SOEs concerns mainly Chinese companies (Bruton et al. 2015). We address this gap by providing insights from rarely-examined SOEs of a CEE country, using a large sample of Polish SOEs. The study is interdisciplinary since it combines legal analysis and statistical analysis of data obtained from SOEs.
The research questions and method:
The research questions are:
 What is the structure of stakeholders’ pressure upon SOEs?
 How do management board members, supervisory board members and government officials differ in terms of their perception of stakeholders’ influence upon state-owned companies?
All findings are based on regulation analysis and a quantitative study of Polish SOEs’. The research instrument is a questionnaire addressed to management and supervisory boards’ members and officials of Polish Ministry of Treasury that supervise SOEs. In order to verify our research hypotheses we use ANOVA.
The theoretical/conceptual foundations for the research:
The research is based on the stakeholder theory.
The results to be reported.
Each of the examined groups, i.e. management board members, supervisory board members and government officials, believes that it has the strongest influence on the company. Government officials, against the other groups, particularly strongly recognize the influence of the Minister and the politicians, ignoring the influence of the management board and the supervisory board.