International Journal of Business Management and Administration Vol. 6(1), pp. 001-006, May 2020 ISSN 2327-3100 ©2020 Academe Research Journals

Full Length Research Paper

Integrating public value into public corporate governance-observations from German “Stadtwerke”

Jörg Raupach-Sumiya

College of Business Administration, Ritsumeikan University, Osaka/Japan 2-150 Iwakura-cho Ibaraki-shi, Osaka-fu, 567-8570, Japan. E-mail: raupach@fc.ritsumei.ac.jp. Tel.: +81-072-665-2090

Accepted 14 May, 2020

Abstract

A growing number of municipalities worldwide provide public services through separately managed entities. This trend towards “corporatization” raises a range of governance issues that differ from corporate governance at purely private firms. This paper discusses specific issues of “Public Corporate Governance” and their impact on public performance management, by referring to the case of Germany’s municipality-owned, integrated infrastructure firms known as “Stadtwerke”. It argues that while Germany’s “Stadtwerke” can generally take pride in high standards of Public Corporate Governance with a strong focus on economic efficiency and managerial effectiveness, the social outcomes justifying their public mandates are not sufficiently reflected in their governance and performance management schemes. While Public Value is receiving growing interest by public managers of “Stadtwerke”, practical system design and implementation faces a range of obstacles.

Keywords: Municipality-owned Companies, Stadtwerke, Public Value