Property Rights, Governance Structure, and Firm Efficiency: Sources of Low Efficiency in State-Owned Enterprises: Sources of Low Efficiency in State-Owned Enterprises

Author: Zhang Keren
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-06-01
Features: The main purpose of this book is to highlight the institutional causes of the relatively low efficiency of Chinese state-owned enterprises. To this end, the author attempts to clarify, transform, and re-integrate some important concepts and topics of modern enterprise theory within the logical framework of Marxist enterprise theory, outlining the origins, nature, property rights system foundation, internal power arrangements, and external market environment of enterprises. From a dynamic "reproduction" perspective, it reveals the logical connection, evolutionary trends, and relevance to efficiency among property rights, enterprises, and the three entities. Furthermore, adhering to the methodology of "systematic and dynamic performance," it comprehensively compares the "historical logic" of Chinese state-owned enterprises with their evolving "theoretical logic," describing the unique property rights system foundation, external institutional environment, inherent nature, governance structure, behavioral patterns, and performance outcomes of state-owned enterprises in different periods. It emphasizes that the administrative nature of state-owned property rights, which differs from all other forms of economic property rights and has persisted to this day, is the ultimate root of the low efficiency of state-owned enterprises. Therefore, to eliminate the syndrome of low efficiency in state-owned enterprises at its source, it is necessary to fundamentally reform the administrative nature of state-owned property rights, ensuring that the next round of reforms of state-owned enterprises proceeds in a logical sequence of property rights—market—enterprise.