Power, politics and privatization: A tale of a telecommunications company

Umesh Sharma and Stewart Lawrence

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, 2015, vol. 28, issue C, 13-29

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the confluence of the political and economic interests of the Fijian elite in transforming state assets into private property and financial gain. Drawing on a Habermasian theoretical framework applied to a privatized state monopoly (Telecom Fiji), we demonstrate how the implementation of privatization concealed social and political interests, and how the implementation of privatization provided a ruling elite with a convenient rhetoric and tool to achieve social and political gain. For those within the telecom company, the ethos of public service could not withstand the message of capitalism with its rhetorical call for greater efficiency, effectiveness and consumer awareness. As is the case, however, with many other privatization programmes around the world when state enterprises are privatized, the results of Telecom Fiji's privatization are not reflected in either improved organizational performance or the wellbeing of the ordinary citizen.

Keywords: Critical; Race; Corruption; Privatization; Fiji (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045235415000155
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:crpeac:v:28:y:2015:i:c:p:13-29

DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2015.01.004

Access Statistics for this article

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING is currently edited by Marcia Annisette, Christine Cooper and Yves Gendron

More articles in CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().