Keeping the aspidistra flying : thatcherite privatization and the creation of the enterprise culture
By: HETZNER, Candace.
Material type: ArticlePublisher: New York : Marcel Dekker, 1988International Journal of Public Administration - IJPA 11, 5, p. 623-650Abstract: This article examines the role of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's pnvatization policy in the present Conservative government's effort to establish an enterprise culture. The Thatcher government has maintained that the policy would make substantial contributions to altering the anti-business values and behaviors of the English, often characterized as the British disease by: (1) permanently altering the boundaries of the public and private in favor of the latter; (2) widening the number I of shareholders in the society; and (3) promoting competition. A look at the results of privatization to date, as well as projections for the future, reveals that the policy has thus far been most successful with respect to the first of these aims and more successful with respect to the second than third goal. The article maintains that privatization appears to be making a significant contribution to achieving a free enterprise society, but that the policy is not in and of itself enough to bring about the transformation that the Thatcher government desiresThis article examines the role of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's pnvatization policy in the present Conservative government's effort to establish an enterprise culture. The Thatcher government has maintained that the policy would make substantial contributions to altering the anti-business values and behaviors of the English, often characterized as the British disease by: (1) permanently altering the boundaries of the public and private in favor of the latter; (2) widening the number I of shareholders in the society; and (3) promoting competition. A look at the results of privatization to date, as well as projections for the future, reveals that the policy has thus far been most successful with respect to the first of these aims and more successful with respect to the second than third goal. The article maintains that privatization appears to be making a significant contribution to achieving a free enterprise society, but that the policy is not in and of itself enough to bring about the transformation that the Thatcher government desires
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