Stakeholder attributes and attitudes during privatisation: a New Zealand case study

The purpose of this paper is to focus on understanding of stakeholder attributes and attitudes towards privatisation. It examines the stakeholder attributes through the framework provided by Mitchell et al. (1997). By combining it with the concept of issue salience proposed by Bundy et al. (2013), it addresses the current gap in research on how stakeholders influence the process of privatisation.

This research uses a process research approach to examine the privatisation process in New Zealand’s electricity industry in order to explore contexts, content and process of change. By collecting real-time data during the period of privatisation, utilising a process approach provided the authors a view of the historical path and associated events which lead to identification of stakeholder attributes and attitudes towards privatisation.

The research offers a unique insight into stakeholder attributes exhibited by different groups during privatisation. The authors identified that during privatisation the government is the ultimate stakeholder who sets the rules of the game of privatisation by exhibiting the attributes of power, legitimacy and urgency. The attributes exhibited by other stakeholders were transitory and were impacted by issue salience. The authors also identified that stakeholders exhibiting all three attributes (the government) chose a non-response approach to deal with any conflicting issues raised by other stakeholders.

The research examined the new public management emphasis on the privatisation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) vis-à-vis stakeholder groups, utilising the complementary concepts of stakeholder salience and issue salience. This research makes a contribution to stakeholder management theory in the public sector by identifying how various stakeholders influence the process of privatisation of SOEs.