Enterprise restructuring and ownership: the case of Ukraine

Rosevear, Adam (2001) Enterprise restructuring and ownership: the case of Ukraine. Doctoral thesis, University of London: London Business School.

Abstract

The thesis uses a unique enterprise level random survey of 150 firms in Ukraine collected in 1997 by the author to test hypotheses on the relationship between enterprise performance and ownership in transitional economies. In particular, it explores whether privatisation has yielded improved company performance and whether specific ownership forms (outsider, manager, worker, and commercialised state owned) have led to differentiated behaviour at the enterprise level. The analysis also explores the determinants and ramifications of barter, a widespread phenomenon across the former Soviet Union. It finds barter to be associated with lower profitability, and to be less common in worker owned firms. It explores whether particular types of ownership - insider, outsider, manager, and worker - have yielded differentiated enterprise performance in the weak legal and institutional setting generated by Ukraine's halfhearted reform process. It finds no evidence that private ownership, or any particular dominant private owner, is associated with improved economic performance at the enterprise level. However, private ownership is related to several of the qualitative restructuring indices, though it is insider rather than outsider ownership that leads to greater restructuring activity, notably with respect to products and inputs. This suggests that, even in cases where privatisation had occurred, it had only limited impact in Ukraine probably because of deficiencies in the broader economic and institutional environment.