Corporatization in the public sector entails decentralizing the provision of public goods and services to more autonomous entities, including state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Research indicates that the decision to corporatize is driven, among other factors, by the pursuit of financial sustainability in public organizations. A continuing debate revolves around whether the political ideology of incumbents is linked to the creation of SOEs. However, limited attention has been given to understanding if incumbents’ ideology shapes SOEs’ financial performance and, hence, financial sustainability. This is concerning because SOEs operate beyond political cycles, facing pressures from ideologically different governments over time. Herein, we investigate whether the incumbents’ ideologies shape SOEs’ financial performance. We hypothesize that the more right leaning the incumbent, the greater the SOEs’ financial performance. However, given that incumbents’ decisions are influenced by their political parties’ behaviors, the effects of ideology may be contingent on these factors. Thus, we investigate whether the association of incumbents’ ideology with SOEs’ financial performance is weaker when incumbents’ political parties display non-policy behaviors (e.g., by prioritizing electoral outcomes or office occupation). We analyze a 2019–2022 panel of 317 SOEs controlled by 27 subnational governments in Brazil with both FGLS and instrumental variable regression approaches. The data comprising 1,116 SOE-year observations confirm our hypotheses. Our research contributes to scholarship on the drivers of public organizations’ financial performance and sheds light on the role of political contingencies, such as incumbents’ ideology and party predominant behaviors regarding SOEs’ financial performance—a commonly overlooked gap in current research.

中文翻译：

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国有企业的财务业绩：政治意识形态是否起作用？

公共部门的公司化需要将公共产品和服务的提供下放给更多自治的实体，包括国有企业 （SOE）。研究表明，除其他因素外，公司化的决定是由公共组织对财务可持续性的追求驱动的。围绕着在位企业的政治意识形态是否与国有企业的创建有关，争论仍在继续。然而，对于了解现有企业的意识形态是否影响了国有企业的财务业绩，从而影响了财务可持续性，人们的关注有限。这令人担忧，因为国有企业在政治周期之外运作，随着时间的推移，它们面临着来自意识形态不同的政府的压力。在本文中，我们研究了现有企业的意识形态是否影响了国有企业的财务业绩。我们假设现任企业越右倾，国有企业的财务业绩就越好。然而，鉴于在任者的决定受到其政党行为的影响，意识形态的影响可能取决于这些因素。因此，我们研究了当在职者的政党表现出非政策行为（例如，通过优先考虑选举结果或办公室占用）时，在位者的意识形态与国有企业的财务表现的关联是否较弱。我们分析了 2019-2022 年由巴西 27 个地方政府控制的 317 家国有企业组成的小组，采用 FGLS 和工具变量回归方法。包含 1,116 个 SOE 年度观察的数据证实了我们的假设。 我们的研究有助于研究公共组织财务业绩驱动因素的学术研究，并阐明政治偶发事件的作用，例如现任企业的意识形态和政党主导行为对国有企业财务业绩的影响——这是当前研究中经常被忽视的差距。