Corporatization

Corporatization is the process of transforming state assets, government agencies, or municipal organizations into corporations. It refers to a restructuring of government and public organizations into joint-stock, publicly listed companies in order to introduce corporate and business management techniques to their administration. The result of corporatization is the creation of state-owned corporations where the government retains a majority ownership of the corporation's stock. However, in many cases, corporatization is a precursor to partial or full privatization, which involves a process where formerly public functions and public enterprises are sold to private business entities by listing their shares on publicly traded .

Corporatization of state enterprises and collectively owned enterprises was a major component of the economic restructuring program of the People's Republic of China. China's contemporary socialist market economy is based on a corporatized state sector where state companies are owned by the central government but managed in a semi-autonomous fashion.

In contrast, the term may also refer to the construction of state corporatism, where state-owned corporations are created and delegated public social tasks resembling corporate nationalism as an alternative to privatization. Corporatization can also refer to non-corporate entities like universities or hospitals becoming corporations, or taking up management structures or other features and behaviors employed by corporations.

The move towards neoliberal economic reform in the 1980s led to privatization of public functions in many countries. Corporatization was seen as a half-way house on the road to privatization. The effect of corporatization has been to convert state departments into public companies and interpose commercial boards of directors between the shareholding ministers and the management of the enterprises.

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