Performance reporting practices in state-owned enterprises: A systematic literature review

Abstract

Background: Performance reporting and measurement in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have been ambiguous for years subject to the nature of the sector. State-owned enterprises are third sector public entities characterised by hybridity of rationales, heterogeneity of goals and multiple stakeholders’ interest. Besides, the diverse institutional frameworks and ownership structure in SOEs make performance reporting and measurements in the sector more complex than in private profit enterprises.

Aim: The systematic review of the literature focusses on performance reporting practices in SOEs. It examines SOE performance report users, performance measurement metrics, and the alignment of objectives and performance information.

Method: Critical searches of literature in databases such as Scopus or Science Direct, Emerald Insight and JSTOR were made using ’performance reporting’ and/or ’State-owned Enterprises’ as main keywords. More literature was explored in Google Scholar.

Results: The concept of performance reporting in SOEs is embedded in broader subjects such as ‘governance in public sectors’, ‘corporate governance in SOEs’ and ‘accountability in public sector’. Performance reports of SOEs in practice focus on the traditional financial performance measurement.

Conclusion: There is no straightforward approach in performance reporting of SOEs in the literature. This shows that performance reporting in SOEs is highly slanted, making it difficult to assess efficiency of SOEs.

Contribution: The article contributes in unlocking knowledge in highly blurred practices of performance reporting in SOEs.