Privatization and Corporate Governance in Poland: Problems and Trends

The paper is devoted to the problems of the impact of privatization on corporate governance formation in Poland. It discusses the dilemmas of choosing a model for privatization and corporate governance, legal background, mechanisms of corporate governance formation depending on a privatization method applied, and the evolution of these structures in the course of systemic transformation in Poland. The Author comes to the conclusion that the processes of privatization and corporate governance formation in Poland are marked by both successes and failures. The most spectacular success is privatization in the “broad sense” which boosted the growth of new private businesses and the share of the private sector in the national economy. Privatization in the “narrow sense” (ownership transformation of state-owned enterprises) was only a partial success, both in terms of quantity and quality. Some methods of privatization proved to be more “permeable, ” easier to implement for a number of social, political and technical reasons than the others; thus, the progress of privatization was very uneven across sectors, and some of them (infrastructure, extractive industries and some others) remain predominantly stateowned. There were two reasons for this situation: the highly gradualist, consensual character of Polish privatization procedures and the emergence of interest groups not interested in privatization of remaining state-controlled companies. Recently, new trends are seen that can be interpreted as a certain convergence of corporate governance models and a convergence between the effects of different privatization methods in corporate governance and performance of enterprises. Taking this into account, the Author elaborates on whether the “how to privatize” question still actual and on the “feasibility vs. efficiency” privatization policy dilemma.