An assessment of the impact of business transformation in state owned enterprises’ service delivery – The case of Telone, NSSA and Agribank

Abstract

State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in Zimbabwe are on the verge of collapse. Government currently cannot financially support these organisations as the economy is in dire financial distress from liquidity challenge and a reeling national debt. As a result, SOEs have been unable to meet their service delivery mandates in the economy. A comparison with other SOEs globally shows that these organisations deliver service in line with expectations. It is the premise of this study to assess the impact of transforming SOEs to improve service delivery.

Literature has shown that an organisation can transform itself to become an industry leader. Chief among the reasons of carrying out transformation is attributed to a change in the operating business environment or internal organisational restructuring and re-engineering. However, there is little evidence of SOE transformation and this creates a gap where it is not clear how the ownership by the government of these SOEs would have any impact on service delivery upon transforming. From this background, the goal of the study is to fill this research gap by making an assessment of the service delivery impact of instigating transformation in SOEs in Zimbabwe.

A qualitative study was done using the convenience sampling technique, where 10 respondents from 3 SOEs were selected. These respondents were interviewed using 8 main questions with follow up probe questions on each. Content analysis was used to analyse the data collected.The study found that SOE transformation like any other organisational transformation is directly influenced by factors identified in literature – competition, technology, culture, leadership, organisational structure and size . In addition, it also found that ownership by the state plays a critical role in ensuring true transformation as there is need to change expectations by the government and all other stakeholders. For this transformation to take place there is need to depoliticize the legislation and policies governing SOEs.