From Interventionism to Market-Based Management Approaches: The Zimbabwean Experience

Abstract

Abstract The adoption and implementation of public enterprise sector reforms the world-over reflects a paradigmatic shift from state-centred to private sectororiented management styles. This article captures these evolutionary trends through a detailed case analysis of the management regime that prevailed in the Zimbabwean public enterprise sector before the adoption of reforms. Public enterprise sector reforms call for a fundamental restructuring of yesteryear practices at the macro and micro levels. However, as a review of the first and the second phases of the programme reveals, by the dawn of the new millennium, the state in Zimbabwe had not significantly relinquished its traditional controls over the parastatals sector. Most public enterprises still operated under their traditional enabling Acts.