Political and business leaderships in managing public service organisation

This study analyses the relationship between the state’s political ideologies and the implementation of cost management strategies during the re-privatisation of a public sector organisation. Drawing on the Dillard et al.’s (2004) conceptual framework, we conducted a case study in a public sector organisation operating in the electricity market of Egypt. Data was gathered through document analysis, interviews, meetings observations and continuous interactions with key informants from 2013 to 2014. The findings show that the implementation of cost management strategies had a political basis, grounded in the state’s reformative ideologies concerning re-privatisation of the public sector organisation. The re-privatisation failed because the state failed to convince a potential international investor. A theoretical contribution is to show the relevance of cost management strategies when used as a political tool to achieve a business goal, such as improving a public sector organisation’s performance management in a developing country. This is the first empirical case study to analyse management accounting change based on the state’s political ideologies in the Maghreb region of Africa. The key difference between this global trend elsewhere and in the Egyptian State, as in some other Islamic countries, is that Egypt was both nationalistic and militarised.