IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijpubp/v5y2010i1p86-102.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Turnaround of the Indian Railways: a public ownership saga

Author

Listed:
  • Desh Gupta
  • Milind Sathye

Abstract

The reported turnaround of the Indian Railways (IR) has attracted wide notice. This article locates the enterprise within the broader Indian public sector and explores the factors that led to the turnaround from a low performing organisation to a high performing one. The case study method is used, with the developing theory of enterprise turnaround underpinning the case study. The theory suggests that turnaround successes need to be understood in terms not only of managerial actions, but also of favourable environmental conditions. This study reveals that both managerial leadership and good luck contributed to the turnaround success of the IR. There was no element of privatisation (apart from some limited outsourcing) within this turnaround. All happened within the context of full public (governmental) ownership. An underlying suggestion is that more such studies could help authorities assess and improve public enterprise performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Desh Gupta & Milind Sathye, 2010. "Turnaround of the Indian Railways: a public ownership saga," International Journal of Public Policy, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 5(1), pages 86-102.
    • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijpubp:v:5:y:2010:i:1:p:86-102
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=29783
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijpubp:v:5:y:2010:i:1:p:86-102. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=97 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.