Swedish municipalities are sometimes using wholly owned corporations in order to conduct certain municipal operations. They have, however, been criticised for being passive owners. This paper presents a development of the concept of ownership strategy, with the aim of reconciling the fragmented field of corporate governance. The concept is empirically developed in order to explore the ownership strategies of municipal owners. From data collected through a survey from Swedish municipalities, it is showed that the municipalities to a certain extent act in accordance to rational ownership strategies.
The work this paper represents was funded by The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and performed at Rådet för KommunalEkonomisk Forskning och Utbildning (KEFU) (The Council for Research and Training in Municipal Economics in Lund). Anna Stafsudd assisted with data collection. The paper has been presented at the 6 thInternational Conference: Public and Private Partnerships, 6 - 9 June, The University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands.