The challenges of Strategic Management for African SMEs And more

The objective of this communication is to confront the governance mechanisms with the power of the directors of public enterprises. In light of agency and political market theories and data from secondary sources on Cameroonian public enterprises, the results show the ambivalent nature of the power of the leader engaged in an impersonal agency relationship with mechanisms and organs of control. governed by other agents of the principal. On the one hand, the decision-making and action powers of the manager are strongly framed by the expanded powers of the board of directors, the political logic of the management of public enterprises, the administrative and financial orientation of the manager's controls. On the other hand, the ineffectiveness of this framework leaves significant room for maneuver to the manager, who enjoys important informal powers based, among other things, on the non-competitive nature of the market for goods and services, the virtual inexistence of the financial market, the political anchoring of the public leaders' market, the function of the members of the board of directors and the manager's ability to develop rooting mechanisms. As in any agency relationship, the foundations of this ambivalence of managerial power are to be found in the asymmetry and imperfection of information, the opportunism of actors and environmental uncertainty. However, these elements seem to be exacerbated by the "impersonal" status of the shareholder state. In the final analysis, the manager, like the board of directors (the manager's main controller), are both employees of the state. The public enterprise may therefore appear to be an institution with powers divided up at its expense. The managerial recommendations focus mainly on the social responsibility of the manager and the intelligence of the board of directors.