Privatisation policy in Poland : the case of Gdansk

Privatisation of the Gdansk shipyard was to prevent its collapse. The act on privatisation of state-owned enterprises, adopted by the parliament in 1990, set the rules to govern the ownership transformation process. The article is to analyse the privatisation process of Stocznia Gdańska im. Lenina and the impact of state-owned institutions on the course of the privatisation in the period 1990-2007. A theses has been presented that Polish governments had no consistent concept for ownership transformation policy regarding the Gdansk shipyard. An attempt has been undertaken to answer the following research question: what factors affected the Gdansk shipyard privatisation process? The interdisciplinary approach to the analysed phenomenon enforced the application of research methods appropriate to political science, legal sciences, and sociology. The case of Gdansk shipyard testifies to absence of a privatisation policy on the part of the government, and wrong management by the shipyard authorities.