Quote Originally Posted by CoccoBill View Post
How do the incentives for the boards and upper management of private institutions differ from those of the public ones? Stock options in the private sector come to mind, in contrast to just shared national ownership in the public sector, but can't think of much else.
Private institutions have to turn a profit in order to remain viable. Public institutions don't. Public institutions receive tax revenues regardless of whether or not they turn a profit.

This is one of the base elements for why so many government programs and institutions get poor results yet keep on trucking along. Private institutions that get poor results go bankrupt and are replaced by others that are more productive. The amount of waste in the private sector is dwarfed by the amount of waste in the public sector, and it is mostly because of the differentiation of the profit incentive between the two types of institutions.

If by Ong's point you mean workers owning the means of production, I would argue social ownership, whether employee-owned large businesses or top-to-bottom stock option programs, are not too popular since those share the profits to a wider audience, and who'd want that if you can get it all to yourself.
If social ownership was more productive, a whole lot of companies would move towards it because the current equity holders would make more money having a smaller share of a much larger pie.