Despite the large size and rapid growth of public enterprises, empirical research on their behaviour is meagre. The research that exists compares public with private enterprises. It is not able to establish any significant differences to support the thesis that they belong to a different genre of business. Nor is research able to explain satisfactorily the wide differences in the performance and public attitudes to the two sectors. An important area, on which no empirical research exists, is political and government control. Research so far has treated such control as intrusions, instead of treating it as its central focus. Therefore, comparisons of public to private enterprise are not only inappropriate but also misleading. Researchers have to examine public enterprise as a system including its political and governmental control to provide an understanding of its processes and behaviour.