Abstract
Corporatization, the conversion of state‐owned enterprises into semi‐autonomous, legally independent entities, has gained in popularity internationally since the 1980s. This review suggests that usage of the term has become entangled with other definitions of corporatization, and other organizational reforms associated with new public management, and appears consequently to have lost its distinctiveness in many contemporary studies of corporatization. Through a scoping review of literature on corporatization of healthcare organizations internationally, we develop a typology of four perspectives on corporatization (as managerialism of medical work, as institutional level reform to encourage market‐like behavior, as corporate governance implications of legal independence, and as private sector colonization) and analyze the specific processes, impacts, and mediators associated with each approach. This typology can aid conceptual clarity in future research on corporatization and orient practitioners to particular management and policy questions within the complex field of reform signified by this term.