Reconstructing the Legal Policy of Human Resource Management in Indonesian State-Owned Enterprises after the 2025 SOE Law Reforms: An Accountability-Based Corporate Merit Model

Abstract

Reforming human resource management in Indonesian State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) is a matter of legal policy because the state must reconcile its authority as owner, the demands of public accountability, and the need for corporate autonomy. This study analyzes the direction of legal policy governing SOE human resources following the 2025 reforms to the SOE legal regime, identifies normative fragmentation and the risks of non-professional intervention, and formulates a governance model compatible with the corporate character of SOEs. The study employs normative legal research using statutory, conceptual, and historical approaches. Legal materials are analyzed qualitatively and prescriptively through the inventory of norms, systematic and teleological interpretation, and consistency testing across the SOE, company, labor, corporate-governance, and merit regimes. The findings show that the civil-service merit system should not be transplanted directly into SOEs because of differences in employment status, authority structures, and business requirements. The novelty of this study lies in the construction of accountability-based corporate merit as a legal-policy model built on five pillars: regulatory coherence, professional independence, competency- and performance-based objectivity, decision traceability, and proportional accountability. Under this model, law functions as an accountability boundary for corporate discretion rather than as an instrument of uniformity, thereby preserving professionalism and business flexibility without diminishing transparency, integrity, or public accountability.