Neutralizing Deviance at State‐owned Enterprises: The Case of South African Airways.
This article investigates how boards of directors and auditors retrospectively reflect on and justify their role in the breakdown of governance systems. We focus on state capture in South Africa where major corruption scandals have crippled the public sector. These scandals have been investigated by...
| Publicado en: | Abacus Vol. 61; no. 1; pp. 162 - 194 |
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| Autores principales: | , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Wiley-Blackwell
Mar2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=183756338&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 183756338 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00013072 AUB jtl: Abacus issn: 00013072 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Mar2025 vid: 61 iid: 1 pid: 480 pub: Wiley-Blackwell artinfo: ui: 183756338 10.1111/abac.12353 ppf: 162 ppct: 32 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: C – @attributes: type: P size: 368KB tig: atl: Neutralizing Deviance at State‐owned Enterprises: The Case of South African Airways. aug: au: De Widt, Dennis Maroun, Warren Atkins, Jill affil: Cardiff University University of Leeds, University of the Witwatersrand su: Organizational governance Corruption Situational awareness Deviant behavior Government business enterprises Governmental investigations South African Airways Ltd. Auditing South Africa sug: subj: South Africa Organizational governance Corruption Situational awareness Deviant behavior Government business enterprises Governmental investigations South African Airways Ltd. Auditing keyword: Audit Corporate governance Neutralization techniques Organizational crisis State‐owned enterprises ab: This article investigates how boards of directors and auditors retrospectively reflect on and justify their role in the breakdown of governance systems. We focus on state capture in South Africa where major corruption scandals have crippled the public sector. These scandals have been investigated by a special commission of inquiry, the 'Zondo Commission', which offers a rich set of data for uncovering how individuals attempt to justify their 'deviant' behaviour. Our focus is on the crisis at South African Airways (SAA), where the Zondo Commission concluded that the airline had repeatedly disregarded relevant laws and experienced a steep governance decline. Despite this malpractice, SAA's former auditors, PwC and joint audit partner Nkonki Incorporated, consistently gave SAA unqualified audit opinions. Only after intervention by the South African Auditor General were deficiencies exposed in SAA's financial and governance structures. Our analysis identifies various neutralization techniques used by implicated individuals to cast doubt on responsibility for wrongdoing and garner sympathy where deflection was not feasible. The method involves documentary analysis, focusing on witness transcripts and other evidence published by the Zondo Commission, SAA's integrated reports, and select media articles. In addition to dealing with a novel set of data, this paper adds to the limited body of work dealing with governance in state‐owned enterprises, particularly in developing economies. The research also provides an account of how deviance theory is operationalized in the context of governance and audit, something which has not yet been explored in detail. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Abacus is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Abacus holder: Wiley-Blackwell dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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