How Corrupt Are Universities? Audit Culture, Fraud Prevention, and the Big Four Accountancy Firms

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Shore, Cris. 2018. How Corrupt Are Universities? Audit Culture, Fraud Prevention, and the Big Four Accountancy Firms. Current Anthropology, 59(S18), S92-S104. ISSN 0011-3204 [Article]

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1086/695833

Abstract or Description

Corruption narratives, like witchcraft accusations, offer a lens for analyzing social relations, economic interests, and hidden structures of power. Developing this theme, I examine discourses of corruption in the context of growing concerns about fraud prevention and anti-corruption in universities. Moving beyond critiques of university administrations as bureaucratic, self-serving entities whose interests are increasingly antithetical to the academic mission of the university, I ask, What is corruption in academia and how does this assumed problem relate to academic capitalism and the rise of audit culture? The empirical context for my study is the extraordinary increase in institutionalized fraud-prevention programs, particularly those offered by the “Big Four” accountancy firms. Taking as my case study the introduction of a whistle-blower hotline at one Australasian university, I examine the politics and interests behind such schemes. The increasing involvement of accountancy firms in nonauditing work, including anti-corruption services, illustrates how corruption narratives operate as market-making strategies. I examine how commercialization, risk management, and auditing proliferate anti-corruption initiatives and how audit firms collude in the risk and corruption that they claim to ameliorate. I conclude by assessing the implications for the anthropology of corruption of the growing penetration of universities by an increasingly commercially focused tax industry that, some argue, cannot even be trusted to regulate itself.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1086/695833

Additional Information:

(c) 2018 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. This is the published version of the paper, 'Shore, Cris. 2018. How Corrupt Are Universities? Audit Culture, Fraud Prevention, and the Big Four Accountancy Firms. Current Anthropology, 59(S18), S92-S104, https://doi.org/10.1086/695833', made available following the journal's self-archiving policy.

Keywords:

corruption, fraud prevention, anti-corruption, universities, academic capitalism, audit culture, fraud-prevention, accountancy

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Anthropology

Dates: