Race and Corruption: An Investigation Within South Africa

The United Nations estimated that African leaders have siphoned more than 200 billion out of Africa in the year 1991, and not much has changed in subsequent decades (Owoye & Bissessar, 2018). The purpose of this research study is to explore how corruption and the racial background of corruptors interact systematically within organizational life in Africa. Race has been explored widely in the management literature, particularly within the Diversity field, yet corruption and race studies are underexplored. Particularly in the case of the African continent, race has been weaponized as a rationale to oppress large groups of people with entire countries such as Nigeria and South Africa struggling to overcome this vicious cycle (Imiera, 2020). This empirical study is critical because it examines organizations within emerging markets such as South Africa as opposed to the more traditional focus on advanced economies in the western world. Luiz and Stewart (2014) explored strategic responses to corruption in the African context and posited some of the qualitative perspectives of executives to this serious concern. Nevertheless, managerial behaviors which is primarily influenced by demographic characteristics are less clear. As corruption researchers, we wish to engage in this debate not only from a methodological perspective but also by extending theory through the construct of race which has evidently been the cause of injustices globally. This study contains qualitative data which was coded and analyzed to develop conclusions we wish to contribute to the extant literature.