Thesis Chapters by Kanti Pertiwi
Doctoral dissertation
Mainstream corruption research suggests that corruption is universally harmful or dysfunctional a... more Mainstream corruption research suggests that corruption is universally harmful or dysfunctional and is bad for development and democracy. It also assumes that people who engage in corruption are rational actors seeking to maximise gain and are detached from their social context. However, this view has been challenged by a group of scholars who argue that in order to better understand how corruption comes about, we need to study what it means in context. Observations of practices commonly labelled as corruption suggest there are locally situated understandings of corruption that diverge from its portrayal in the media and by the global anti-corruption movement. This research investigates the different meanings of corruption constructed by actors situated in a particular context – in this case, Indonesia, using insights from the anthropological literature and cultural studies. These meanings are empirically explored through an analysis of newspaper articles and interviews with Indonesians, including members of government, business and anti-corruption organisations. Findings show that there are multiple meanings of corruption inferred from the articles and these meanings are bound up with notions of 'democracy' and 'national identity', reflecting changes in the political and economic context in which these meanings are produced. Similarly, meanings assigned to corruption by interviewees are also influenced by the context in which the interviewees are situated, such as their socioeconomic interests and institutional positions. In analysing the different meanings, I found different conceptualisations of ethics and morality in relation to practices associated with corruption. Moreover, in applying the theory of care ethics, I argue that people who engage in these practices may subscribe to a different moral orientation, one that puts emphasis on caring for others and preserving relationships, as opposed to applying abstract universal codes of ethics. This is not to say that ethics is relative, but to assert that the understanding of ethics cannot be separated from the context within which it arises, and that it moves from generalising principles to a " focus on local meaning and sensemaking practices that constitute ethics " (Clegg, Kornberger et al. 2007 p.119). The study contributes to corruption research by applying an 'interpretive' perspective, and by bringing in the views of people whose voices are rarely heard in empirical studies. At the same time, it contributes to corruption research in developing countries. Finally, there are some practical implications for anti-corruption campaigning, as well as for the larger policy community.
Papers by Kanti Pertiwi
Millenial’s Perspective of Job-Hopping Phenomenon and The Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Economics, Business and Economic Education Science, ICE-BEES 2021, 27-28 July 2021, Semarang, Indonesia
Research: masculine offices add to the burden of female office workers during COVID-19 pandemic
Investigating Women Leadership Construction in New Media: Indonesia’s Context
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Economics, Business and Economic Education Science, ICE-BEES 2021, 27-28 July 2021, Semarang, Indonesia, 2022
“We care about others”: discursive constructions of corruption vis-à-vis national/cultural identity in Indonesia’s business-government relations
critical perspectives on international business, 2020
Purpose This paper aims to problematize existing conceptualization of corruption by presenting al... more Purpose This paper aims to problematize existing conceptualization of corruption by presenting alternative perspectives on corruption in Indonesia through the lens of national/cultural identity, amidst claims of the pervasiveness of corruption in the country. In so doing, the paper also sheds light on the micro-processes of interactions between global and local discourses in postcolonial settings. Design/methodology/approach The study applies discourse analysis, involving in-depth interviews with 40 informants from the business sector, government institutions and anti-corruption agencies. Findings The findings suggest that corruption helps government function, preserves livelihoods of the marginalized segments of societies and maintains social obligations/relations. These alternative meanings of corruption persist despite often seen as less legitimate due to effects of colonial powers. Research limitations/implications The snowballing method of recruiting informants is one of the li...
Journal of Business Ethics, 2020
Corruption is of central interest to business ethics but its meaning is often assumed to be self-... more Corruption is of central interest to business ethics but its meaning is often assumed to be self-evident and universal. In this paper we seek to re-politicize and unsettle the dominant meaning of corruption by showing how it is culturally specific, relationally derived and varies over time. In particular, we show how corruption's meaning changes depending on its relationship with Western-style liberal democracy and non-Western local experience with its implementation. We chose this focus because promoting democracy is a central plank of the international anti-corruption and development agenda and yet the relationship between corruption and democracy is rarely specified. Adopting a critical-discursive approach that draws on poststructuralism and postcolonialism, we explore how the meaning of corruption constructed The Jakarta Post (TJP) changed in relation to Indonesia's experience in implementing democratic reform, a condition of the international financial aid it received following the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. In the 1990s, corruption was seen as an illness, and democracy the cure; from 2000-2011 experience with democracy brought disillusiondemocracy had not cured corruption but caused it to spread; while from 2012-2014 democracy was constructed as a valued end in its own right, but needed protection from corruption in order to survive. From translating the international development agenda in a relatively straightforward way, TJP moved towards constructions of increasing complexity and ambivalence. This demonstrates how corruption's meaning is fundamentally contingent and unstableeven dominant meanings have the potential to be contested, showing how they are an effect of power and raising the possibility of alternatives.
Administrative Sciences, 2018
This paper aims to establish how organization and management research, an extensive field that ha... more This paper aims to establish how organization and management research, an extensive field that has contributed a great deal to research on corruption, could apply insights from other disciplines in order to advance the understanding of corruption, often considered as a form of unethical behavior in organizations. It offers an analysis of important contributions of corruption research, taking a 'rationalist perspective', and highlights the central tensions and debates within this vast body of literatures. It then shows how these debates can be addressed by applying insights from corruption studies, adopting anthropological lens. The paper thus proposes a cross-disciplinary approach, which focuses on studying corruption by looking at what it means to individuals implicated by the phenomenon while engaging in social relations and situated in different contexts. It also offers an alternative approach to the study of corruption amidst claims that anti-corruption efforts have failed to achieve desirable results.
Feminist Media Studies, 2022
This article engages with the ways through which women were discursively represented in media rep... more This article engages with the ways through which women were discursively represented in media reports on corruption cases in Indonesia. Moving away from the traps of universalism and essentialism in conceptualising the causes and consequences of corruption, we unpack the dominant views and contextualise corruption in local-historical perspectives. Our main argument is that gendered meanings around women and corruption in Indonesian news media were constituted through the dominant religious and sociopolitical discourses; and the consequences were the (re)productions of stereotypical and simplistic meanings around women and corruption. Employing critical discourse analysis on 547 selected Indonesian newspaper articles reporting corruption scandals from 2010 to 2020, we identified three key discourses through which meanings around corruption and women were constituted, namely, a discourse of promiscuous sexuality, a discourse of moral ibuism, and a discourse of Islamic piety. The analysis drew attention to the importance of situating corruption and gendered media representation as an intersecting problem embedded in the social, political, religious, and historical contexts; as opposed to the dominant universal, objective, and positivist approaches to corruption studies.
Geliat Kritis dalam Penelitian Sosial: Catatan Para Peneliti
Buku ini membangkitkan harapan yang besar bahwa akan lahir dan menguatnya pengetahuan yang beraka... more Buku ini membangkitkan harapan yang besar bahwa akan lahir dan menguatnya pengetahuan yang berakar pada pengalaman Indonesia untuk dunia. Para penulisnya datang dari latar keilmuan yang berbeda-beda, dari manajemen, sains-teknologi, sampai psikologi dan sastra. Mereka menggeluti persoalan lapangan yang beraneka, dari korupsi sampai autisme, dengan satu pijakan yang sama: perspektif kritis. Pengetahuan yang terbangun lahir dari empati, pergulatan diri, refleksi atas kesulitan dan kesalahan. Inilah akar pengetahuan sejati. (Melani Budianta, Guru Besar Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan Budaya, Universitas Indonesia) Buku ini membawa semangat baru dari para ilmuwan muda dengan pemikiran kekinian tentang pentingnya data berbasis local-specific, membumi dan bersifat naturalis-humanis. Buku ini wajib menjadi referensi bagi para mahasiswa, akademisi, pelaku pembangunan, dan para pembuat kebijakan dari berbagai disiplin ilmu. (Emy Susanti, Guru Besar Sosiologi Gender, Universitas Airlangga) Buku ini...
Etika Bisnis & Profesi untuk Direktur, Eksekutif, dan Akuntan BUKU-2= Bussines & Professional Ethics for Directors, Executives & Accountants
But that's not corruption": an interpretive approach to corruption in business-government relations in Indonesia
Mainstream corruption research suggests that corruption is universally harmful or dysfunctional a... more Mainstream corruption research suggests that corruption is universally harmful or dysfunctional and is bad for development and democracy. It also assumes that people who engage in corruption are rational actors seeking to maximise gain and are detached from their social context. However, this view has been challenged by a group of scholars who argue that in order to better understand how corruption comes about, we need to study what it means in context. Observations of practices commonly labelled as corruption suggest there are locally situated understandings of corruption that diverge from its portrayal in the media and by the global anti-corruption movement. This research investigates the different meanings of corruption constructed by actors situated in a particular context – in this case, Indonesia, using insights from the anthropological literature and cultural studies. These meanings are empirically explored through an analysis of newspaper articles and interviews with Indonesians, including members of government, business and anti-corruption organisations. Findings show that there are multiple meanings of corruption inferred from the articles and these meanings are bound up with notions of 'democracy' and 'national identity', reflecting changes in the political and economic context in which these meanings are produced. Similarly, meanings assigned to corruption by interviewees are also influenced by the context in which the interviewees are situated, such as their socioeconomic interests and institutional positions. In analysing the different meanings, I found different conceptualisations of ethics and morality in relation to practices associated with corruption. Moreover, in applying the theory of care ethics, I argue that people who engage in these practices may subscribe to a different moral orientation, one that puts emphasis on caring for others and preserving relationships, as opposed to applying abstract universal codes of ethics. This is not to say that ethics is relative, but to assert that the understanding of ethics cannot be separated from the context within which it arises, and that it moves from generalising principles to a " focus on local meaning and sensemaking practices that constitute ethics " (Clegg, Kornberger et al. 2007 p.119). The study contributes to corruption research by applying an 'interpretive' perspective, and by bringing in the views of people whose voices are rarely heard in empirical studies. At the same time, it contributes to corruption research in developing countries. Finally, there are some practical implications for anti-corruption campaigning, as well as for the larger policy community.
From ‘sick nation’ to ‘superpower’: Anti-corruption knowledge and discourse and the construction of Indonesian national identity (1997–2019)
Organization
Anti-corruption knowledge and discourse emerged in the mid-1990s promoted by powerful internation... more Anti-corruption knowledge and discourse emerged in the mid-1990s promoted by powerful international actors and organizations, mostly targeting countries in the ‘Third World’. In this paper, we seek to decolonize this knowledge and show how it influences the construction of national identity of former colonies. Our case is a country with a reputation as one of the most corrupt in the world: Indonesia. Long celebrated in the West for its economic growth and political stability, in 1997 the Asian Financial Crisis forced Indonesia to accept financial aid from the International Monetary Fund accompanied by harsh conditions that resulted in domestic turmoil. Using discourse-historical method, we trace how national identity was constructed in The Jakarta Post from 1997 through two decades of Western-influenced corruption-related reform. Our findings show how acceptance of Western anti-corruption discourse and knowledge early on contributed to highly negative internal constructions of Indon...
critical perspectives on international business, 2020
Purpose-This paper aims to problematize existing conceptualisation of corruption by presenting al... more Purpose-This paper aims to problematize existing conceptualisation of corruption by presenting alternative perspectives on corruption in Indonesia through the lens of national/cultural identity, amidst claims of the pervasiveness of corruption in the country. In so doing, the paper also shed light on the micro-processes of interactions between global and local discourses in postcolonial settings. Design/methodology/approach-The study applies discourse analysis, involving in-depth interviews with 40 informants from the business sector, government institutions, and anti-corruption agencies. Findings-The findings suggest that corruption helps government function, preserves livelihoods of the marginalized segments of societies, and maintains social obligations/relations. These alternative meanings of corruption persist despite often seen as less legitimate due to effects of colonial powers. Research limitations/implications-The snowballing method of recruiting informants is one of the limitations of this paper, which may decrease the potential diversity and lead to the silencing of different stories (Schwartz-Shea and Yanow, 2013). Researchers need to contextualize corruption and study its varied meanings to reveal its social, historical, and political dimensions.
Indonesia's anti-corruption movement has occupied public discourse within the last two decades. V... more Indonesia's anti-corruption movement has occupied public discourse within the last two decades. Various programs have been carried out by the vanguard in eradicating corruption in this country, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). However, the journey was not free from turbulence and ambiguity, both in the realm of law and in the social sphere. Using a critical discourse analysis approach, this paper examines (anti)corruption discourses in Indonesia and how they are positioned against each other. Previous studies suggest that there is a strong emphasis on universal morality within the dominant discourses on (anti)corruption in Indonesia. Using illustrations which are drawn from in-depth anthropologically-oriented studies, I demonstrate that corruption needs to be understood through the lens of morality-in-context. This further suggests there is a serious gap between the dominant and marginalized discourses of (anti)corruption in Indonesia. Abstrak Gerakan antikorupsi telah mendominasi wacana publik di Indonesia dalam dua dekade terakhir. Berbagai program telah dilakukan oleh garda depan dalam memberantas korupsi di negeri ini, yaitu Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (KPK). Namun, perjalanan itu tidak bebas dari turbulensi dan ambiguitas, baik di ranah hukum maupun di ranah sosial. Menggunakan pendekatan analisis wacana kritis, makalah ini mencoba mengidentifikasi wacana dominan dan wacana alternatif (anti)korupsi di Indonesia dan bagaimana mereka diposisikan satu sama lain. Studi-studi terdahulu menunjukkan bahwa ada penekanan kuat pada moralitas universal dalam wacana dominan tentang (anti)korupsi. Dengan menggunakan ilustrasi yang diambil dari tiga studi beorientasi antropologi, saya menunjukkan bahwa korupsi perlu dipahami lewat konsep moralitas dalam konteks. Ini juga menunjukkan adanya kesenjangan serius antara wacana dominan (anti)korupsi yang dominan dan terpinggirkan di Indonesia.
Journal of Business Ethics, 2020
Corruption is of central interest to business ethics but its meaning is often assumed to be self-... more Corruption is of central interest to business ethics but its meaning is often assumed to be self-evident and universal. In this paper we seek to re-politicize and unsettle the dominant meaning of corruption by showing how it is culturally specific, relationally derived and varies over time. In particular, we show how corruption's meaning changes depending on its relationship with Western-style liberal democracy and non-Western local experience with its implementation. We chose this focus because promoting democracy is a central plank of the international anti-corruption and development agenda and yet the relationship between corruption and democracy is rarely specified. Adopting a critical-discursive approach that draws on poststructuralism and postcolonialism, we explore how the meaning of corruption constructed in The Jakarta Post (TJP) changed in relation to Indonesia's experience in implementing democratic reform, a condition of the international financial aid it received following the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. In the 1990s, corruption was seen as an illness, and democracy the cure; from 2000 to 2011 experience with democracy brought disillusion-democracy had not cured corruption but caused it to spread; while from 2012 to 2014 democracy was constructed as a valued end in its own right, but needed protection from corruption in order to survive. From translating the international development agenda in a relatively straightforward way, TJP moved towards constructions of increasing complexity and ambivalence. This demonstrates how corruption's meaning is fundamentally contingent and unstable-even dominant meanings have the potential to be contested, showing how they are an effect of power and raising the possibility of alternatives.
This paper aims to establish how organization and management research, an extensive field that ha... more This paper aims to establish how organization and management research, an extensive field that has contributed a great deal to research on corruption, could apply insights from other disciplines in order to advance the understanding of corruption, often considered as a form of unethical behavior in organizations. It offers an analysis of important contributions of corruption research, taking a 'rationalist perspective', and highlights the central tensions and debates within this vast body of literatures. It then shows how these debates can be addressed by applying insights from corruption studies, adopting anthropological lens. The paper thus proposes a cross-disciplinary approach, which focuses on studying corruption by looking at what it means to individuals implicated by the phenomenon while engaging in social relations and situated in different contexts. It also offers an alternative approach to the study of corruption amidst claims that anti-corruption efforts have failed to achieve desirable results.
Drafts by Kanti Pertiwi
Purpose -This paper aims to report on a study of how business professionals and members of govern... more Purpose -This paper aims to report on a study of how business professionals and members of government in Indonesia interpret corruption in relation to national/cultural identity, amidst claims of the pervasiveness of corruption in the country.
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Thesis Chapters by Kanti Pertiwi
Papers by Kanti Pertiwi
Drafts by Kanti Pertiwi