MANAGECOR | The political economy of management consulting firms in emerging economies: Evidence from illicit financial networks in Brazil and South Africa

Summary
Over the last 10 years, cases of corruption and money laundering involving management consulting firms multiplied in the global South. They cast doubts on these firms’ claims to help establish transparent competitive economies and to deliver solid accounting services. MANAGECOR is a political science project which examines the role of these firms in the financialisation of emerging economies and their subsequent enabling of illicit financial flows. It looks at two cases (Petrobras and Odebrecht in Brasil, State capture case in South Africa) on which exceptional sets of data are publicly available but have not been used yet. The data are composed of political and judicial investigations which include leaks of internal documents with details of operations and services provided. They will be processed through an original interdisciplinary method and thanks to the trainings received by the researcher. The project aims at making 3 contributions: 1) Along with a group of leading researchers it will be associated with, it will develop a new theorization of corruption. It will show that corruption results of processes and networks of actors at the core of the global economy. These results may help to improve anti corruption policies. 2) The project uses a close collaboration with the supervisor and a joint discussion of the results to bridge gaps in the literature as regard to the accounting, fiscal and legal practices that consulting firms imported into emerging countries. It will examine how consulting firms act as brokers, how they manage their reputation and mitigate risks. 3) MANAGECOR contributes to rewriting the political economies of Brazil and South Africa to show how external reform agendas affected existing political economies of corruption. This will be done with the writing of a monograph and by engaging with local academics’ works. The results will be disseminated to a global public interested in understanding the perpetuation of structural inequalities.
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More information & hyperlinks
Web resources: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101025201
Start date: 01-11-2021
End date: 14-01-2025
Total budget - Public funding: 224 933,76 Euro - 224 933,00 Euro
Cordis data

Original description

Over the last 10 years, cases of corruption and money laundering involving management consulting firms multiplied in the global South. They cast doubts on these firms’ claims to help establish transparent competitive economies and to deliver solid accounting services. MANAGECOR is a political science project which examines the role of these firms in the financialisation of emerging economies and their subsequent enabling of illicit financial flows. It looks at two cases (Petrobras and Odebrecht in Brasil, State capture case in South Africa) on which exceptional sets of data are publicly available but have not been used yet. The data are composed of political and judicial investigations which include leaks of internal documents with details of operations and services provided. They will be processed through an original interdisciplinary method and thanks to the trainings received by the researcher. The project aims at making 3 contributions: 1) Along with a group of leading researchers it will be associated with, it will develop a new theorization of corruption. It will show that corruption results of processes and networks of actors at the core of the global economy. These results may help to improve anti corruption policies. 2) The project uses a close collaboration with the supervisor and a joint discussion of the results to bridge gaps in the literature as regard to the accounting, fiscal and legal practices that consulting firms imported into emerging countries. It will examine how consulting firms act as brokers, how they manage their reputation and mitigate risks. 3) MANAGECOR contributes to rewriting the political economies of Brazil and South Africa to show how external reform agendas affected existing political economies of corruption. This will be done with the writing of a monograph and by engaging with local academics’ works. The results will be disseminated to a global public interested in understanding the perpetuation of structural inequalities.

Status

SIGNED

Call topic

MSCA-IF-2020

Update Date

28-04-2024
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Horizon 2020
H2020-EU.1. EXCELLENT SCIENCE
H2020-EU.1.3. EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
H2020-EU.1.3.2. Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility
H2020-MSCA-IF-2020
MSCA-IF-2020 Individual Fellowships