MANAGECOR · The political economy of management consulting firms in emerging economies: Evidence from illicit financial networks in Brazil and South Africa
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-11-01 → 2025-01-14
- EU contribution
- €224,934
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
The political economy of management consulting firms in emerging economies: Evidence from illicit financial networks in Brazil and South Africa
The project aimed at developing a new understanding of the role of management consultancies and big audit firms in two countries, Brazil and South Africa, and more generally, in emerging economies and low income countries of Africa and Latin America. It focused on three objectives. First, it aimed to develop a new theorisation of corruption, that is to propose a move away from focus on “politically exposed persons” (PEPs) to analyse the role of different practices and actors in the international political economy and get to a new understanding of its relation with the global financial system. Second, the project aimed to analyse the various practices, ideas and techniques consulting firms circulate in their networks of firms and clients. This is of prime importance for research and society as we don't understand precisely today how these firms engage with sovereing and corporate actors. We lack empirical studies on the role of these firms as advisers, intermediaries and fixers to develop private or public projects. We also need to improve our understanding of these firm's organisations and of their business models. Third, the work aims to contribute to debates on the political economies of Brazil and South Africa.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
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.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD · OxfordCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union