Government and public–private relationships: lessons from the Odebrecht case

The relationship between public entities and multinationals in Latin America has been affected by a series of scandals of corruption and collusion that deteriorates the common good. One of the most notorious is Odebrecht, which has affected and continues to affect at least nine countries of the region. The resulting lack of credibility and legitimacy has urged governments and multinationals to find new management models that better respond to recover the citizens’ confidence and provide higher levels of well-being. In this sense, humanistic management can provide guidance regarding how to best manage organisations for the common good. The aim of this chapter is to explore how a humanistic management approach can improve the relationship between governments and multinationals in Latin America. To this end, this chapter examines Odebrecht as a case example of poor management practices and how a three-stepped humanistic management model may improve decision-making and stakeholder engagement based on human dignity protection and recognition. The results suggest that improving transparency, accountability, participation, legitimacy, and the search for the common good in this type of partnerships can directly contribute to improve infrastructure (SDG 9), increase peace, justice, and strong institutions (SDG 16), and to build stronger partnerships for the goals (SDG 17).