MSc Financial Crime and Compliance in Digital Societies (top-up) (blended learning)

This unit provides an advanced grounding in theoretical frameworks and modes of analysis for developing explanatory accounts of the individual motivations, organisational contexts and structural conditions that can contribute to financial crime and compliance risks. When organisations encounter insider and outsider threats or risks to their business, compliance, governance and risk professionals need to understand how and why certain individuals or groups pose, or posed, these threats, and how conditions within the organisation might have contributed to them. How did opportunities for non-compliance or financial crime arise within the organisation? How were employees able to conceal their transgressions? What strategies or policy changes may have prevented this from happening? Academic theories can inform decision-making approaches for dealing with such risks and support the development of policies and practices to reduce future risks. This can make organisations more robust, efficient and compliant, and in turn protect customers, investors and organisational reputation. .

This unit introduces you to empirically informed theories of (non-) compliance and regulation, to help you better understand the nature of financial crime or compliance risks and violations (what, why and how), the organisational and structural contexts within which opportunities for non-compliance emerge, and public/private regulatory and governance responses. It provides you with amulti-level theoretical tool-kit that can be used to understand (i) individual motivations and propensities for engaging in financial crime or non-compliance (ii) how organisational cultures, structures and policies can create opportunity, means, or rationale for non-compliant behaviour, and (iii) how wider political-economic environments shape individual decisions and motivations.

You will learn how to critically assess various theoretical perspectives and modes of analysis that could be used to provide explanations for financial crime or compliance risks within your organisation/sector. This knowledge can be integrated into organisational policy and practices for preventing, reducing, or responding to internal and external threats.

 

CRIM70003 FCC Online Conditions (Programme 10177)

The unit aims to provide students with an advanced critical grounding in theoretical frameworks and modes of analysis for developing explanatory accounts of the individual motivations, organisational contexts and structural conditions that can contribute to governance, compliance and financial crime risks. It will present case studies of financial crime and compliance risks, and introduce students to theories of compliance and regulation that can be used to understand financial crime and compliance risks, victimisation, governance and enforcement.

Week 1: Introducing Financial Crime (and the Need for Advanced Theory)
Week 2: Introducing Compliance: The Governance Turn
Week 3: Proximal Factors: Individual Motivations and Situational Components of Financial Crime and Compliance Risks
Week 4: Distal Factors: Organisational Contexts and Structural Conditions
Week 5: Consolidation Week
Week 6: Modes of Analysis I: ‘Scripting’ the Dynamics of Business Risk
Week 7: Modes of Analysis II: ‘Network’ Approaches to Financial Crime and Compliance Risks
Week 8: Case Study I – Globalised Economies and the AML Transnational Legal Order
Week 9: Case Study II – Business Compliance, Modern Slavery and Associated Finances
Week 10: Revision Week

Blended learning for distance-learning students, through interactive online learning materials (developed with/supported by Transnational Education (TNE)) and a hybrid weekend ‘Masterclass’ held at UoM and online.

Online asynchronous learning materials include text, videos, reading list, tasks, quizzes and discussion forums. Students can meet course tutors one-on-one for further discussion, guidance, assessment feedback etc (online).

The online Community Area provides a range of resources to help students use the VLE; engage with materials and courses provided by the library; develop their academic skills; and engage with Study Skills workshops.
 

 

 

By the end of the unit, students should be able to:

Describe and explain relevant cases, theoretical frameworks, and empirical research related to financial crime, compliance, and regulation. Identify, and differentiate between, individual, organisational, and structural factors contributing to financial crime or non-compliance. 

Critically analyse financial crime or non-compliance scenarios using multi-level theoretical perspectives. 

Use analytical tools to interpret real-world cases of financial crime or non-compliance. 

Communicate complex theoretical and practical insights clearly and effectively.

• Essay 2000 words (33.3%)
• Presentation 20 Minutes (66.7%)

 

• Levi, M. (2012) 'Financial Crimes' in Tonry, M. (ed) The Oxford Handbook of Crime and Public Policy
• Harrison, K. and Ryder, N. (2022) The Law Relating to Financial Crime in the United Kingdom, 3rd Edition, Routledge: London.
• Lord, N. and Levi, M. (2023) 'Economic crime, economic criminology, and serious crimes for economic gain: On the conceptual and disciplinary (dis)order of the object of study', Journal of Economic Crime, 1: 1-8:
• Parker, C. and Nielsen, V. (2011) Explaining Compliance: Explaining Compliance Business Responses to Regulation, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.
• Black, J. (2001) 'Decentring Regulation: Understanding the Role of Regulation and Self Regulation in a “Postregulatory” World', Current Legal Problems 54: 103-147.
• Benson, M. L., Simpson S., Rorie, M. and Kennedy, J. (2024) White-Collar Crime: An Opportunity Perspective (4th edn), New York: Routledge.
• Campbell, JL., Göritz, A.S. (2013) ‘Culture Corrupts! A Qualitative Study of Organizational Culture in Corrupt Organizations’, J Bus Ethics 120, 291-311
• Lord, N. and Levi, M. (2025) Organising White-Collar and Corporate Crimes, Abingdon: Routledge
   

For Information and advice on Link2Lists reading list software, see:

http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/academicsupport/informationandadviceonlink2listsreadinglistsoftware/