Consulting the future

During 2023-24, I’ve held a research fellowship at the University of Auckland, and working with Prof Nick Lewis within the Politics, Economies and Place research group. Work has focused on global management consultancies’ role in ‘imagineering’ a post-neoliberal capitalism:

Consulting the future: Net Zero, the Big Four, and imagineering the inclusive capitalism moonshot [In preparation]
This paper examines the presence of the Big Four management consultancies (Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PwC) at key global events like COP28 and the World Economic Forum in Davos. We show how their participation in these events illustrates their work in creating the conditions for a global post-neoliberal economic formation coordinated via extra-state governance. Given the label ‘inclusive capitalism’, we use this paper to argue that the Big Four number among its more prominent imagineers, and perhaps prophets of this emergent formation. The Big Four have attracted intense critical attention in recent years from academics and investigative journalists. Critics question the extent, transparency, and legitimacy of the influence they wield through their auditing, corporate restructuring, and advisory work for states and major companies alike, but their work as imagineers of the future has yet to attract as much attention. The paper asks what the emerging role of global consultancies as “imagineers of the future” tells us about the moonshot of inclusive capitalism and the rise of extrastate governance.