Consulting the future

Through 2023-26, 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:

Imagineering inclusive capitalism: The Big Four as agents of extra-state governance at COP and Davos [Paper under review]
This paper examines the participation of the Big Four global audit houses and management consultancies (Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PwC) at COP28 and the World Economic Forum in Davos. The Big Four wield significant influence over public and private sector organisations through their auditing, corporate restructuring, and advisory work for states and major companies alike. This influence has attracted growing critical attention in recent years from academics and other commentators who have questioned its extent, transparency, and legitimacy. Their self-named ‘thought leadership’ work as would-be imagineers of future extra-state economic formations, however, has yet to attract as much attention. We argue that their involvement at Davos and the COP conferences opens a rare public window onto this work. We trace the outlines of a discursive and technical project to embed ideas of ‘inclusive’ or ‘stakeholder’ capitalism as an ideological and technical fix to a capitalism collapsing under the weight of its own excesses. We extend the growing critique of the Big Four to argue that as beneficiaries, intermediaries, and imagineers of inclusive capitalism, they are extending their role from intermediary to agents of an extra-state economic governance. As afterword, we consider the challenge posed to this imagined future by the challenge to the internationalist geopolitical order issued at Davos 2026.