Resarch Summaries

Here you’ll find the latest in the team’s research. 

Reid, J. and Scobie, M.

Abstract

In this short essay we make the argument that the Big Four firms (Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PWC) are positioning themselves as a bridge between Māori and the Crown. In a political economy that is evolving in line with Te Tiriti o Waitangi, this bridge presents a profitable opportunity. We engage with theories of imperialism, the business case for diversity and revolving doors from existing literature to advance our argument. We conclude with opportunities for future research that take the role of the Big Four in the Māori economy seriously.

Lewis, N. and Westgate, J.

Abstract

This paper examines the work of the Big Four global management consultancies (Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PwC) in creating the conditions for a climate-change conscious after-neoliberal economic formation coordinated through extra-state governance. We use the case of Big Four participation at global events like COP28 and the World Economic Forum in Davos to illustrate their aspirations and practices in imagineering this emergent formation, which has been dubbed ‘inclusive capitalism’. The Big Four wield significant influence through their auditing, corporate restructuring, and advisory work for states and major companies. While this influence has attracted growing critical attention in recent years from academics and investigative journalists who have questioned its extent, transparency, and legitimacy, their work as imagineers of future economic formations has yet to attract much attention. We argue that their extensive presence at the COP conferences is an indication of this work. In a world of shifting geo-politics and economic globalisation, COP 28 and Davos 2024 represent high points, perhaps even end points, in the inclusive capitalism project before the second coming of Trump. They are also rare moments at which the Big Four hove into public view and put their authority and reputational capital on the line publicly. This paper outlines how at Cop 28 the Big Four invited various publics to join the Net Zero project, while at Davos they invited us to trust them to lead their clients to create a better future. These performances illustrate how the Big Four have inserted themselves into social movements and governmental projects as great assemblers. They reveal the work of GMCs as intermediaries in the assemblage of an emergent economic formation and key actors in an extra-state programme to stimulate, authorise, template, and legitimate this formation assemblage and perform it into being.

Dowell, A., Lewis, N. and Baker, T.

Abstract

The Big Four global audit firms, Deloitte, KPMG, PWC and EY, have over the last 45 years refashioned themselves from auditors into global management consultancies (GMCs) that work as business consultants and strategic advisors for private and public corporations alike. They have become go-to advisors for state, corporate and civil society actors on concerns ranging from health and education to economic change, climate change response, indigenous economy, transformations in education and health care, socially responsible investment, procurement, the adoption of AI, the future of work, and much more. They support their clients to perform activities as well as navigate crises, and use thought pieces to lead policy change in public and private sectors while simultaneously cultivating demand for their advisory services. Their names emblazon large hyper-modern downtown office blocks in all the world’s major cities, which light up commercial and financial districts at night. They are major employers and embedded in influential domestic and international corporate, state, and NGO networks. Each of these features makes them attractive employers. Together they offer workers the opportunity to trade Big Four reputational capital in diverse global labour markets across their careers. The opportunity to become a Big Four imagineer is seductive. Meanwhile for the Big Four, the game is to attract and manage the right recruits in a context where their primary assets are their reputation and ability to stay at the forefront of these knowledge brokerage practices, value that is embodied in their labour. In this paper, we examine Big Four recruitment practices and professional development programmes to ask how they recruit for and cultivate workers with a particular set of skills and dispositions. We explore what this tells us about their wider work in shaping contemporary governmental formations.

Sharp, E. Lewis, N. and Locke, K.

Abstract

Global management consultancies provide strategic advice and expertise to government agencies on policy development, identifying key policy issues, conducting research and analysis, and providing recommendations for policy development. They may also fill capacity gaps within government agencies and actively draft policy documents, prepare proposals for policy implementation, or assist in implementing policies. At the same time, they have also been tasked with conducting research, gathering data, and evaluating the effectiveness of government policies and programs. The extent and mix of these roles call into question the ethical basis under which they conduct their work, especially where different tasks involve potential conflicts of interest. The principal-agency relation under which contracting out is based derives from a cluster of ‘new’ public management theories that decree that civil service ethics are insufficient to bind public sector workers to the interests of their office in the presence of moral hazard and other temptations of self-interest. Market disciplines and contracts have for many years been seen as an efficient and ethical solution. But in a real world of monopolistic experts, multiple and overlapping roles, under-specified contracts, uneven knowledge, and revolving doors between consultants, ministries and private sector actors, have we come to replace trust in civil service ethics with trust in consultancies? Is the self-interest and moral hazard of the bureaucrat that much stronger than that of the consultant, or is it that the bureaucrat is a less palatable figure of trustworthiness than that of the consultant in contemporary times? In this paper, we ask whether there is an answer to this quandary in the distinction between responsibility and obligation, and how obligation might be derived and policed beyond hoped for ethical dispositions. Do we need somehow to hold consultants and public officials to the same level of ethical standards and scrutiny of practice?