A critical analysis of international organizations’ and global management consulting firms’ consensus around twenty-first century skills

Linda A. White, Sumayya Saleem, Elizabeth Dhuey and Michal Perlman

Review of International Political Economy, 2023, vol. 30, issue 4, 1334-1359

Abstract: A growing number of academic studies and policy reports have identified a set of core skills considered crucial in the twenty-first century economy. This article critically examines the evidence base underpinning that ideational consensus among international organizations (IOs) and global management consulting firms (GMCFs). We collected 234 skills reports produced over the past decade by major IOs (European Commission, ILO, OECD, UNESCO, and World Bank) and GMCFs (BCG, Deloitte, Ernest and Young, KPMG, McKinsey, and PWC). We then extracted bibliographic references from each report and used the analytic technique of citation analysis to examine how the consensus around these core skills was generated in order to uncover the authoritative sources of knowledge and the pattern of ideational policy diffusion observed. Our analysis reveals substantial gaps in the evidence base used. Evidence drew largely on a few academic economists, along with strong use of grey literature, and high rates of self-citation. Given these characteristics, the consensus around twenty-first century skills appears less epistemic in nature and more like an ideational echo chamber, which raises concerns about the extent to which policymakers should rely on this evidence.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2097289 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:30:y:2023:i:4:p:1334-1359

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rrip20

DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2097289

Access Statistics for this article

Review of International Political Economy is currently edited by Gregory Chin, Juliet Johnson, Daniel Mügge, Kevin Gallagher, Ilene Grabel and Cornelia Woll

More articles in Review of International Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().