Klaus Schwab

Schwab has authored or co-authored several books; some consider him to be "an evangelist" for "stakeholder capitalism".[17] The Fourth Industrial Revolution is one of his pet ideas, and he sees "human enhancement" as driver for this revolution.[18] In this he was seconded by Jack Ma and Eric Schmidt, the latter of whom wrote that "the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are extraordinary. Leadership has to be equally extraordinary to manage the complexities of systemic change." Indeed WEF data predict that "by 2025 we will see: commercial use of nanomaterials 200 times stronger than steel and a million times thinner than human hair; the first transplant of a 3D-printed liver; 10% of all cars on US roads being driverless."[19]

In January 2017 Steven Poole wrote in The Guardian amidst threats of gene editing that "this high-management style contains much fashionable vacuity (we should avoid “linear thinking”, it says, which is meaningless however you interpret it), and also a weird kind of imagistic brutality – the “gig economy” companies such as Uber or Taskrabbit are “human cloud platforms”, as though the serfs who work for them are euphoric angels playing harps on a bed of cumulonimbus. To complete the style, just add a heavy dose of tech-utopian boilerplate, such as the claim that “digital technology knows no borders”, which of course it does: witness Facebook’s recent decision to comply with China’s censorship laws so it can operate there." The dominant ideology of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, transhumanism, has attracted at least one academic bioethicist critic,[20][21] although it has its supporters in the popular press, too.[22] The Great Reset has attracted its own share of critics, and certain among these approach the topic from a biblical perspective.[23][24] The Financial Times "innovation editor" found "the clunking lifelessness of the prose" led him to "suspect this book really was written by humans — ones who inhabit a strange twilight world of stakeholders, externalities, inflection points and “developtory sandboxes”."[25] One writer sought to "engage in the discourse of posthumanism and cybernetics and how these debates relate to craft and making.." and to produce "a humble attempt to reorient makers to the necessary discourse required to navigate the inevitable changes they will face in their disciplines. Thus, the article seeks to transfer posthumanist literary understanding to intellectually position craft in the Fourth Industrial Revolution."[26]

• The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Geneva: World Economic Forum (2016). ISBN 978-1944835002.
• Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, with Nicholas Davis. New York: Crown Publishing Group (2018).
• COVID-19: The Great Reset, with Thierry Malleret. Forum Publishing (2020). ISBN 978-2940631124.
• Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy that Works for Progress, People and Planet. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley (2021).

Schwab (rightmost) opens the inaugural European Management Forum in Davos in 1971.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Schwab shaking hands at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

In 1971, Schwab founded the European Management Forum, which was renamed the WEF in 1987.[27] In 1971, he also published Moderne Unternehmensführung im Maschinenbau[28] (Modern Enterprise Management in Mechanical Engineering). In that book, he argued that the management of a modern enterprise must serve both shareholders and corporate stakeholders (die Interessenten), to achieve long-term growth and prosperity. Schwab has championed the multistakeholder concept since the WEF's inception.

In 2003 Schwab appointed José María Figueres as CEO of the WEF,[29] with the intent that Figueres would be his successor. In October 2004, however, Figueres resigned[30] over his undeclared receipt of more than US$900,000 in consultancy fees from the French telecommunications firm Alcatel while he was working at the Forum.[31][32] In 2006, Transparency International highlighted this incident in their Global Corruption Report.[33]

In June 2012 Schwab was invited to address the International Labour Conference by Director General Juan Somavia. Schwab said that a "paradigm shift toward entrepreneurship and innovation is needed to address the Global Jobs Crisis and the growing disparities between rich and poor," and that "the role of the International Labour Organization is central to the process of bringing about change; and he predicted that in the future most jobs will be created by the workers themselves."[34]

In 2015, the WEF was formally recognised by the Swiss Government as an "international body".[35]

While Schwab declared that excessively high management salaries were "no longer socially acceptable",[36] his own annual salary of about one million Swiss Francs has been repeatedly questioned by the media. The Swiss radio and television corporation SRF mentioned this salary level in the context of ongoing public contributions to the WEF and the fact that the Forum does not pay any federal taxes.[37] Moreover, the former Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung journalist Jürgen Dunsch made the criticism that the WEF's financial reports were not very transparent since neither income nor expenditure were broken down.[38] Schwab has also drawn ire for mixing the finances of the not-for-profit WEF and other for-profit business ventures. For example, the WEF awarded a multimillion dollar contract to USWeb in 1998. Yet shortly after the deal went through, Mr. Schwab took a board seat at the same company, reaping valuable stock options.[39][40]

In the view of some critics, the WEF is exercising too much influence on global systems and institutions. The picture shows George Soros during a Davos session on redesigning the international monetary system.

Schwab as publisher of the World Economic Forum's 2010 "Global Redesign" report postulates that a globalized world is best managed by a self-selected coalition of multinational corporations, governments (including through the UN system), and select civil society organizations (CSOs).[41] He argues that governments are no longer "the overwhelmingly dominant actors on the world stage" and that "the time has come for a new stakeholder paradigm of international governance". The WEF's vision includes a "public-private" UN, in which certain specialized agencies would operate under joint state and non-state governance systems.[42]

According to the Transnational Institute (TNI), the Forum is hence planning to replace a recognised democratic model with a model where a self-selected group of "stakeholders" make decisions on behalf of the people.[43] The think tank summarises that we are increasingly entering a world where gatherings such as Davos are "a silent global coup d'état" to capture governance.[43]

In June 2021, Schwab sharply criticised the "profiteering", "complacency" and "lack of commitment" by the municipality of Davos in relation to the WEF annual meeting. He mentioned that the preparation of the COVID-related meeting in Singapore in 2021/2022[44] had created an alternative to its Swiss host and sees the chance that the annual meeting will stay in Davos at between 40 and 70 per cent.[45][46]