As business and government leaders convene in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, the event faces the usual criticism for representing “Davos Man”, a stereotype of male, globalist business leaders. To gauge whether there’s any truth to the stereotype, Shawn Pope and Irene Beccarini listened to the quarterly earnings calls in which company leaders spoke. They present three findings from their investigation.

This week a swarm of private jets will descend on Davos, Switzerland for the five-day annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. There, in the highest town in Europe, about 2,500 chief executives, heads of state, celebrities and other elites will discuss the issues of the day, from war to populism, hate speech, AI and sustainable energy.

The meeting is always one of the most covered—and criticised—events on the geopolitical calendar. It will certainly be derided this year, yet again, as the gathering of “Davos Man,” which is a caricature of its typical attendee. First spotted by political scientist Samuel Huntington in 2004, Davos Man is still known by a few signature traits: He is male, a globalist, a champion of free markets and a chatterbox who talks incessantly about changing the world but rarely delivers on any big promises.

Davos Man is still known by a few signature traits: he is male, a globalist and a chatterbox.

In actuality, whether Davos Man still possesses those traits is becoming an open question. In recent years the Forum has worked hard to fix its image. It now has a quota system for women at its annual meeting, buys carbon credits to cancel out the private jets mentioned above, and runs year-round initiatives on racism, corruption and urban renewal. This rebranding will be easier with the retirement this month of the ultimate Davos Man, the Forum’s founder, Klaus Schwab. He is stepping down after 54 years at the helm and a history of controversial takes on where the global economy should go.

To be sure, we have never really had a good handle on the actual prevalence of Davos Man, despite the annual supply of fresh anecdotes. With some exceptions here and there, academics have ignored the Forum. Public discussion, rather, is increasingly driven by polemics, whether screeds from Alex Jones, harangues on TV from Tucker Carlson (or radio from Glenn Beck), or protests at the event itself from Greenpeace and Greta Thunberg.

Onsite study of Davos Man would, at any rate, be difficult. The Forum’s sessions are, by default, off-the-record (subject to the so-called Chatham House Rule). Indeed, many are behind closed doors where the Forum plies its most dubious trade—giving CEOs that pay as much as US$ 620,000 per year for Forum “partnership” privileged access to government representatives.

That said, there is a decent alternative to studying Davos Man in his natural Swiss habitat. We can examine him in action at other conferences: quarterly earnings calls. These are public by law. On them, leaders of the Forum’s “strategic partners” take questions from stock analysts about the finances and business prospects of their enterprises. Analysing CEO behaviour on these calls can provide a window into whether Davos Man, in actuality, is any different from his peers at similarly large companies.

To build our dataset, we gathered the transcripts of the earnings calls of the Forum’s 31 American strategic partners and, for comparison, the 79 Fortune 100 companies without Forum affiliation. For balance, we sampled more partners (three quarters of earnings calls) than other companies (two quarters), yielding 206 transcripts with full data in our source repository. Below are our main findings.

First finding 

Davos Man is very much a man. Among the Forum’s partners, only three per cent of CEOs are female (Jane Fraser at Citigroup stands alone). This is considerably lower than the 13 per cent for non-affiliates in the Fortune 100. It is also a far cry from 28 per cent, the share of females at the Forum’s 2024 meeting. It should be noted that these overwhelmingly male CEOs are the Forum’s paying customers and its core group of guaranteed guests at the annual meeting.

Second finding

Fitting the stereotype, Davos Man is a globalist. After controlling for total words spoken, Forum CEOs’ lexicon makes 2.6 times as many references to “global”, “world”, “international” and “countries”. Underneath this statistic is the difference between apex multinationals like Meta, Google and Coca-Cola (all partners of the Forum) and predominantly American concerns like UnitedHealth, Home Depot and Kroger (non-affiliates in the Fortune 100). This finding dovetails with the understanding of the Forum as a meet up for the most transnational of business elites.

Third finding

Davos Man is a chatterbox. By a large margin, Forum CEOs outspeak their colleagues on the earnings calls who could possibly answer the same analyst questions, whether the chief financial or operating officer or the director of investor relations. Forum CEOs say 23 per cent more of their company’s words as compared to their Fortune 100 counterparts. This amounts to about 500 more words and 3.5 minutes of additional talking—a lot considering that company responses, on average, take only about 30 minutes. Helping to explain this finding is the greater tendency of Forum CEOs to field an analyst question and, thereafter, to ramble. The finding resonates with the view of the annual meeting as a talking shop for executives to pontificate in plenary sessions.

Conclusions

Altogether, despite proclamations that Davos Man is on his way out, our findings suggest that the stereotype still has some grains of truth. Based on our research, we would imagine that this year’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum will continue to play host to a core cabal of overwhelmingly male CEOs with especially large business stakes in globalisation.

At the same meeting, we would envision a lot of attendance from many of corporate America’s most prolific babblers—executives who are used to dominating the airtime on their own earnings calls, all packed into the same conference rooms and trying to score conversational points. This latter thought, at least, gives us introverted academics some solace after not receiving, yet again, an invitation to the world’s largest, longest-running, and most-followed business conference.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter here. 

• This blog post represents the views of its author(s), not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School of Economics and Political Science.
• Featured image provided by Shutterstock.
• When you leave a comment, you’re agreeing to our Comment Policy.

Print Friendly