MPhil Thesis · Open Access

Proletarisation of Advisory in AI Settings

Your Name · MPhil Thesis, University of [X], 2025

Advisory work sits at the heart of how organisations make decisions — yet the transformation of that work under AI conditions has received surprisingly little sustained scholarly attention. Most accounts are either breathlessly optimistic (AI empowers advisors) or reductively alarmist (AI replaces advisors). This thesis tries to do something harder: to trace, empirically and theoretically, the structural mechanisms through which AI is reshaping what advisors actually do, and what that means for the profession. The work draws on 38 qualitative interviews across management consulting, legal services, financial advice, and corporate strategy — conducted between 2023 and 2024. It is published openly because these questions matter beyond the academy, and because the people most affected by them — working advisors — deserve access to the research.

01
Introduction
This chapter establishes the puzzle the thesis addresses: the gap between the banal productivity register i...
02
Situating the Inquiry
This chapter situates the thesis within European infrastructure advisory. It introduces the Chartered Manag...
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Theoretical Framework
This chapter constructs the philosophical apparatus for the thesis. It assembles the Stieglerian account of...
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The Materialisation of Expertise
This chapter describes how advisory expertise materialises across three scales: the individual practitioner...
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The Political Economy of AI Mediation
This chapter develops the sovereignty argument across two scales. At the national-cultural scale, it examin...
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Adjacent Professions
This chapter examines AI-induced professional transformation in software development and law to generate hy...
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Three Transformations across the ChMC Formation Pathway
This chapter analyses AI mediation's impact on advisory formation across the three ChMC stages. At Foundati...
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Futures: Four Scenarios for AI-Mediated Advisory
This chapter constructs four philosophical thought-experiments as scenarios for European infrastructure adv...
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Conclusion: Judgment, Responsibility, and the Conditions of Future Capability
The conclusion restates the thesis's central claim - that AI mediation proletarianises situated advisory ...
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Annexes
Seven conceptual annexes providing extended treatment of the thesis's core analytical apparatus. Tier 1 ann...
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Glossary
Definitions of 35 key concepts used in the thesis, grouped thematically across eight sections: the central ...
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