The commentary and conversations from the World Economic Forum make it clear. This era of trade realignment represents a structural shift in the global business environment. Geopolitical fragmentation, state intervention, supply-chain reconfiguration, and accelerating technological change have made uncertainty the new normal rather than temporary disruption.
This paper outlines what these shifts mean for the relevance, role, and expectations of Commercial & Contract Management (CCM) as a business discipline and organizational capability.
Based on the analysis of events at the 2026 World Economic Forum, four realities are shaping executive decision-making:
- Uncertainty is structural: Political intervention, trade realignment, and policy volatility are no longer exceptional risks but enduring features of the business landscape.
- Governments are actively reshaping economic activity: Industrial policy, incentives, sanctions, and regulatory intervention increasingly shape where and how businesses operate.
- Strategic silos are dangerous: Leaders must expand thinking and test assumptions, particularly around globalisation, risk and the rule of law.
- Upside risk matters as much as downside risk: Organizations that focus only on protection will miss the growth opportunities created by realignment and change.
What This Means for Commercial & Contract Management
CCM is becoming more important.
In stable environments, contracts could be standardized and delegated. In volatile environments, contracts become one of the few mechanisms for organizations to actively manage uncertainty, power shifts, and change. As uncertainty increases:
- Judgment requirements increase
- Coordination costs increase
- Poor contract design destroys value faster
This elevates CCM from a role of operational efficiency and compliance to a position where it must provide strategic infrastructure.
The Role of CCM Must Shift
The environment described by commentators such as the Financial Times and McKinsey cannot be managed with traditional, buyer-centric, template-led contracting. CCM is increasingly required to:
- Translate strategy and risk appetite into executable commercial frameworks
- Design optionality, adaptability, and resilience into long-term relationships
- Balance risk, reward, and incentives across both buy-side and sell-side interests
- Enable legitimate, fast decision-making under uncertainty
This is a fundamental reset of goals and objectives on both buy-side and sell-side - and it must be enacted now!
Contracts Are No Longer Static Risk Instruments
In fragmented and politicized markets:
- Risk cannot be fully transferred
- Forecasts cannot be relied upon
- Enforcement alone will not protect outcomes
Contracts must become more expansive, operating as governance frameworks, providing decision rights architectures and acting as economic coordination mechanisms.
This requires an integrated commercial capability that understands and aligns economics, relationships, and operational realities, ready to step beyond classical legal and financial approaches to risk.
CCM Becomes a Connector Discipline
Warnings against ‘echo chambers’ reinforce a critical point that has been made by WorldCC time and again: high-value CCM sits at the intersection of strategy, finance, legal, operations, and external partners. In this environment, CCM must increasingly act as:
- An integrator between policy, commercial intent, and delivery
- A translator of geopolitical and regulatory risk into commercial terms
- A stabilizing force in long-term partnerships where trust and alignment matter
Executive Implications
If CCM continues to be treated as a rules-based compliance role, it will be bypassed, automated, or marginalized - but then who or what fills the gap we are describing, turning the contracting process into a dynamic source of controlled adaptability? It will be far easier and faster to re-purpose existing resources to become this source of resilience, adaptability, and competitive advantage.
This is not primarily a technology issue. AI will amplify capability, but only if the commercial role itself is clearly defined and empowered, with one of its key responsibilities being to empower others.
Key Questions for Executives
In the environment that’s been confirmed at Davos, executives have many actions to consider. Traditional thinking does not place commercial and contract management high on the agenda. Yet traditional thinking is precisely the problem: attitudes to contract management are a classic example of the siloed thinking that must be challenged. More adaptive, resilient trading relationships lie at the foundation of managing uncertainty. So these questions must be answered:
- Do our contracts enable adaptation, or lock us into outdated assumptions?
- Do our commercial frameworks balance buyer and supplier sustainability, or drive defensive behaviour?
- Is CCM positioned to shape and influence strategy and policies, or only to operate within decisions already made?
- Do we have clear authority, data, and governance for making rapid, informed decisions when conditions change? And do we have plans to shift the point of control through effective empowerment?
The Bottom Line
In a fragmented, volatile global economy, Commercial & Contract Management is no longer a support activity. It must transition to a system-level capability for navigating uncertainty and capturing value.
Organizations that recognise and act on this will adapt faster and perform better. Those that do not will increasingly find themselves constrained by their own contracts.
The Commerce & Contract Management Institute is a not-for-profit organization jointly owned by the National Contract Management Association (NCMA) and World Commerce & Contracting (WorldCC). For further information and additional research papers and reports, visit www.ccm.institute