經理人的短視拖累管理復興

Where governments have failed to restore previous world growth levels, could a management renaissance do the trick? Noting in a Harvard Business Review blog that a mere 13 per cent of employees worldwide are engaged in their work, with twice as many disengaged or hostile, Richard Straub and Julia Kirby call for a “Great Transformation” that would set the world on a new path to sustainable growth.

各國政府沒能讓全球經濟增長恢復之前的水平，那麼管理方式復興能否辦成這件事？理查德•斯特勞布(Richard Straub)和茱莉亞•柯比(Julia Kirby)在《哈佛商業評論》(Harvard Business Review)博客上指出，全世界僅13%的僱員投入工作，而兩倍於此的僱員在混日子或仇視工作。兩人呼籲來一場“大轉變”，稱這可能讓世界走上可持續增長的新道路。

Can we manage our way to prosperity? Some would turn it around and say it is not an option – it is management’s fault that the economy is so limp in the first place. And it is less a case of sulky employees than of zombie managers in the grip of management ideas that refuse to die. Leave aside for the moment the poor management decisions that caused the crisis whose legacy still besets us. Clayton Christensen, holder of the unofficial title of the world’s most influential management thinker, blames managers’ short-termism for companies’ preference for innovation that cuts costs (usually jobs).

我們能否通過變革管理方式實現繁榮？有些人會搖頭，說這是不可能的——經濟之所以走到眼下的困難境地，追根溯源就是因爲管理方式的錯誤。與其責怪心懷不滿的員工，不如責怪那些緊抱陳舊管理思想的死腦筋經理人。暫且不談導致了這場危機（其爛攤子至今仍在折磨我們）的糟糕管理決策。有“全球最具影響力管理學思想家”之稱的克萊頓•克里斯坦森(Clayton Christensen)說，企業之所以青睞於那些能夠削減成本（通常意味着削減工作崗位）的創新，應歸咎於經理人的短視。

Another academic, William Lazonick, has shown how in recent years many large US corporates have been spending more than their total profits on dividends and share buybacks, leaving precious little for investment or employees. And in The Road to Recovery, City economist Andrew Smithers, hardly a rabid lefty, argues that the recession is not cyclical but structural, and it is caused by the misallocation of investment resources brought about by bonuses and incentives. For Smithers, dismantling the bonus culture that misdirects managers’ investment decisions is the single most important task for economic and social policy today.

另一位學者威廉•萊宗尼克(William Lazonick)則指出，近年來，美國許多大公司在派息和股票回購上的支出超過它們的總利潤，使得它們能夠用在投資和員工上的資金少之又少。倫敦金融城經濟學家安德魯•史密瑟斯(Andrew Smithers)在《走向復甦之路》(The Road to Recovery)一書中提出，這場衰退不是週期性的，而是結構性的，其誘因是獎金和激勵機制導致的投資資源配置不當。在史密瑟斯看來，廢除誤導經理人投資決策的獎金文化，是當今經濟和社會政策的最重要任務。

If this is the case then, the management innovation that is needed will not come from hot new communication and co-ordinating technologies (such as big data, the internet of things or social media). In fact, the reverse. In today’s financialised world, these are more likely to be used to accentuate the job-stripping, winner-takes-all trend already seen with previous techniques like outsourcing and offshoring.

如果是這樣，我們需要的管理方式創新將不會來自熱門的新通訊和合作技術（比如大數據、物聯網或社交媒體）。事實上，恰恰相反。在當今的金融化世界裏，這些技術更有可能被用於加快削減工作崗位、贏者通吃的趨勢，就像之前的外包和在海外設廠等手段那樣。

As Straub writes: “Instead of liberating the creative and innovative energy of employees [ ... ] blind processes and rigid hierarchies still hold them down. In effect, the emergence of a Taylorism of a sort in non-manufacturing business operations has been enabled by digital technology.”

如斯特勞布所寫的：“員工的創造力和創新熱情仍然沒有得到釋放……盲目的流程和僵硬的層級制度仍然束縛着他們。事實上，數字技術使得某種泰勒主義在非製造業企業運營中出現。”

As the reference to Frederick Winslow Taylor’s “scientific management” project suggests, managers are still building mass-production organisations fit for the early 20th century, based on hierarchy, standardisation and compliance, rather than flexible, human-centred outfits in which technology is not a threat but a partner of both employees and customers.

正如提及弗雷德裏克•溫斯洛•泰勒(Frederick Winslow Taylor)的“科學管理”項目所顯示的，經理人仍然在構建適合20世紀早期的那種以層級制度、標準化和服從爲基礎的大規模生產組織，而不是那種靈活、以人爲本、讓技術成爲員工和客戶的夥伴而非威脅的組織。

A-list management voices as well as a cohort of younger thinkers and doers, have been calling for the reinvention of management along these lines for years. But nothing much has changed, at least among large established companies – just look at the unreconstructed financial sector. If anything, managers report that short-term pressures are getting worse.

多年來，前沿管理學討論、以及一批年輕思想家和實踐家，一直在呼籲類似的管理學創新，但迄今沒有多少改變，至少在老牌大公司裏（只用看看未見重整的金融行業就知道了）。如果說有任何改變的話，那就是經理人們稱，他們面臨的短期壓力更大了。

So if this is old news, what is holding things up? What has to change to break the management logjam? Enter the zombies. As Smithers demonstrates, the invisible link between sluggish innovation, cost-cutting, share buybacks, the jobs and pay squeeze, and neo-Taylorism, is management incentives. What locks them all together in a tight, self-reinforcing paradigm is shareholder value – the assertion that the sole purpose of the company is to maximise returns to shareholders.

那麼，如果這是個老問題，爲何到現在都沒有解決？要打破這種管理方面的僵局，有什麼是必須改變的？答案是，死腦筋經理人。正如史密瑟斯所展示的，將創新萎靡、成本削減、股票回購、裁員和降低與新泰勒主義聯繫在一起的，正是管理激勵。使得這一切固化爲自我強化的緊密範式的是股東價值：企業的唯一存在目的是實現股東回報的最大化。

This idea is embedded deep in official governance codes and it is hard to believe it is both recent – gaining traction only in the 1970s and 1980s – as well as based on a myth. In law, as the redoubtable legal scholar Lynn Stout, among others, has pointed out, shareholders own shares, not companies, which are separate legal persons, and directors’ only fiduciary responsibility is to the company. Shareholders are not principals and managers are not their agents.

這一觀念深深地影響了正式的公司治理規範，我們很難相信，它出現的時間其實並不長（上世紀70、80年代才流行起來），並且是基於一個錯誤的想法。從法律上講，正如大名鼎鼎的法學家林恩•斯托特(Lynn Stout)等人所指出的，股東擁有的是股票，而不是公司，公司是一個單獨的法人，董事只對公司負有受信責任。股東不是企業主，經理人也不是他們的代理人。

The fact that this is a zombie idea does nothing to weaken its hold on the corporate psyche, particularly in the US. As the late London Business School scholar Sumantra Ghoshal explained, the problem is not that we fail to recognise good management practice – it is that bad management theory anaesthetises it.

儘管這一觀念十分陳腐，但它對企業心態的影響並未因此減弱，特別是在美國。如已故的倫敦商學院(London Business School)學者蘇曼德拉•戈沙爾(Sumantra Ghoshal)所說，問題並不在於我們不知道什麼是好的管理實踐，而在於壞的管理學理論讓我們變得麻木。

So, yes, an era of management-led growth is both feasible and urgently needed. But the renaissance will not flourish unless a stake is driven through the heart of the shareholder-primacy zombie first.

因此，是的，我們能夠、也亟須創造一個由管理復興拉動增長的時代。但只有首先了結那些股東至上的死腦筋經理人，管理方式纔會真正復興。