Economics

企业功夫在企业外

Oct 31, 2013 Laura Tyson

伯克利—今年早些时候，哈佛商学院的西蒙斯（Robert Simons）发表了一篇攻讦美国企业和商学院的战斗檄文。他说，美国公司变得愚蠢、注意力分散、竞争力低下，之所以如此，部分原因是商学院说服他们认同许许多多浮华的、看起来很美的价值观，比如社会责任、环境可持续性和包容性等。

西蒙斯让人们想起了1970年弗里德曼（Milton Friedman）的尖锐批评。他指出，一个公司的唯一任务是“竞争并胜出”。弗里德曼也说，除了赚钱之外，其他的一切都是不务正业。

很难否认，这一观点有难以克服的简洁性。谁能否认，公司有明确的责任应该为股东赚取利润、大部分股东投资的主要目的是赚钱而不是让世界变得更好？为什么要把事情搞得这么复杂？

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 4 Comments on this article

John Shin Dec 30, 2013

The most ardent follower of the "win at any cost" dogma is Samsung which actually serves the family who owns just one percent of the company.
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Nathan Coppedge Dec 24, 2013

Flawlessly argued, up to a point. I agree, because I feel that the 'new factors' are the techne or technology of future businesses. They have to 'speak the lingo' and the new social media and environmentalist interests are the nature of the service. If nothing else, speaking the language would help these potential innovators to connect with like-minded people who have been fed the same dialectic. There is probably a hidden exception which goes Simon's way, but whether it is an achievable end for everyone is another matter. It seems to me that what Simon is appealing to is an ineffable 'right stuff', which he feels is not equatable inherently with the new mentality. He is undercutting the 'loaded plate' to appeal to the most ambitious individuals.

As I see, the author of this article has turned it on it's head, which is not such a bad thing to do. Social media and environmentalism could just as easily be the right stuff, and it is afterall more likely that this approach is closer to the minds of the new generations.

What is the business mentality of the future? I suspect it is growing more scarce and more prolific, and more and more depending on apparatuses of social dictation and government resourcefulness to be realized. I really hope some of the future innovators are not flying by the seat of their pants one way or the other.
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Zsolt Hermann Nov 7, 2013

Thank you for the interesting and informational review article. It is a very complicated issue, and although the example is from the business world, this paradox applies at all levels of our lives. The "Friedman-Simons view" is not evil as many people would paint it, actually that is the only honest view. This view looking at the world through ruthless competition, and sole focus on self-profit is the direct representation of our inherently self-centred, egoistic, greedy human nature. We are all operated by the same nature and how strong this inherent "hunger", "desire to receive for the self" is determines our place in the pyramid of humanity. And up to this point it seemed this inherent nature drove us through our development, expanding, conquering, amassing fortunes. We would not be asking these questions today if humanity did not evolve into a global, integral system where each and every one of us became interconnected and interdependent. In this new integral system the previous attitude, "operating software" suddenly makes us behave like cancer in a single body, our previously successful system has become self-destructive. This is what the deepening, seemingly unsolvable crisis represents. Thus I fully agree with the fourth point of reasoning in the article: "...Fourth, every company both depends on and affects the societies in which it functions. The larger and more global the company, the larger and more global are its societal effects..." The question is how can we motivate people to take on this notion not only in theory, not only in order to adjust to make more profit, simply exploiting the system in a more cunning, modern way as most leading companies like Apple do today, but in order to truly build a completely new, mutually complementing and equal system, where benefiting, sustaining the community, the environment is primary, and profit is secondary? This is only possible by explaining, teaching people both in theory, and more importantly in practice that in our new, global and integral human system, mutual cooperation, mutual responsibility instead of ruthless competition and exploiting for more profit is the only way each of us can prosper, or even survive. We have all the data, scientific studies, and through the crisis the real life experience to start changing people's attitude and our socio-economic system in a way that we adapt to our new circumstances. Such an adaptation would open up possibilities and prosperity in a way we did not even dream about before, simply as mutual, collective cooperation can propel us to unprecedented quality of life above our present subjective, isolated, fragmented, competitive existence.
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Procyon Mukherjee Nov 7, 2013

The social costs of running a business (externalities included) are seldom borne by those who profit from it and sustainability is just one of the instruments, it isn't all that could make a world of difference to the new business paradigm that Laura Tyson is suggesting. It reminds one of the example of the sharing of the cake, as in the Theory of Justice, where what justice ('veiled ignorance') would demand, the rules of business from its infinite world of negation turn down, by its mere will; more power will prevail. That which augments power, over everything else, is what matters, at the end. Some call it competitive advantage.
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