【家族企业】建立在血缘上的成功

Family companies
家族企业

Relative success

建立在血缘上的成功

There are important lessons to be learnt from the surprising resilience of family firms

家族企业惊人的韧劲值得我们学习

Nov 1st 2014 | From the print edition of The Economist

译者：nelsonxu511

TODAY real power is rarely inherited. Monarchs spend their lives cutting ribbons and attending funerals. Landed aristocrats have to climb the greasy pole if they want to wield serious influence. Even in the United States great dynasties such as the Clintons and Bushes have to go to the trouble ofgetting themselves elected. The one exception to this lies at the heart of the capitalist system: the family firm.

如今，真正的权力很少是由继承所得。君王女皇们终日只是剪彩，出席葬礼。贵族地主们要想有正儿八经的影响力就得吃苦奋斗。即使是在美国，克林顿和布什这样的世家大族也得不辞辛苦，参加选举。而在资产阶级体系的核心却存在着一个例外：家族企业。

Leading students of capitalism have been pronouncing the death rites of family companies for decades, arguing that family firms would be marginalised by the arrival of industrial capitalism. They also insisted that the Dallas-style downsides of family ownership would become more destructive: family quarrels would tear these companies apart and the law of regression to the mean would condemn them to lousy management. Most countries have a variation of the phrase “clogs to clogs in three generations”. For a long time, they appeared to be right: in both America and Europe, family firms were in retreat for much of the 20th century.

数十年来，资本主义的领军学生们一直认为，随着资本主义工业化的到来，家族企业必将消亡。他们还坚称家族企业达拉斯式的的缺陷会变得更加严重：家族纷争会让这些企业陷入分裂状态，盛极必衰的规律也会将企业置于混乱的管理之下。大多数国家都有“富不过三代”这个说法。对于家族企业来说，这一说法在很长的时间内都是正确的：无论在美国还是欧洲，家族企业在20世纪的大部分时间内都处于衰退。

Yet that decline now seems to have been reversed. The proportion of Fortune 500 companies that can be described as family companies increased from 15% in 2005 to 19% today. That is largely because of the rise of emerging economies, in which family firms are more common. But even in the rich world family companies are these days holding their own. Of the American firms in the Fortune Global 500, 15% are family firms- only slightly less than a decade ago. In Europe, families control 40% of big listed companies.

然而，如今的家族企业似乎不衰反盛。世界500强中家族企业所占比率从2005年的15%增长到了现在的19%。发展中经济体的崛起很大程度上导致了这一现象。因为，家族企业在发展中国家更常见。但就算在发达国家，现今的家族企业也是地位稳固。在世界500强名单中，15%的美国公司都是家族企业。这一数据仅比十年前略低。在欧洲，四成的大型上市公司都为家族掌控。

You can happily go through a day consuming nothing but the products of family concerns: reading the New York Times (or the Daily Mail), driving a BMW (or a Ford or a Fiat), making calls on your Samsung Galaxy, munching on Mars Bars and watching Fox on your Comcast cable. And the growth is likely to continue. McKinsey predicts that in 2025, family companies from the emerging world will account for 37% of all companies with annual revenues of more than $1 billion, up from 16% in 2010.

让你在一天之中只消费家族企业的产品，你也能快活自在：读纽约时报（或是每日邮报），开宝马（或是福特或者菲亚特），用你的三星手机打电话，嚼火星棒巧克力，在康卡斯特有线电视上看福克斯频道。并且，家族企业的繁荣可能会持续。麦肯锡公司预计，到2025年，发展中国家的家族企业能在所有年收益高于10亿美元的公司中占到37%的比重。而在2010年，这一数据是16%。

Pass the silver spoon, Dad

把我的金勺递过来，老爸

Why have family companies defied their obituarists? Many of them continue to suffer from serious problems: witness the recent debacle at Portugal’s Espírito Santo.But, particularly in the West, family firms have far fewer defects than in the past, largely because they have got better at addressing their obvious weaknesses.

家族企业曾被判下死刑，但如今却势头正猛。这是为什么呢？尽管很多家族产业仍饱受严重问题困扰（看看葡萄牙Espírito Santo家族的惨剧你就知道了），但是家族企业同过去相比少了很多缺陷。这点在西方尤其明显，很大程度上是因为家族对于其明显不足之处，采取了更好的处理方法。

These days it is rare for a family boss to hand his job on to an obvious dud. Most family companies train future leaders by sending them to business schools and putting them through their paces in a succession of lower level jobs. A growing number (particularly in Germany) have become masters at moving family memberfrom executive jobs to supervisory roles in the boardroom. An entire consulting industry exists to help families deal with the peculiar dynamics of their companies, such as managing personal conflicts and sidelining thick relations without hurting their feelings.

在如今，家族企业的老大很少会让位给“阿斗”。大多数继任者会被送到商业学校，然后先从一系列低层工作做起。越来越多的家族企业（尤以德国家族企业为多）逐渐精于将家庭成员从行政岗位调至董事会中担当监管职责。社会上出现了帮助企业家族处理企业独特变故的一整套咨询行业。这些公司替家族调解个人冲突，保证在削弱至亲权力的同时不伤及亲情。

Family firms’ strengths, meanwhile, are just as important today as they were in the early days of capitalism. They solve the “agency problem” that Adam Smith put his finger on in “The Wealth of Nations” when he argued that hired managers would never have the same “anxious vigilance” in running companies as the owners. Family managers are often parsimonious: companies such as Walmart, Koch Industries and Mars & Co are famous for running a tight ship with humble headquarters, lean management and an obsession with operational efficiency.They are good at thinking in terms of generations rather than quarterly results:Roche makes long-term bets on developing pharmaceuticals; the Murdochs and Newhouses have stuck with print media in difficult times.

如今，家族企业的实力一点不比资本主义早期逊色。它们解决了亚当·斯密在《国富论》中指出的代理问题。亚当·斯密认为雇来的经理在对公司的管理上肯定不会像公司老板那样警觉。家族企业中的老板通常极度节俭。在这一点上，诸如沃尔玛、科氏工业和马思咨询这样的公司是著名的例子。这些公司纪律严明，决策开明，管理简明，并且极其强调运营效率。这些公司都善于从长远计议，而不是只关注公司季度表现。譬如罗氏在研制药物上就有长期的打算，默多克家族和他的新闻集团在困难时期仍旧坚守纸媒。

But the emerging world is currently witnessing a battle for the soul of the family firm. Old-model family companies are sprawling conglomerates that rely on political connections to protect them from global competition and complex cross-ownership structures designed to give families maximum control for minimum cash.New-model family firms are professionally managed, transparent outfits whose owners maintain long-term vision and quality but eschew the sort of wheeling and dealing that made them rich in the first place.

但如今，一场关于家族企业的发展方向之争正在发展中国家展开。老式做法中，庞大的家族企业依托政治关系在全球化带来的竞争中自我保护，并依靠复杂的交叉所有制结构，用最少的花费得到最大程度的控制权。新派的家族企业则是专业管理、透明运营的。企业家保有长远视野，追求长期质量的同时，排斥当初使得企业富强的手腕和伎俩。

The best way to ensure that the right side wins is to increase competition: India’s great liberalisation of the late 1990s persuaded Tata and Mahindra & Mahindra to transformthemselves. Emerging-world governments should also outlaw cross-ownership and strengthen the rights of non-family shareholders, as America did in the 1930s and other countries have done more recently.

确保家族企业往正道发展，最佳的做法是依靠激烈竞争。印度上世纪九十年代晚期的自由化经济改革使得Tata以及Mahindra & Mahindra 公司走上了正轨。发展中国家政府同时也应该禁止交叉所有权，强化非亲属股东的权力。这一做法，美国于2003年采用，也有一些国家在近期使用。

The other great problem with family companies, which plagues the West as well as the emerging world, is that the weaker members of the breed have failed to learn from the stronger members. Too many fail to make even the most basic plans for the future: PricewaterhouseCoopers discovered that only 16% of the family firms it surveyed had put a formalsuccession plan in place.Too many lack the ambition to think that they can compete with the best in the world: convincedthat they are a bit of an anachronism they tend to keep themselves tothemselves. The remarkable record of the best family firms should remind millions ofbusiness owners that, in the corporate world at least, you do not have to surrender family control in order to prosper.

家族企业的另一个大问题对西方和发展中国家均有荼毒，即血缘关系中，弱者并未学习到强者的能力。很多人连未来最基本的方案都定制不好。PricewaterhouseCoopers 公司发现只有16%的受调查家族企业有正式的接班方案。太多企业家缺乏野心，认为他们不能无法同全球的顶尖公司竞争。他们深信自己已为时代淘汰。然而，顶尖的家族企业应该用它们辉煌的记录提醒成千上万的企业家，至少在商业领域，要想公司欣欣向荣 ，不一定非要放弃家族对企业的控制权。