经济学人361:减肥大作战

　　Business

商业报道

Schumpeter

熊彼得

Fighting the flab

减肥大作战

Corporate 1 headquarters have put on weight, and need to slim down again

企业的总部体积膨胀，需要再次瘦身

“ONE of the most extraordinary corporate centres in America.”

“这可能是美国最奇怪的企业总部了 。”

减肥.jpg

This is how Trian Partners, a disgruntled shareholder 2 of PepsiCo, described the headquarters of the snacks-to-soft-drinks company in a recent letter to its board.

特利安基金管理公司在给百事公司的董事会最近的一封信中抱怨道。特里安基金是这个销售零食和软饮料的公司的股东。

Set amid lakes and fountains in 100 acres of wealthy Westchester County, New York, PepsiCo's HQ features seven interconnected three-storey office buildings designed in the 1960s by Edward Durell Stone, a pioneering American modernist architect.

百事总部位于纽约市富裕的威彻斯特郡，坐落于湖泊与喷泉之间，占地约100英亩，中心是七座相连的三层办公楼，此楼是美国现代主义先驱建筑师爱德华?斯通在1960年设计的。

Its crown jewel is the Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens, named after a former chief executive, which has works by artists such as Alexander Calder, Henry Moore and Auguste Rodin.

百事总部最吸引人的景观就是以其前总经理Donald M. Kendall名字命名，由Alexander Calder、Henry Moore 和Auguste Rodin三位艺术家共同建造的雕塑花园。

Mr Kendall reportedly intended the garden to reflect his vision for the company by creating an atmosphere of “stability, creativity and experimentation”.

据报道称，Kendall是想要这用花园能展现他对公司的构想，即“稳定，创新和实验性”。

Two years ago PepsiCo began a 243m upgrade of the complex to make space for more staff and “create a more collaborative and innovative 3 work environment”.

两年前，为了给更多的员工创造空间，并“建立一个更利于协作与创新的工作环境”，的百事公司斥资2.43亿美元，开始对其总部的建筑群进行升级。

Trian, run by Nelson Peltz, a veteran activist 4 investor 5, thinks shareholders 6 would be better served by selling it and shedding many of its 1,100 workers, as part of a broader cost-cutting and productivity-boosting strategy that would see PepsiCo split in two.

由资深活跃投资人纳尔逊佩尔茨运作的特里安基金则认为，百事应该把总部卖掉，并将其中的1100名员工裁掉大半，以此作为消减成本和提升生产力计划的一部分，百事内部对此产生了分歧。

The raiders of the 1980s, who made fortunes by seizing and shaping up flabby conglomerates 7, were supposed to have put an end to corporate extravagance and administrative 8 bloat.

上世纪八十年代的那些恶意收购者通过给臃肿的企业集团瘦身攫取了大量利益，人们本以为企业铺张浪费的习气和管理人员过剩的问题已经在那时被终结了。

But PepsiCo is not alone in now being accused of these.

可是，像百事这样因这类问题被诟病的公司不在少数。

A recent report by Sanford C. Bernstein, a research firm, reckoned that Coca-Cola, which is spending 100m on upgrading its home in Atlanta, has overheads that are 30% of sales, almost as high as PepsiCo's 32%.

调研公司Sanford C. Bernstein最近的一份报告指出，可口可乐公司正花费1亿美元升级其在亚特兰大的总部，可口可乐公司的经常性开支占其营业额的30%，百事的则为32%。

Activist investors 9 such as Trian, which also has its guns trained on DuPont, a chemicals firm, may find inspiration in other examples highlighted by Bernstein.

像特里安这样的活跃投资者又把矛头指向了化学公司DuPont，后者可能是受到了Bernstein强调的那些反面教材的启发。

Procter & Gamble's overheads ratio is far higher than that of its consumer-goods archrival, Unilever; so is Estee Lauder's compared with that of L'Oreal, another big cosmetics 10 firm.

日用消费品公司Procter & Gamble's的经常性开支比率比其主要竞争对手Unilever要高出一大截；化妆品行业大公司Estee Lauder同L'Oreal也形成了这样鲜明的对比。

It is hard to think of many big companies that could not benefit from taking a fresh look at their overheads.

如果那些大公司能重新审视自己的费用开支，一定可以获益良多。

One, perhaps, is Mars, a family-run confectioner with a tiny, frugal 11 HQ in suburban 12 Virginia.

玛氏食品公司就是一个很好的例子，这个家族企业在弗吉尼亚州郊外的总部简朴而精致。

Another is Berkshire Hathaway.

伯克希尔哈撒韦公司也是个很好的例子。

In this year's letter to shareholders, sent last month, the conglomerate's boss, Warren Buffett, broke a long-standing “no pictures” policy to show off his head-office team, just 24 strong.

上个月，这个大集团的的老板巴菲特在今年给股东的信中打破了其长期以来的“无照片”的传统，展示了他仅由24名精英组成的总公司团队。

Mr Buffett's last big acquisition, of Heinz, was made in partnership 13 with 3G, a Brazilian private-equity firm whose boss, Jorge Paulo Lemann, has a passion for cost-saving.

巴菲特上一笔大宗收购，就是与巴西的私募股权公司3G资本合伙收购亨氏食品。3G的老板Jorge Paulo Lemann很热衷于消减成本。

Heinz had already undergone a round of cuts under pressure from Mr Peltz.

虽然亨氏之前就已经在Peltz的督促下进行了一轮开支消减。

But 3G found plenty more to trim, as it applied 14 its “zero-based budgeting” approach, in which all spending must be justified 15 from first principles each year.

但3G认为还有很多地方需要消减，才能达到它的“零基准预算”标准，即每一项开支都要以实现公司的年度目标为目的。

Swathes of managerial jobs were axed, as was the company's “aviation department”, which ran its corporate planes.

亨氏大片的管理层职位被砍掉，其中包括管理企业飞机的“航空部”。

Mr Buffett is impressed: hitherto he has mostly bought well-run firms that he could largely leave alone, but now he wants to do more deals like the Heinz one.

巴菲特对此印象深刻，想来只会收购那些自我运行良好，不需要他再多加关注的企业，但现在，他想多做几次像亨氏这样的收购。

Of course there are many reasons, other than differing levels of bloat, why businesses vary greatly in which functions are performed centrally, and in how many people and other resources are needed at head office.

除了不同程度的人员过剩之外，当然还有其他原因，造成了各企业在职能的重心取向方面和总部需要的人力物力多寡方面千差万别。

But there is evidence that companies have piled on the pounds in recent years.

然而，的确有证据近年来企业有增重的趋势。

A study by Sven Kunisch, a management professor at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland, and others looked at the head offices of 761 big companies in Europe and America between 2007 and 2010.

瑞士圣加伦大学的管理学教授Sven Kunisch及其同事以2007至2010年全球761个大型企业的总部为对象进行了一项研究。

By the end of the period, a quarter of them had more than 600 staff at HQ, whereas another quarter had fewer than 63.

截至年底,四分之一的公司拥有超过600名员工,而另一个季度已经不到63人。

Two-thirds of the firms said they had made significant changes during the period, generally strengthening centralised control over their divisions.

三分之二的公司表示他们已经取得了重大变化,普遍加强中央集权控制他们所存在的分歧。

Some 44% of the firms had increased the headcount at HQ, whereas only 28% trimmed.

截至2010年，其中四分之一的企业都加强了对其分部的控制，约44%的企业都增加其总部的人数，而只有28%进行了消减。

Of the 21 countries in which the head offices were located, only ones based in Denmark and Greece reduced staff numbers on average.

在此研究涉及到的21个国家中，只有位于丹麦和希腊两国的企业总部的平均员工人数减少了。

All this at a time, in the wake of the financial crisis, when companies were striving to protect their profit margins 16 by cutting jobs elsewhere in the workforce 17.

而这也是由于金融危机的影响，企业为了保证其利润率，只得裁员以减少工资支出。

All aboard the mother ship

登上母舰

What might explain the return of head-office bloat?

是什么原因再次造成了企业总部的膨胀呢？

The crusade for leaner, more focused companies, which began in the 1980s, ran out of steam after the turn of the century.

上世纪美国刮起了一场主要集中于企业的精简运动，从80年代一直持续到世纪末。

And three other issues moved up bosses' agendas, each seemingly justifying 18 extra staff at HQ: globalisation meant that the mother ship had more far-flung operations to oversee 19; new digital technology made it easier, in theory, to centralise control and oversight 20; and, starting with America's Sarbanes-Oxley act in 2002, deregulation gave way to a growing regulatory burden, bringing with it a bigger head-office compliance 21 operation.

三个原因使得这一运动开始转向，每个原因似乎都为企业增加总部的多余人员提供了合理性：全球化意味着企业总部需要监管更多的海外业务；数字技术理论上也为企业实施集中控制和监督提供了便利；另外，美国在2002颁布的萨宾法案也加重了企业监管负担，企业为了进行合规操作，不得不扩大总部。

Various events, from the September 11th 2001 terror attacks to the financial crisis, may have made bosses view the world as an increasingly complicated and uncertain place.

从2001年的911事件到后来的的金融危机，各种意外事件已经让企业家们觉得这个世界正变得越来越复杂多变。

It would not be surprising if many of them responded in the same way as Jeffrey Immelt, the boss of GE: in his latest annual letter to shareholders, he confessed that “We attempted to manage volatility 22 through layers and reviewers.

所以某些人的表现得像通用电气的的老板伊梅尔特一样其实并不奇怪:在最近的一封给股东的年度致股东信中，他进行了自我反省：“我们曾期望用层层审查来控制不确定性。

Like many companies we were guilty of countering complexity 23 with complexity...more inspectors 24, multiple reviewers.”

像很多公司一样，用复杂的系统来解决复杂的问题，我们对此感到很内疚…更多的监管人员，更多的审查者。”

The result was a “higher cost structure, an artificial sense of risk management, and we were insulating our people from the heat of the market.” Mr Immelt has now decided 25 to reverse course.

这样的结果就是“高成本的结构，一种风险得到控制的错觉，而且还把我们的员工同市场隔离起来。”

GE has launched a new simplification strategy, with a goal of cutting overheads to 12% of sales from 16%, including a 45% reduction in the cost of the corporate headquarters, by 2016.

伊梅尔特现在决定转变方向。通用已经开启了一个新的精简计划，目标是在2016年之前把开支从占营业额16%减到12%，其中包括把企业总部的开支消减45%。

Other bosses would be wise to do the same, or expect to have Mr Peltz and his fellow activists 26 on their case.

其他的企业老板最好也去效仿伊梅尔特，不然只好等着成为佩尔茨等的一众活跃投资人的靶子了。