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  3. Though mindful of its evils, many people believe bureaucracy is unavoidable.

Though mindful of its evils, many people believe bureaucracy is unavoidable.

游客2023-12-28  11
问题    Though mindful of its evils, many people believe bureaucracy is unavoidable. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, remembers an outside adviser who defended it as the "necessary outcome of complex businesses operating in complex international and regulatory environments". Indeed, since 1983 the number of managers, supervisors, and administrators in the U.S. workforce has grown by more than 100%. Peter Drucker’s prediction that today’s organizations would have half as many layers and one-third as many managers as their late-1980s counterparts was woefully off the mark. Bureaucracy has been thriving.
   Meanwhile, productivity growth has stalled. From 1948 to 2004, U.S. labor productivity among nonfinancial firms grew by an annual average of 2.5%. Since then its growth has averaged just 1.1%. That’s no coincidence: Bureaucracy is particularly virulent in large companies, which have come to dominate the U.S. economy. More than a third of the U.S. labor force now works in firms with more than 5,000 employees — where those on the front lines are buried under eight levels of management, on average.
   Some look to start-ups as an antidote. But although firms such as Uber, Airbnb, and Didi Chuxing get a lot of press, these and other unicorns account for a small fraction of their respective economies. And as entrepreneurial ventures scale up, they fall victim to bureaucracy themselves. One fast-growing IT vendor managed to accumulate 600 vice presidents on its way to reaching $4 billion in annual sales.
   Why is bureaucracy so resistant to efforts to kill it? In part because it works, at least to a degree. With its clear lines of authority, specialized units, and standardized tasks, bureaucracy facilitates efficiency at scale. It’s also comfortably familiar, varying little across industries, cultures, and political systems.
   Despite this, bureaucracy is not inevitable. Since the term was coined, roughly two centuries ago, much has changed. Today’s employees are skilled, not illiterate; competitive advantage comes from innovation, not sheer size; communication is instantaneous, not tortuous; and the pace of change is hypersonic, not glacial.
   These new realities are at last producing alternatives to bureaucracy. Perhaps the most promising model can be found at a company that would not, at first glance, appear to be a child of the digital age. Haier, based in Qingdao, China, is currently the world’s largest appliance maker. With revenue of $35 billion, it competes with household names such as Whirlpool, LG, and Electrolux.
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答案    尽管大家都明白官僚主义充斥着弊端，但不少人仍认为官僚主义是无法避免的。摩根大通(JP Morgan Chase)首席执行官杰米-戴蒙(Jamie Dimon)记得一位外部顾问曾如此为之辩护：官僚主义是“在复杂的国际监管环境下企业运营的必然结果”。事实上，1983年以来的美国劳动力中，经理、总监和主管的人数翻了一番。彼得-德鲁克(Peter Drucker)曾预测，与20世纪80年代晚期相比，当代机构的层级将减少一半，管理人员将减少三分之二，然而不幸的是，这一预测大错特错了。官僚主义正在蓬勃发展。
   与此同时，生产率增长已经停滞。从1948年到2004年，美国非金融企业的劳动生产率年均增长2．5％。此后的年均增长率只有1．1％。这绝非巧合：官僚作风在大公司中流毒甚广，而这些大公司已经开始主宰美国经济。现在，超过三分之一的美国劳动力在规模超过5000名员工的公司工作，在这些公司，一线员工被压制在平均八层管理之下。
   有些人向创业公司寻求解药。但是，优步(Uber)、爱彼迎(Airbnb)和滴滴出行等独角兽公司虽然备受媒体关注，在各自的经济领域中所占份额并不大。随着创业企业规模扩大，他们自己也会沦为官僚主义的牺牲品。一家快速发展的IT供应商汇聚了600位副总裁以实现年销售额40亿美元的目标。
   官僚主义为何如此屡禁不止?部分原因在于，它至少在一定程度上行之有效。官僚主义以其明确的职权范围、专业的部门和标准化的任务大规模地提升了效率。大家都熟悉这种形式，用起来轻松，在不同的行业、文化和政治制度中变化不大。
   尽管如此，官僚主义并非不可避免。从该词面世到约200年后的今天，世界发生了很大的变化。今天的员工技术娴熟，而不是文盲：今天的竞争优势来自创新，而不是纯粹的规模：今天的沟通是即时的，而不是曲折的；今天的变革步伐是超音速的，而不是龟速的。
   这些新的现实最终催生了官僚体制的替代品。也许最有前途的模式可以在这样一家公司找到。乍一看，这家公司似乎并不是数字时代的产物。总部位于中国青岛的海尔目前是世界上最大的家电制造商。该公司年收入350亿美元，与惠而浦(Whirlpool)、LG、伊莱克斯(Electrolux)等家喻户晓的大公司同台竞争。
解析    《哈佛商业评论》(Harvard Business Review)是哈佛商学院的标志性杂志，致力于传播工商管理领域中最前沿的思想理论，为专业人士提供缜密的管理见解和实践案例。
   该文选自2018年《哈佛商业评论》，原文标题是“The End of Bureaucracy，How a Chinese Appliance Maker is Reinventing Management for the Digital Age”。选文为原文开头部分，主要讲述官僚主义在美国企业甚嚣尘上的情况，分析了官僚主义存在的客观原因，最后在分析新时代种种变数的基础上，指出海尔管理模式有可能医治企业管理官僚主义的沉疴。
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