- UID
- 770435
- 在线时间
- 小时
- 注册时间
- 2012-6-15
- 最后登录
- 1970-1-1
- 主题
- 帖子
- 性别
- 保密
|
文章难度，排版神马不知道大家喜不喜欢~欢迎大家提出宝贵意见~
周末愉快~
【TIME 1】
For most of the 20th century, Asia asked itself what it could learn from the modern, innovating West. Now the question must be reversed. What can the West’s overly indebted and sluggish nations learn from a flourishing Asia?
Just a few decades ago, Asia’s two giants were stagnating under faulty economic ideologies. However, once China began embracing free-market reforms in the 1980s, followed by India in the 1990s, both countries achieved rapid growth. Crucially, as they opened up their markets, they balanced market economy with sensible government direction. As the Indian economist Amartya Sen has wisely said, “The invisible hand of the market has often relied heavily on the visible hand of government.”
Contrast this middle path with America and Europe, which have each gone ideologically over-board in their own ways. Since the 1980s, America has been increasingly clinging to the ideology of uncontrolled free markets and dismissing the role of government---following Ronald Regan’s idea that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. “of course, when the markets came crashing down in 2007, it was decisive government intervention that saved the day. Despite this fact, many Americans are still strongly opposed to “big government.”
If Americans could only free themselves from their antigovernment doctrine, they would begin to see that the U.S.’s problems are not insoluble. A few sensible federal measures could put the country back on the right path. A simple consumption tax of, say, 5 percent would make a significant dent in the country’s huge government deficit without damaging productivity. A small gasoline tax would help wean America from its dependence on oil imports and create incentives for green energy development. In the same way, a significant reduction of wasteful agricultural subsidies and other earmarks could also lower the deficit. But in order to capitalize on these common-sense solutions, Americans will have to put aside their own attachment to the rhetoric of smaller government and less regulation. American politicians will have to develop the courage to follow what is taught in all American public-policy schools: that there are good taxes and bad taxes. Asian countries have embraced this wisdom, and have built sound long-term fiscal policies as a result.
【367】
【TIME 2】
Meanwhile, Europe has fallen prey to a different ideological trap: the belief that European governments would always have infinite resources and could continue borrowing as if there were no tomorrow. Unlike the Americans, who felt that the markets knew best, the Europeans failed to anticipate how the markets would react to their incessant borrowing. Today, the EU is in firefighting mode to stave off sovereign collapse. In concert with the IMF, it has created a $580 billion fund to bail out Europe’s troubled economies. This will buy the EU time, but it will not solve the bloc’s larger problem.
The man who must change China
Xi Jinping will soon be named as China’s next president. He must be ready to break with the past
Oct 27th 2012 | from the print edition
JUST after the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which starts in Beijing on November 8th, a short line of dark-suited men, and perhaps one woman, will step onto a red carpet in a room in the Great Hall of the People and meet the world’s press. At their head will be Xi Jinping, the newly anointed party chief, who in March will also take over as president of China. Behind him will file the new members of the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s supreme body. The smiles will be wooden, the backs ramrod straight. Yet the stage-management could hardly be more different from the tempestuous uncertainties of actually governing.
As ruler of the world’s new economic powerhouse, Mr Xi will follow his recent predecessors in trying to combine economic growth with political stability. Yet this task is proving increasingly difficult. A slowing economy, corruption and myriad social problems are causing growing frustration among China’s people and worry among its officials.
In coping with these tensions, Mr Xi can continue to clamp down on discontent, or he can start to loosen the party’s control. China’s future will be determined by the answer to this question: does Mr Xi have the courage and vision to see that assuring his country’s prosperity and stability in the future requires him to break with the past?
【322】
【TIME 3】
Who’s Xi?
To the rich world, labouring under debt and political dysfunction, Chinese self-doubt might seem incongruous. Deng Xiaoping’s relaunch of economic reforms in 1992 has resulted in two decades of extraordinary growth. In the past ten years under the current leader, Hu Jintao, the economy has quadrupled in size in dollar terms. A new (though rudimentary) social safety net provides 95% of all Chinese with some kind of health coverage, up from just 15% in 2000. Across the world, China is seen as second in status and influence only to America.
Until recently, the Chinese were getting richer so fast that most of them had better things to worry about than how they were governed. But today China faces a set of threats that an official journal describes as “interlocked like dog’s teeth”. The poor chafe at inequality, corruption, environmental ruin and land-grabs by officials. The middle class fret about contaminated food and many protect their savings by sending money abroad and signing up for foreign passports. The rich and powerful fight over the economy’s vast wealth. Scholars at a recent government conference summed it up well: China is “unstable at the grass roots, dejected at the middle strata and out of control at the top”.
Once, the party could bottle up dissent. But ordinary people today protest in public. They write books on previously taboo subjects (see article) and comment on everything in real time through China’s vibrant new social media. Complaints that would once have remained local are now debated nationwide. If China’s leaders mishandle the discontent, one senior economist warned in a secret report, it could cause “a chain reaction that results in social turmoil or violent revolution”.
But, you don’t need to think that China is on the brink of revolution to believe that it must use the next decade to change. The departing prime minister, Wen Jiabao, has more than once called China’s development “unbalanced, unco-ordinated and unsustainable”. Last week Qiushi , the party’s main theoretical journal, called on the government to “press ahead with restructuring of the political system”.
【350】
【TIME 4】
Mr Xi portrays himself as a man of the people and the party still says it represents the masses, but it is not the meritocracy that some Western observers claim (see article). Those without connections, are often stuck at the bottom of the pile. Having long since lost ideological legitimacy, and with slower growth sapping its economic legitimacy, the party needs a new claim on the loyalty of China’s citizens.
Take a deep breath
Mr Xi could start by giving a little more power to China’s people. Rural land, now collectively owned, should be privatised and given to the peasants; the judicial system should offer people an answer to their grievances; the household-registration, or hukou, system should be phased out to allow families of rural migrants access to properly funded health care and education in cities. At the same time, he should start to loosen the party’s grip. China’s cosseted state-owned banks should be exposed to the rigours of competition; financial markets should respond to economic signals, not official controls; a free press would be a vital ally in the battle against corruption.
Such a path would be too much for those on the Chinese “left”, who look scornfully at the West and insist on the Communist Party’s claim—its duty, even—to keep the monopoly of power. Even many on the liberal “right”, who call for change, would contemplate nothing more radical than Singapore-style one-party dominance. But Mr Xi should go much further. To restore his citizens’ faith in government, he also needs to venture deep into political reform.
That might sound implausible, but in the 1980s no less a man than Deng spoke of China having a directly elected central leadership after 2050—and he cannot have imagined the transformation that his country would go on to enjoy. Zhu Rongji, Mr Wen’s predecessor, said that competitive elections should be extended to higher levels, “the sooner the better”. Although the party has since made political change harder by restricting the growth of civil society, those who think it is impossible could look to Taiwan, which went through something similar, albeit under the anti-Communist Kuomintang.
【355】
【TIME 5】
Ultimately, this newspaper hopes, political reform would make the party answerable to the courts and, as the purest expression of this, free political prisoners. It would scrap party-membership requirements for official positions and abolish party committees in ministries. It would curb the power of the propaganda department to impose censorship and scrap the central military commission, which commits the People’s Liberation Army to defend the party, not just the country.
No doubt Mr Xi would balk at that. Even so, a great man would be bold. Independent candidates should be encouraged to stand for people’s congresses, the local parliaments that operate at all levels of government, and they should have the freedom to let voters know what they think. A timetable should also be set for directly electing government leaders, starting with townships in the countryside and districts in the cities, perhaps allowing five years for those experiments to settle in, before taking direct elections up to the county level in rural areas, then prefectures and later provinces, leading all the way to competitive elections for national leaders.
The Chinese Communist Party has a powerful story to tell. Despite its many faults, it has created wealth and hope that an older generation would have found unimaginable. Bold reform would create a surge of popular goodwill towards the party from ordinary Chinese people.
Mr Xi comes at a crucial moment for China, when hardliners still deny the need for political change and insist that the state can put down dissent with force. For everyone else, too, Mr Xi’s choice will weigh heavily. The world has much more to fear from a weak, unstable China than from a strong one.
【278】
【Obstacle】
June 2012
The global company’s challenge
As the economic spotlight shifts to developing markets, global companies need new ways to manage their strategies, people, costs, and risks.
Managing global organizations has been a business challenge for centuries. But the nature of the task is changing with the accelerating shift of economic activity from Europe and North America to markets in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. McKinsey Global Institute research suggests that 400 midsize emerging-market cities, many unfamiliar in the West, will generate nearly 40 percent of global growth over the next 15 years. The International Monetary Fund confirms that the ten fastest-growing economies during the years ahead will all be in emerging markets. Against this backdrop, continuing advances in information and communications technology have made possible new forms of international coordination within global companies and potential new ways for them to flourish in these fast-growing markets.
There are individual success stories. IBM expects to earn 30 percent of its revenues in emerging markets by 2015, up from 17 percent in 2009. At Unilever, emerging markets make up 56 percent of the business already. And Aditya Birla Group, a multinational conglomerate based in India, now has operations in 40 countries and earns more than half its revenue outside India.
But, overall, global organizations are struggling to adapt. A year ago, we uncovered a “globalization penalty”: high-performing global companies consistently scored lower than more locally focused ones on several dimensions of organizational health. For example, the former were less effective at establishing a shared vision, encouraging innovation, executing “on the ground,” and building relationships with governments and business partners. Equally arresting was evidence from colleagues in McKinsey’s strategy practice showing that global companies headquartered in emerging markets have been growing faster than counterparts headquartered in developed ones, even when both are operating on “neutral turf”: emerging markets where neither is based (see “Parsing the growth advantage of emerging-market companies”).
Over the past year, we’ve tried to understand more clearly the challenges facing global organizations, as well as approaches that are helping some to thrive. Our work has included surveys and structured interviews with more than 300 executives at 17 of the world’s leading global organizations spanning a diverse range of sectors and geographies, a broader survey of more than 4,600 executives, and time spent working directly with the leaders of dozens of global organizations trying to address these issues.
Clearly, no single organizational model is best for all companies handling the realities of rapid growth in emerging markets and round-the-clock global communications. That’s partly because the opportunities and challenges facing companies vary, depending on their business models. R&D-intensive companies, for example, are working to staff new research centers in the emerging world and to integrate them with existing operations. Firms focused on extracting natural resources are adapting to regulatory regimes that are evolving rapidly and sometimes becoming more interventionist. Consumer-oriented firms are facing sometimes-conflicting imperatives to tailor their businesses to local needs while maintaining consistent global processes.
Another reason no single model fits all global companies is that their individual histories are so different. Those that have grown organically often operate relatively consistently across countries but find it hard to adjust their products and services to local needs, given their fairly standardized business models. Companies that have mainly grown through M&A, in contrast, may find it easier to tailor operations to local markets but harder to integrate their various parts so they can achieve the potential of scale and scope and align a dispersed workforce behind a single set of strategies and values.
Although individual companies are necessarily responding differently to the new opportunities abroad, our work suggests that most face a common set of four tensions in managing strategy, people, costs, and risk on a global scale. The importance of each of these four tensions will vary from company to company, depending on its particular operating model, history, and global footprint. (For more on the implications of these uneven globalization efforts, see “Developing global leaders.”) Taking stock of the status of all four tensions can be a useful starting point for a senior-management team aiming to boost an organization’s global performance.
Strategic confidence and stretch
Being global brings clear strategic benefits: the ability to access new customer markets, new suppliers, and new partners. These immediate benefits can also create secondary ones. Building a customer base in a new market, for example, provides familiarity and relationships that may enable additional investments—say, in a research center.
But being global also brings strategic challenges. Many companies find it increasingly difficult to be locally flexible and adaptable as they broaden their global footprint. In particular, processes for developing strategy and allocating resources can struggle to cope with the increasing diversity of markets, customers, and channels. These issues were clear in our research: fewer than 40 percent of the 300 senior executives at global companies we interviewed and surveyed believed that their employers were better than local competitors at understanding the operating environment and customers’ needs. And barely half of the respondents to our broader survey thought that their companies communicated strategy clearly to the workforce in all markets where they operate.
People as an asset and a challenge
Many of the executives we interviewed believed strongly that the vast reserves of skills, knowledge, and experience within the global workforce of their companies represented an invaluable asset. But making the most of that asset is difficult: for example, few surveyed executives felt that their companies were good at transferring lessons learned in one emerging market to another.
At the same time, many companies find deploying and developing talent in emerging markets to be a major challenge. Barely half the executives at the 17 global companies we studied in depth thought they were effective at tailoring recruiting, retention, training, and development processes for different geographies. An emerging-market leader in one global company told us that “our current process favors candidates who have been to a US school, understand the US culture, and can conduct themselves effectively on a call with head office in the middle of the night. The process is not designed to select for people who understand our market.”
One of our recent surveys showed how hard it is to develop talent for emerging markets at a pace that matches their expected growth. Executives reported that just 2 percent of their top 200 employees were located in Asian emerging markets that would, in the years ahead, account for more than one-third of total sales. Complicating matters is the fact that local highfliers in some key markets increasingly prefer to work for local employers (see “How multinationals can attract the talent they need.”) Global companies are conscious of this change. “Local competitors’ brands are now stronger, and they can offer more senior roles in the home market,” noted one multinational executive we interviewed.
Scale and scope benefits, complexity costs
Large global companies still enjoy economic leverage from being able to invest in shared infrastructure ranging from R&D centers to procurement functions. Economies of scale in shared services also are significant, though no longer uniquely available to global companies, as even very local ones can outsource business services and manufacturing and avail themselves of cloud-based computing.
But as global companies grow bigger and more diverse, complexity costs inevitably rise. Efforts to standardize the common elements of essential functions, such as sales or legal services, can clash with local needs. And emerging markets complicate matters, as operations located there sometimes chafe at the costs they must bear as part of a group centered in the developed world: their share of the expense of distant (and perhaps not visibly helpful) corporate and regional centers, the cost of complying with global standards and of coordinating managers across far-flung geographies, and the loss of market agility imposed by adhering to rigid global processes.
Risk diversification and the loss of familiarity
A global company benefits from a geographically diverse business portfolio that provides a natural hedge against the volatility of local growth, country risk, and currency risk. But pursuing so many emerging-market opportunities is taking global companies deep into areas with unfamiliar risks that many find difficult to evaluate. Less than half of the respondents to our 2011 survey thought these organizations had the right risk-management infrastructure and skills to support the global scale and diversity of their operations.
Furthermore, globally standard, exhaustive risk-management processes may not be the best way to deal with risk in markets where global organizations must move fast to lock in early opportunities. One executive in an emerging-market outpost of a global company told us “a mind-set that ‘this is the way that we do things around here’ is very strongly embedded in our risk process. When combined with the fact that the organization does not fully understand emerging markets, it means that our risk process might reject opportunities that [the global] CEO would approve.”
Understanding these tensions is just a starting point. Capturing the benefits and mitigating the challenges associated with each will require global companies to explore new ways of organizing and operating.
【1482】
|
|
京公网安备11010202008513号 京ICP证101109号 京ICP备12012021号
发表于 2012-11-2 18:49:00
收藏
收藏
angela 辛苦~~
