‘Thou shalt not steal' would have done nicely, thanks
Today's generation of US college students are the most distressed administrators have ever seen. Within days of their parents dropping them off, many fall to pieces. Those who do not collapse in a binge drinking-induced stupor are soon queueing for help with depression or anxiety.
According to an article in the December issue of Psychology Today, students' mental state is so precarious that Steven Hyman, provost of Harvard University and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, says: “It is interfering with the core mission of the university.”
The university administrators have no doubt who is to blame: over-protective parents. After years of being sheltered from any possible mishap, today's young have no idea how to look after themselves once removed from their parents' frantic oversight.
Psychology Today wonders what best exemplifies contemporary child-rearing. “Maybe it's the cyclist in the park, trim under his sleek metallic blue helmet cruising along the dirt path . . . at three miles an hour. On his tricycle. Or perhaps it's today's playground, all-rubber-cushioned surface where kids used to skin their knees. And . . . wait a minute . . . those aren't little kids playing. Their mommies and especially their daddies are in there with them.”
It is through mistakes, falls and skinned knees that children learn, the magazine says, lambasting parents who “are hyper-attentive to their kids, reactive to every blip of their child's day”.
It is a picture we can all recognise not only in the US, and not only when it comes to parenting. Reading the Psychology Today article brought something else to mind: the Sarbanes-Oxley Act another attempt to head off every possible risk its legislative parents could think of.
I am all in favour of companies being subject to the law. Nor is there anything wrong with the way Sarbanes-Oxley deals with specific abuses, such as Enron-style special purpose entities to hide liabilities. What jars is the way the creators of Sarbanes-Oxley attempted to identify every last detail of what went wrong at Enron and then fashioned a law on the assumption that they could stop those misdemeanours happening again.
The Andersen auditors were too close to Enron's management? Sarbanes-Oxley makes it unlawful for an accountancy firm to audit a corporation's accounts if the company's senior executives worked for the accounting firm and were involved in the audit in the previous year. (Why not 10 years? Those inappropriate friendships are unlikely to have dissolved in 12 months.)
Recent corporate scandals revealed a lamentable attitude to ethical issues on the part of senior financial officers? Every company now has to say whether it has a code of ethics for senior financial officers. The code should prohibit inappropriate conflicts of interest and specify that senior financial officers will comply with “applicable government rules and regulations”. Companies that do not have such a code have to explain why not. (Perhaps because senior financial officers who need a code of ethics to remind them to obey the law should not be appointed in the first place.)
Andersen appeared to have forgotten what being an auditor was all about? The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board will conduct inspections of accounting firms and suspend, send for additional training or impose financial penalties on those who fall short. What will happen to the money raised from penalties? It will “be used to fund a merit scholarship programme for undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in accredited accounting degree programmes”. (Presumably open only to those students who are not incapacitated by drink or depression.)
German and British companies with US stock exchange listings have been railing against section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley, which requires them to assess the effectiveness of their internal financial controls. Sir Christopher Bland, chairman of BT, said last week that complying with Sarbanes-Oxley was so expensive that the telecommunications group would delist in the US if it could. The FT reported on Saturday that nearly all German companies with US listings had considered pulling out because of the Sarbanes-Oxley burden.
We can take some of this with a pinch of salt. Sir Christopher conceded that there was no chance of BT delisting in the US. He told the FT last week: “We've got American shareholders and US dollar-denominated bonds as well. So we've just got to grit our teeth and get on with it.” Quite so.
Any half-conscientious chief executive would make sure the company had a proper internal reporting system, even without the prompt of a legal requirement to say that it had. While specific legal changes may well have been justified, it is difficult to see why such an all-embracing law was needed. Much of the corporate misbehaviour of the last few years would have been unlawful under any existing legal system. Indeed, “thou shalt not steal” would have taken care of a lot of it.
It is not as though those involved have got away with it. Andersen has been destroyed. Several top corporate executives face criminal charges.
Far more effective than codes-of-practice-for-this and statements-of-responsibility-for-that is seeing what happens to those who transgress. You hear the chief executive of a company in which you are an investor is off-loading his shares? Do not dump yours remember Martha Stewart and swallow your losses. Worried that your company is under criminal investigation? Remember Frank Quattrone and resist the temptation to tell everyone to delete their e-mails.
Effective law enforcement is more important than hugely detailed changes in the law. Watching others pay the price is a salutory shock to the entire system the corporate equivalent of skinning your knees.
公司擦破点皮没什么
当今这一代美国大学生是校管理人员所见到的最苦恼的一代。父母撒手不管还没有几天，很多人就崩溃了。有些虽然没有堕入借酒消愁的境地，但他们不久便开始排队寻求帮助克服抑郁或焦虑症。
《今日心理学》(Psychology Today)杂志12月刊的一篇文章说，学生的精神状态极不稳定，以至于哈佛大学教务长、全国心理健康协会前任负责人史蒂芬?海曼(Steven Hyman)说：“这种不稳定正在干扰大学的核心使命。”
大学管理者非常清楚谁应该受到谴责：那就是过度保护孩子的父母。今天的青年人多年来一直受到父母的呵护，免受任何磨难，而一旦离开父母的过度看护，他们却对如何照顾自己一无所知。
《今日心理学》想知道，当代抚养孩子的最佳范例应该是什么样。“或许是公园里骑自行车的人，穿戴整齐，戴着时髦的蓝色金属头盔，以每小时3英里的速度……沿着小径慢骑。骑在三轮童车上。或许是今天全部装有橡胶垫的游乐场，孩子们过去在那里会磨掉膝盖上的皮……等等……不是孩子在玩耍，他们的妈妈，特别是爸爸和他们在一起。”
这本杂志说，孩子们正是通过犯错、摔倒和磨破膝盖皮而学习的。杂志严厉批评了那些“过分关注孩子、对孩子一天中的每个细节都做出反应”的家长。
这不是我们仅在美国才发现的现象，也不只是谈到教育子女时才有。读着《今日心理学》的这篇文章，我想到了另一件东西：萨班斯-奥克斯利法案(Sarbanes-Oxley Act)。这个法案是另一次尝试，试图挡开所有可能的风险，只要它那立法的父母能够想到。
我完全赞成公司服从这部法律。在处理具体违法行为时,比方说像安然(Enron)等隐瞒债务的案例，萨班斯-奥克斯利法案采用的方式也没有什么不对。我不敢苟同的，是萨班斯-奥克斯利法案缔造者的做法，他们试图识别安然出错的每一个细枝末节，然后根据一个假设制定一部法律，这个假设就是，他们能够阻止此类不端行为再次发生。
安达信(Andersen)的审计师与安然管理层关系过于紧密？如果一家公司的高层管理人员一年前为某家会计师事务所工作，并参与了该公司的审计，萨班斯-奥克斯利法案就认定，这家会计师事务所为该公司审计账目为非法。(为什么不是10年呢？这些不适当的友谊不太可能在12个月内消失。)
最近发生的公司丑闻是不是暴露出，高级财务官对道德问题的态度非常低劣？现在，每家公司都必须说明，公司是否为高级财务官制定了一部道德准则。这部准则应禁止不当利益冲突，并明确说明，高级财务官应遵守“可适用的政府规章制度”。没有这样一部准则的公司必须解释为何没有。(也许是因为，首先就不应该任命那些需要一部道德准则去提醒他们守法的高级财务官。)
是不是安达信似乎忘记了审计方是干什么的？上市公司会计监督委员会(Public Company Accounting Oversight Board)将对会计师事务所进行检查，对那些未达标的事务所将暂停其业务、要求进一步培训，或施加经济处罚。处罚所得到的钱怎么办？它将“用于资助一个优秀奖学金计划，该项目面向攻读获得认证的会计学位课程的本科生和研究生。”(这些课程大概只对那些没有因酗酒和抑郁症而失去资格的学生开放。)
在美国证交所上市的德国和英国公司一直在抱怨萨班斯-奥克斯利法第404款，该款要求这些公司评估它们内部财务控制的有效性。英国电信(BT)董事长克里斯托弗?布兰德爵士(Sir Christopher Bland)上周表示，遵守萨班斯－奥克斯利法案代价是如此昂贵，以致于倘若可以的话，这家电信集团将从美国退市。《金融时报》周六报道，由于萨班斯-奥克斯利法案产生的负担，几乎所有在美上市的德国公司都考虑过退出。
我们可以对其中的一些持保留态度。克里斯托弗爵士承认，英国电信在美国退市是不可能的。他上周告诉《金融时报》：“我们有美国股东，还发行了美元计价债券。所以我们只能咬紧牙关继续下去。”正是如此。
任何一位首席执行官，只要有一半责任心，都会保证公司有适当的内部报告制度，即使没有法律规定促使他们这样说。虽然具体的法律修改可能完全有道理，但难以理解的是，为什么需要这种包罗万象的法律。即使是在任何一个现行法律体系下，过去几年的许多公司不良行为都是非法的。的确，“不可偷盗”的戒条本应处理了其中许多不良行为。
好像那些牵涉其中的公司都没有逃过惩罚。安达信被毁。几位高级公司管理人士面临刑事指控。
知道那些违法者得到了什么下场，要比这样那样的行业守则或职责声明远为有效。你是不是听说，你投资的某公司的首席执行官在抛售持股？不要抛售你的股票，然后吞下损失――记住玛莎?斯图尔特(Martha Stewart)吧。担心你投资的公司在接受刑事犯罪调查吗？记住弗兰克?奎特隆(Frank Quattrone)，抵制告诉每个人删除电子邮件的诱惑。
有效的执法比大面积地逐条修改法律更为重要。看他人付出代价对于整个制度是一个有益的震动，相当于公司磨破了膝盖皮。
