East and west are not a world apart
If there is anythingmore challenging than the world of Asian business - one of the best books on the subject in the 1990s was an A-Z of doing business in Thailand in which the "A" stood for Assassination - it must be the linguistic netherworld inhabited by management strategists.
Perhaps it is rash for journalists to complain about clichés. No doubt many, like Peter Williamson here, have felt the urge to write "corporate czar" where "chief executive" or "boss" would do. And perhaps the jargon in Prof Williamson's new book should come as no surprise from a professor of Asian business and international management whose previous work was entitled From Global to Metanational. But unwary readers should be warned that management- speak is a language in which things are rarely "used" when they can be "leveraged"; in which the word "change" is preceded by "sea", "step" or "quantum"; and in which technology is "cutting-edge", "best-of-breed" or "state-of-the-art".
Behind this fog of unnecessary epithets, however, lie some important assumptions and recommendations. The assumptions should be obvious to those in Asia but may not be evident to company executives in Europe or America: the Asian economy is big and getting bigger and is becoming more competitive. Large companies, Asian and western, must adopt the right strategies to succeed in the world's fastest-growing markets.
The recommendations are more problematic, not because they are wrong but because many are based on the controversial and largely discredited idea that Asia has a peculiar business culture that differentiates it from the west. Advice for Asian companies in Asia is thus awkwardly juxtaposed with different advice for western companies in Asia.
Take the case of Taiwan's Evergreen group. The company is among those used to illustrate the distinctive nature of Asian business, including an ability to act "with the acumen of street traders in seeking out and exploiting new opportunities". But it is hard to see what is so "Asian" about making bold investments in new ships, manning cargo vessels with skeleton crews to cut costs or launching an airline that starts off by losing money.
The truth is that Asian business has some characteristics that are old-fashioned, rather than Asian; that almost every "Asian" business habit has been or is still practised in the west; and that Asian business is modernising fast as globalisation takes hold. Foreign investors in Japan have started to shake up the banking sector and industrial companies such as Nissan. Samsung Electronics of South Korea, as Prof Williamson notes, embarked on a drastic restructuring and hired hundreds of US-educated MBA graduates.
Diligent readers will glean some useful tips. Prof Williamson is right about the need for growth in Asian manufacturing productivity to be matched by improved productivity in services, and about the "wage illusion" that deludes investors in Asia into thinking that low wages automatically translate into lower costs.
Yet these practical thoughts are too often crowded out by contentious assertions about the nature of Asian business. Maybe it is unfair to expect a book on business strategy to dwell on good governance but it is surely going too far to excuse Indonesian-style crony capitalism because it "did develop a subtle understanding in Asia of how to align corporate strategies with government economic and social goals for the benefit of both parties".
Like other authors, Prof Williamson has to grapple with what he means by "Asian". He excludes India and focuses on east Asia but even then struggles to find common ground between the Korean chaebol, the bumiputra companies of Malaysia, and the family-controlled Chinese conglomerates of south-east Asia.
This geographical challenge is understandable. It is less easy to forgive his publishers for their approach to time. Once again, the languid cycle of writing, editing and publishing a book has proved no match for the rapidity of the business cycle. The companies cited in the book have all moved onwards, or backwards, since it was written, and some of the financial and economic figures quoted are from 2001 or earlier. As any investor will testify, three years is a long time in Asian business.
Most readers, thankfully, will buy this book not for its historical analysis or its prose style but for the bullet-point recommendations that mark it out as a true business book. They include making the most of - sorry, leveraging - your company's strengths; making a "step change" in total productivity; innovating; creating strong brands; extending and integrating international networks; and reshaping the playing field by driving industry consolidation. All true, but not peculiar to the growing markets of Asia.
东西方商界 无天壤之别
东方企业的运作熟悉得惊人。如果有比亚洲商界更具挑战性的地方，那一定是管理战略家所居住的语言地狱。有关亚洲商界这个题目，《泰国经商大全》(A-Z of doing business in Thailand)是上世纪90年代期间最好的几本书之一，其中书名中的“A”代表暗杀。
也许记者对陈词滥调的抱怨是轻率的。无疑，许多人已经非常迫切地感到，要用“公司独裁者”这样的字眼来代替“首席执行官”或“老板”的说法，比如这里要说的彼得?威廉森(Peter Williamson)。威廉森是一位商业和国际管理学教授，这位教授以前有一本名为《从全球化到超国家化》(From Global to Metanational)的著作，因此他新书中的术语应该不会令人感到惊讶。但应该警告粗心的读者，在管理语言这种语言中，当东西可以被“利用”(leveraged)时，就很少用“使用”(used)来表达；“变化”这个词之前总是有“海量”(sea)、“梯级”(step)或“量子”(quantum)等词；而且科技总是“尖端的”、“出众的”或“先进的”。
然而，在这些多余的、令人如坠云雾的修饰词背后，有一些重要的假设和建议。对在亚洲的人来说，这些假设应该是显而易见的，但对于在欧美的公司管理人员来说，这些假设可能不那么明显：亚洲经济体本来就很大，且正在不断变得更大，并变得越来越有竞争力。亚洲和西方的大型公司必须采取正确的战略，才能在世界成长最快的亚洲市场获得成功。
这些建议则更成问题，这倒不是因为它们不正确，而是因为其中有许多是建立在尚有争议的观点之上的，且该观点在很大程度上并不足信。这个观点认为，亚洲有着奇特的商业文化，与西方迥然不同。于是在亚洲，为亚洲公司提供的建议与为西方公司提供的建议截然不同，放在一起都不太协调。
以台湾的长荣集团(Evergreen group)为例。这是一家被用来证明亚洲商业特色的公司之一，其中包括该公司“在寻找和利用新机会方面，能以街头小贩式的敏锐”行事的能力。但是，该公司也大胆投资建造新船，只为货轮配备最基本的人手以求削减成本，或者推出一家不惜以赔钱开始的航空公司。在这些做法上，很难看出该公司有多么“亚洲”。
事实是，亚洲企业的某些特色是过时的，而不那么“亚洲”。几乎每个“亚洲的”商业习惯都曾在(或者仍在)西方存在，而且随着全球化趋势的进展，亚洲企业正在快速实现现代化。在日本的外国投资者已开始整顿日本的银行业和日产(Nissan)等工业公司。就像威廉森教授所指出的，韩国的三星电子(Samsung Electronics)已开始进行大幅重组，并雇佣了数百名在美国毕业的MBA毕业生。
细心的读者将能注意到一些有用的建议。威廉森教授有两点论述是对的。第一，亚洲制造业生产率的增长需要与服务业生产率的提高相匹配；第二，“薪资幻觉”让投资于亚洲的人误以为低薪会自动转化为低成本。
然而，上述这些有实际意义的想法，却经常因为有关亚洲商业特性的各类争议性主张太多，因而被忽略了。或许，要期望一本有关企业战略的书详细讲述良好的公司治理不太公平，但这本书为印尼式任人唯亲的资本主义开脱，说它“的确在亚洲培育了一种微妙的看法，懂得如何协调企业的战略与政府的经济和社会目标，从而取得双赢”，但这种说法显然过头了。
像其他作者一样，威廉森教授也不得不想方设法弄明白他所说的“亚洲”的含义。他把印度排除在外，然后把目光集中到东亚，但尽管那样，他还是很难找出韩国企业集团、马来人办的公司和东南亚华人家族控制的联合企业之间的共同点。
这种地理上的挑战可以理解。但要原谅他的出版商在时间上采取的方式就不那么容易了。书的写作、编辑和出版周期又一次如此缓慢，根本跟不上商业周期的速度。自该书写成以来，书中援引的各家公司全都前进或者倒退了。此外，书中引用的一些财务和经济数据来自2001年或更早时期。任何一个投资者都可以证明，三年在亚洲商业领域是很长的一段时间。
幸好，大多数会买这本书的读者，并不是因为它历史性的分析或它的散文体裁，而是看中它那些“点句式”(bullet-point)的建议。正是这些建议，才使它成为一本真正的商业书籍。这些建议包括最大限度地使用(use)(对不起，是利用(leverage))公司的长处、在总劳动生产率上作出“梯级改变”(step change)、创新、创立强势品牌、拓展及整合国际网络，以及通过推动行业整合来重塑产业格局。这些都对，但并不特别针对成长中的亚洲市场。
