[2011.10.01] Samsung: Asia's new model company 三星—亚洲企业新楷模
[b][size=2][color=#ff0000][url=http://www.ecocn.org/thread-58716-1-1.html]http://www.ecocn.org/thread-58716-1-1.html[/url][/color][/size][/b][b][size=2][color=#ff0000]Samsung and its attractions
[/color][/size][size=4]Asia’s new model company[/size][/b]
[b][size=4]亚洲企业新楷模[/size][/b]
[b]Samsung’s recent success has been extraordinary. But its strategy will be hard to copy
三星集团最近大放异彩。不过它的成功难以复制[/b]
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THE founders of South Korea’s chaebol (conglomerates) were an ambitious bunch. Look at the names they picked for their enterprises: Daewoo (“Great Universe”), Hyundai (“The Modern Era”) and Samsung (“Three Stars”, implying a business that would be huge and eternal). Samsung began as a small noodle business in 1938. Since then it has swelled into a network of 83 companies that account for a staggering 13% of South Korea’s exports. The hottest chilli in the Samsung kimchi bowl is Samsung Electronics, which started out making clunky transistor radios but is now the world’s biggest technology firm, measured by sales. It makes more televisions than any other company, and may soon displace Nokia as the biggest maker of mobile-telephone handsets.
韩国财阀（大型联合公司）的创始人都野心勃勃。从他们为自己公司取的名字就知道：大宇（宇宙大荒）、韩国现代（现代纪元）还有三星（三颗星，预示生意越做越大生生不息）。三星在1938年的一间小型的面粉公司起步，发展至今已成拥有83间子公司的大集团，出口总额惊人地占全国的13%。如果说三星公司像韩国的泡菜，那么三星电子就是这碗泡菜中最够味的辣椒。三星电子原本只制造笨重的半导体收音机，现在若以营业额计算，它已是全球最大的科技公司。它是电视机的最大制造商，而且将很快超过诺基亚成为最大的手机生产者。
Small wonder others are keen to know the secret of Samsung’s success. China sends emissaries to study what makes the firm tick in the same way that it sends its bureaucrats to learn efficient government from Singapore. To some, Samsung is the harbinger of a new Asian model of capitalism. It ignores the Western conventional wisdom. It sprawls into dozens of unrelated industries, from microchips to insurance. It is family-controlled and hierarchical, prizes market share over profits and has an opaque and confusing ownership structure. Yet it is still prodigiously creative, at least in terms of making incremental improvements to other people’s ideas: only IBM earns more patents in America. Having outstripped the Japanese firms it once mimicked, such as Sony, it is rapidly becoming emerging Asia’s version of General Electric, the American conglomerate so beloved of management gurus.
[color=royalblue]难怪会有人如此着迷地寻找三星成功的经验了。[/color]中国派特使去三星取经，这劲头跟得上其派官员到新加坡学习创建高效政府。对他们来说，三星集团预示着亚洲资本主义新的运营模式。这种模式跟西方传统经验完全不同。从微型芯片到保险，三星集团的经营范围涉及数十个毫不相关的行业。这间家族企业等级森严，强调占领市场份额不太重视攫取利润，产权结构也让人捉摸不清甚至困惑。可它依然极富创新力，至少在改进现有工艺上不断创新，在美国只有IBM公司拥有比它更多的专利。三星已经超越昔日模仿的日本公司，例如索尼，迅速成为崛起中亚洲的通用电气，[color=royalblue]这间美国大型联合公司深受管理界的追捧。
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[b]Tomorrow’s GE or tomorrow’s Daewoo?
像通用一样鼎盛还是像大宇一样灭亡？[/b]
There is much to admire about Samsung (see article). It is patient: its managers care more about long-term growth than short-term profits. It is good at motivating its employees. The group thinks strategically: it spots markets that are about to take off and places huge bets on them.
三星公司有太多地方值得钦羡。它有耐心：管理者更注重长远发展而不是眼前利益。它善于激励士气。集团决策深谋远虑：寻找即将腾飞的行业，然后押以重注。
The bets that Samsung Electronics placed on DRAM chips, liquid-crystal display screens and mobile telephones paid off handsomely. In the next decade the group plans to gamble again, investing a whopping $20 billion in five fields in which it is a relative newcomer: solar panels, energy-saving LED lighting, medical devices, biotech drugs and batteries for electric cars. Although these industries seem quite different from each other, Samsung is betting that they have two crucial things in common. They are about to grow rapidly, thanks to new environmental rules (solar power, LED lights and electric cars) or exploding demand in emerging markets (medical devices and drugs). And they would benefit from a splurge of capital that would allow large-scale manufacturing and thus lower costs. By 2020 the Samsung group boldly predicts that it will have sales of $50 billion in these hot new areas, and that Samsung Electronics will have total global sales of $400 billion.
三星电子在DRAM芯片、液晶显示屏和手提电话都押注成功，获益丰厚。未来十年，集团依然准备豪赌一番，豪掷200亿到五个之前不曾涉猎的行业：太阳能电池板、LED节能灯、医疗器械、生物制药和电动车电池。这些行业看起来千差万别，但是三星下注在于它们间两个重大相同点。第一，这些行业都将增长迅速，或是因为新环境法例（太阳能、LED照明灯和电动汽车）或是因为新兴市场的爆炸性需求（医疗器械和制药）。第二这些行业都能受益巨额投资，生产上形成规模优势，从而降低成本。大致估算，到2020年在这些新兴热点行业三星集团的销售额将达到500亿美元，而三星电子的全球总营业额将达到4000亿美元。
It is easy to see why China might like the chaebol model. South Korea’s industrial titans first prospered in part thanks to their close ties with an authoritarian government (though Samsung was not loved by all the generals). Banks were pressured to pump cheap credit into the chaebol, which were encouraged to enter dozens of new businesses—typically macho ones such as shipbuilding and heavy industry. Ordinary Koreans were chivvied to save, not consume. South Korea grew into an exporting powerhouse. Does this sound familiar?
显而易见中国会喜欢财阀这种发展模式。韩国的产业巨人最初发展起来，部分归功于与当时集权政府的密切联系（尽管三星当时不是很得军方欢心）。当时政府说服银行为财阀企业送去低息贷款，并且支持财阀从事各种新行业尤其是[color=royalblue]一些大气行业[/color]例如造船和重工业。政府促使韩国人们储蓄，减少消费。最终韩国成为出口大国。听起来是不是很熟悉？
In China, too, the state draws up long-term plans, funnels cash to industries it deems strategic and works hand-in-glove with national champions, like Huawei and Haier (see article). Some of Beijing’s planners would love to think that state intervention is the route to world-beating innovation. No doubt inadvertently, Samsung feeds this delusion.
中国政府也同样会制定长期战略，对认可的战略产业上投入巨资并且尤为紧密地扶持国内行业翘楚例如华为、海尔等。北京一些决策者倾向认为只有走国家引导的道路才能在创新上领先世界。有意无意之间，三星毫无疑问也助长了这种错觉。
[b]Of hindsight and survivor bias
经验总结还是适者误差？[/b]
（个人以为这个标题概括了两种观点，一种观点认为财阀体制是对一种科学发展模式，值得推广；另一种观点认为财阀体制只看到成功者的风光，没看到失败者的眼泪，过分盲目乐观地推行财阀体制）
For delusion it is, on three levels. Most broadly, South Korea’s prosperity owes less to dirigisme than China’s dirigistes believe, and nothing to dictatorship—South Korea is now a democracy, and much happier for it. Second, the chaebol system has been less beneficial for South Korea than Samsung’s success might imply. Some of the state-directed cheap credit that powered the chaebol produced superb companies, such as Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motors. But it yielded some costly failures, too. During the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, half of the top 30 chaebol went bust because they had expanded recklessly. Daewoo, the Great Universe, is no more.
在三个层面上可见这是一个错觉。从大方向来说，统制政策对韩国崛起中的贡献并没有中国统制政策者认为的那么大，更不用说独裁统治——韩国现在很庆幸自己是一个民主国家。第二，三星集团中大放异彩的财阀体制对韩国经济的促进作用并不明显。财阀集团在政策引导低息贷款下能出现了一些优秀的公司，例如三星电子和现代汽车。但也付出高昂的代价。在1997-98年度的亚洲金融危机中，前30名的财阀由于扩张无度倒闭大半。大宇，宇宙大荒，已经破产了。
Defenders of the chaebol say that the crisis spurred reforms, curbing the tendency of the chaebol to overborrow and overexpand. They don’t hog credit as much as before—Samsung Electronics now generates oceans of cash to finance its expansion plans. But in general the giants still crowd out small entrepreneurial firms: a former boss of Samsung Electronics has warned that South Korea has too many eggs in too few baskets. And despite a decade of political reform, the ties between the chaebol and the state are still too cosy. President Lee Myung-bak (the ex-boss of a Hyundai firm) has pardoned dozens of chaebol bosses convicted of corporate crimes.
[color=royalblue]坚持财阀体制的人认为金融危机带来了改革，他们开始注意控制，避免过度借贷和盲目扩张。[/color]他们现在对贷款不再像以前那样贪婪了，三星电子目前扩张的大量资金都是由自身经营提供。但是总体来说，这些大型公司依然使得中小企业难以在市场立足：三星前任领导人就警告说，韩国投资太集中了。而且尽管政治改革十年之后，财阀与政府之间依然存在官商勾结的嫌疑。现任总统李明博（现代集团的前领导人）共赦免了数十位财阀老板的经济罪。
As for Samsung, it is an admirable company, packed full of individual successes that managers (and not just ones in Asia) should study. But inevitably it has not always got everything right—who now drives a Samsung car? And its overall success is not easily replicable. Samsung is patient and bold because the family of its late founder, Lee Byung-chull, wants it to be. Family control is guaranteed by a complex web of cross-shareholdings. This is fine so long as the boss is as brilliant as the late Lee or his son, Lee Kun-hee, the current chairman. But if the founder’s grandson, who is being groomed for the top job, fails to measure up, he will be harder for the company’s shareholders to oust than his peers at GE, Sony and Nokia.
最后就三星自身的层面来说，尽管他依然是值得钦羡的公司，其成功经验值得全球（不仅是亚洲）的经理人学习，智者千虑必有一失—现在谁还会开三星的汽车？它成功的各方面不能被轻易复制。三星集团之所以能如此深思熟虑果敢进取，那是因为离世的创始人李秉哲和他的家族的领导。通过一系列复杂的交叉持股，三星公司被李氏家族牢牢控制。如果领导人都像过去的李秉哲和他儿子现任领导李健熙那样英明那就问题不大。但万一将要继承大统的孙子不称职的话，三星的股东可不能像通用、索尼和诺基亚这些公司的股东那样容易更换领导人。
To that extent, for all its modern technology, Samsung’s story is an old one writ new—the well-run family firm, with a strong culture and a focus on the long term, which has made good use of an indulgent state. Celebrate it on those grounds and Asia’s new model has something going for it. Just don’t expect it to keep going at its current rate for ever.
在这个意义上来说，尽管三星掌握现代科技，可三星模式可谓换汤不换药——家族企业，经营良好，[color=royalblue]企业文化浓厚[/color]，注重长期利益，并能够充分利用政府的溺爱。这些都值得庆贺而三星集团这个亚洲企业新楷模也将证明这模式的可行之处。只是不要指望它能够按照目前的速度继续一路增长下去就是了。
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