Big business fights back in the battle for millennial talent - FT.com
對企業而言，“大”這個標籤就像一個靶子。大科技，大金融，大型製藥，大石油，大食品和四大會計師事務所都被監管機構和活動人士盯著。For business, the label “big” is like a target. Big Tech, Big Finance, Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Food and the Big Four accountancy firms are in the sights of regulators and campaigners.
難怪千禧一代據說都喜歡創業和自僱的自由和自主性，勝過諮詢公司和投資銀行的全職工作。No wonder millennials are said to favour the freedom and autonomy of entrepreneurship and self-employment over the draw of full-time roles at consultancies and investment banks.
為了抗衡那種誘惑，大公司正在改變自己，以便像小企業一樣行事。他們鼓勵各個團隊做出更多更貼近前線工作的決定。敏捷管理(Agile management)風靡一時。公司總部要麼正徹底消失，要麼正轉變成共享的工作空間。巨型跨國集團躲在一個個商標背後，在客戶眼中，這些商標與工匠精神和本地生產聯繫在一起，而不是與跨國大規模生產聯繫在一起。想想Ben＆Jerry的冰淇淋，它是聯合利華(Unilever)的一部分；或者很多精釀啤酒廠，例如倫敦的肯頓鎮釀酒廠(Camden Town Brewery)，它實際上是釀造業巨頭百威英博(AB InBev)的一部分。To counter that temptation, big companies are bending themselves out of shape to behave like smaller enterprises. They are encouraging individual teams to take more decisions closer to the frontline. Agile management is all the rage. Head offices are either disappearing altogether or morphing into shared working spaces. Gigantic global groups hide behind individual labels that the customer associates with artisanship and local production rather than multinational mass manufacture. Think of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, part of Unilever, or the many craft beers, such as London’s Camden Town Brewery, that are in fact part of brewing behemoth AB InBev.
事實上，許多千禧一代最終都去了大公司。美國智囊機構“經濟創新集團”(Economic Innovation Group)和安永(EY)在2016年的一項調查發現，近三分之二的美國千禧一代考慮過創業，但只有五分之一多一點的人認為創業是在事業上取得進步的最佳方式。實際上，44%的人認為待在同一家公司並一步步爬向職業階梯頂端——也許正如他們的父母當年所做的那樣——是最好的路線。The truth is that many millennials end up at big companies. A 2016 survey by the US think-tank the Economic Innovation Group and EY found nearly two-thirds of American millennials had considered starting their own business, but only just over a fifth believed entrepreneurship was the best way to advance their career. In fact, 44 per cent thought staying with one company and working their way up the ladder — like their parents may have done — was the preferable route.
在不確定的時代，這不足為奇。阿里•德赫斯(Arie de Geus)在2002年出版的有關企業何以能生存的《長壽公司》(The Living Company)一書中指出，他的前僱主殼牌(Shell)公司以及聯合利華和飛利浦(Phillips)等大型荷蘭公司在二戰後為荷蘭的年輕僱員們提供了穩定。對確定性的類似訴求有助於解釋為什麼當被問及哪些地方能提供最佳機會時，英國的畢業生往往將四大專業服務公司以及像葛蘭素史克(GlaxoSmithKline)、英國國家醫療服務體系(NHS)和文官隊伍(Civil Service)這類的僱主排在前十位。In uncertain times, this is not a surprise. In his 2002 book The Living Company, about why enterprises survive, Arie de Geus pointed out that his former employer Shell, along with large Dutch companies such as Unilever and Phillips, offered stability to young Dutch recruits after the second world war. A similar search for certainty helps explain why, when asked which places offer the best opportunities, UK graduates regularly rank the Big Four professional services firms and the likes of GlaxoSmithKline, the NHS and the Civil Service in the top 10 employers.
羅伯特•阿特金森(Robert Atkinson)和邁克爾•林德(Michael Lind)撰寫的一本新書《大就是美》(Big is Beautiful)中，展示了大公司的一些優勢。它們比小規模的同行公司支付更高薪水；它們的僱員（至少在美國）可以在如下方面獲得更好的福利：加班費、獎金、健康保險、假期、育兒假、培訓和養老金；較大的公司在總體上更環保、承擔更多社會責任，也更多元化；而且它們還提供了一個在現實中和網絡上都更安全的工作場所。A new book, Big is Beautiful, by Robert Atkinson and Michael Lind, lays out some advantages of large companies. They pay more than smaller counterparts; their workers, at least in the US, receive better benefits, in overtime, bonuses, health insurance, holidays, parental leave, training and pensions; larger companies are on the whole more environmentally friendly, socially responsible and diverse; and they offer a safer and more cyber-secure workplace.
阿特金森和林德的統計數據服務於政治目的。他們認為美國政策制定者近幾十年來一直表現出對小企業的不合理的偏袒。他們把這種變化追述到20世紀70年代，當時的激進經濟學家E•F•舒馬赫(EF Schumacher)寫了那本有影響力的《小就是美》(Small is Beautiful)，來質疑經濟體系如何耗盡全球資源、讓工作場所失去人情味。但他們聲稱，“巨物恐懼症”是反生產力的。他們主張不區分規模地支持各種各樣的企業，無論其大小。Atkinson and Lind’s statistics are wielded for political ends. They make the case that US policymakers have over recent decades shown an unjustified bias towards supporting smaller businesses. They date the change to the 1970s, when radical economist EF Schumacher wrote the influential
Small is Beautiful, questioning the way the economic system depleted global resources and dehumanised workplaces. But “megalophobia” is counter-productive, they claim. They argue instead for a size-neutral approach to supporting a full range of businesses, big and small.對於那些在大企業工作或正在申請加入大企業的人來說，隔壁熱鬧的小型初創企業或時髦的小型企業裡“草會更綠”的感覺必定很強烈。但請記住，初創企業尤易失敗。阿特金森和林德寫道，小公司“創造了大量的工作，但當那麼多小公司都失敗時，它們也摧毀了幾乎一樣多的工作”。當然，那些取得成功的新公司通常都有一個抱負：變成大公司。For those working for or applying to join big business, the sense that the grass is greener at the neighbouring buzzy start-up or funky small enterprise is bound to be strong. But remember that start-ups, in particular, are prone to failure. Small companies, Atkinson and Lind write, “create lots of jobs, but they destroy almost as many when so many of them fail”. And of course those new companies that do succeed usually have one ambition: to grow bigger.
可以肯定的是，對於大公司員工來說，前景並不完全樂觀。大公司仍然可能變成缺乏人情味的官僚機構。他們不再提供曾經的安全感。像英國電信(BT)和羅爾斯•羅伊斯(Rolls-Royce)最近公佈的大規模裁員，是現代企業生活的現實。千禧一代和更年輕的一代像許多20世紀50年代加入殼牌的年輕人那樣，在一家大公司度過整個職業生涯的可能性已經很小。The outlook is not wholly rosy for big company staff, to be sure. Big companies can still turn into faceless bureaucracies. They no longer offer the security they did. Mass lay-offs, such as those announced recently by BT and Rolls-Royce, are a fact of modern business life. The chances are low that millennials and younger generations will spend their entire careers at single large companies, as did many of those young people who joined Shell in the 1950s.
但在大公司工作的最好時候可能就是現在了。為了生存、為了招到和留住年輕僱員，那些最好的大企業僱主正被迫適應。他們為僱員提供更多獨立性、更有意義的工作、發明和創造的自由，以及靈活的工作時間和空間：換句話說，他們正努力同時體現出大公司和小公司的優勢。But there may never have been a better time to work for a big company. In their efforts to survive, and recruit and retain young staff, the best large employers are being forced to adapt. They are offering employees more independence, more purposeful work, the liberty to invent and innovate, and flexible working hours and spaces: in other words, they are striving to offer the best of both big and small.
在這方面，跨國公司和其他大型集團正在實現上個世紀一位有先見之明的思想家為他們譜寫下的雄心壯志。他寫道，理想的大型機構應“由許多半自治單位組成，（每個單位）都擁有大量的自由，以便為發揮創造力和開拓精神創造最好條件”。這個人就是舒馬赫，他在描繪的是“小”可以有多美，即便是在大企業中。In this respect, multinationals and other big groups are living up to the ambitions one prescient thinker of the last century laid out for them. He wrote that the ideal large organisation should “consist of many semi-autonomous units [each of which] will have a large amount of freedom, to give the greatest possible chance to creativity and entrepreneurship”. That was EF Schumacher, pointing out how small could be beautiful, even within big business.
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