跨国公司的民族性

飞雪寒冰

Multinational companies are used to pondering whether to shift their headquarters from one country to another. Rarely do they worry about the country itself shifting allegiance. So, international companies based in Scotland – including blue-chips such as Standard Life, the insurer, and Cairn Energy, the oil and gas group – received a shock last week when the Scottish National party won a majority in the country’s parliament and promised a referendum on independence from England within five years.
跨国公司已经习惯于考虑将总部从一个国家迁到另一个国家。它们很少担心国家本身会变节。因此最近，当苏格兰国家党(Scottish National Party)在苏格兰议会选举中获得多数席位，承诺将在5年内进行公投，从英国独立时，震惊了总部位于苏格兰的跨国公司，其中包括保险商标准人寿(Standard Life)和油气集团Cairn Energy等蓝筹公司。

Big Scottish companies’ reactions ranged from silent to mealy-mouthed. That was understandable. The end of the 300-year union with England may never happen. If it does, the Scottish government may sweeten it for nervous companies with tax breaks. Either way, declaring a preference now would be bad business.
苏格兰各大公司要么表现沉默，要么顾左右而言他。这可以理解。与苏格兰长达300年的统一可能永远不会破裂。即使破裂，苏格兰政府可能也会提供税收优惠，安抚紧张的公司。不管怎样，现在就公布偏好是不利的。

飞雪寒冰

In an acute form, however, the Scottish vote highlighted a question that leaders of big businesses must address: is it important which flag our company flies – and if so, why? “In industry, nationality really doesn’t matter,” says Royal Dutch Shell’s Peter Voser. He is a Swiss running an Anglo-Dutch multinational under the chairmanship of a Finn, Jorma Ollila, so his response reflects the reality for Shell. But Mr Voser adds a nuance: “Having an Anglo-Dutch heritage is quite helpful. It gives us a different status around the world. We’re not just one nationality – so we’re not seen to be American, for instance – and [it helps us] come across as a company that’s quite globalised.”
然而，苏格兰选举严重突显出一个大企业领袖必须解决的问题：公司挂哪面国旗是否重要？如果是的话，为什么？荷兰皇家壳牌(Royal Dutch Shell)的彼得•沃瑟(Peter Voser)表示：“在行业中，国籍真的并不重要。”他是一位瑞士人，管理着一家英荷跨国公司，由芬兰籍董事长乔马•奥利拉(Jorma Ollila)领导，因此他的回答反映了壳牌的现实。但沃瑟补充了一句微妙的话：“拥有荷英传统非常有帮助。它让我们在全球获得了与众不同的地位。我们不只有一个国籍，因此，比如说，我们不会被视为美国企业，这有助于我们被视作一家相当国际化的公司。”

Ten or more years ago, many large companies aspired to become “stateless”. It proved largely a dream. The merger that formed Asea Brown Boveri in 1988 became a case study in subsuming Swiss and Swedish nationality into a new global whole. But the dream evaporated in the early 2000s after the group added too many layers of management complexity.
10多年前，很多大公司都渴望变得“无国界”。事实证明，这基本上只是一个梦想。1988年缔造了ABB的合并交易，成为将瑞士和瑞典国籍合归入一个全球新整体的典范。但本世纪初，在该集团增加了太多管理层，让管理变得过于错综复杂之后，这一梦想破灭了。

飞雪寒冰

Even so, Samir Brikho, chief executive of Amec, the British engineering group, and a former ABB executive (like Mr Voser), says the group had achieved a level of integration of two cultures that allowed managers to set aside national allegiance in deciding, for example, where to locate new manufacturing facilities.
即便如此，英国工程集团Amec首席执行官、像沃瑟一样曾任ABB高管的萨米尔•布里科(Samir Brikho)仍表示，该集团在一定程度上实现了两种文化的融合，例如，管理层在决定新厂厂址时，可以将国家忠诚度置之一旁。

But Pankaj Ghemawat, professor of global strategy at Iese business school and author of World 3.0, which re-examines the state of globalisation, says a closer look reveals many multinationals are not as international as they seem. The fact that both Unilever and Shell unified their original Anglo-Dutch structure suggests “that if companies have roots in two places, it’s difficult to sustain”.
但Iese商学院全球战略教授潘卡基•格玛沃特(Pankaj Ghemawat)表示，更近距离地观察一下就会发现，很多跨国公司并没有表面上那么国际化。联合利华(Unilever)和壳牌都整合了最初的英荷架构，这一事实表明，“如果企业在两个地方都有根基，这种情况是很难维持下去的”。格玛沃特著述的World 3.0一书，对全球化的状况进行了重新评估。

飞雪寒冰

Most global companies rest on strong national foundations, even if the rhetoric suggests otherwise. HSBC – one of the best-known global brands – tries to appeal to customers worldwide, based on its Asian and UK heritage. But on Wednesday it said it was “scaling back” some of its global ret­ail banking operations and dropping its slogan “the world’s local bank”.
多数跨国企业都有强大的国家基础，即便嘴上说的是另一套。最著名的全球品牌之一——汇丰(HSBC)试图基于亚洲和英国传统，吸引世界所有地方的客户。但5月11日，该行宣布将“缩减”部分全球零售银行业务，放弃“全球金融、地方智慧”(the world’s local bank)的口号。

Laurence Parisot, president of Medef, the French employers’ federation, and a director of BNP Paribas and Michelin, says French blue-chip companies are now worldwide champions. But she concedes that “they are still French, because most of the CEOs are French, most of the board members are French and their headquarters are in Paris”.
法国雇主协会(Medef)总裁、巴黎银行(BNP Paribas)及米其林(Michelin)的董事劳伦斯•派瑞索(Laurence Parisot)表示，法国蓝筹股公司现在是全球冠军企业。但她承认，“它们仍是法国企业，因为多数CEO都是法国人，多数董事都是法国人，它们的总部也设在巴黎”。

飞雪寒冰

That is not to say that companies have abandoned any ambition to become borderless entities. Web technology allows for the creation of virtual business networks that would previously have required a physical presence in several countries. It has also opened the way for smaller companies to expand internationally.
这并不是说，企业已经彻底放弃了成为无国界实体的雄心。网络技术让虚拟业务网络得以创建，而以前这需要在几个国家建立实体机构。它也打通了小企业进行国际扩张的道路。

But three factors root companies to particular countries: tax, the location of production facilities and national culture. The first and second can be altered – through redomiciling or outsourcing, respectively – although at some reputational risk. The backlash against US manufacturers that tried to move offshore for tax reasons in the early 2000s was fierce, as patriotism surged after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. But the third element is hard to shed.
但有3个因素会让企业把根扎在特定的国家：税收、生产设施的安置和国家文化。前两个因素可以改变（分别通过迁址和外包），虽然会带来一些名誉风险。本世纪初，美国制造商出于税收原因曾试图迁往海外，却引发了激烈的反对情绪，因为在世贸中心(World Trade Center)和五角大楼遭受恐怖袭击之后，美国人爱国主义热情高涨。但第三个因素很难回避。

飞雪寒冰

Companies, therefore, have to live with the consequences of their nationality, which can be significant. The flipside of the post-9/11 wave of US nationalism was the hostility to American companies’ products and services after the US attacked Iraq in 2003. Some American critics held the Britishness of BP – and its chief executive, Tony Hayward – against it following last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill, in spite of the company’s substantial US investments. More recently, political fears about the international expansion of successful Chinese companies have overshadowed the investment plans of Huawei, the telecoms equipment-maker, and state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation.
因此，企业不得不忍受其国籍带来的后果，而影响可能是巨大的。美国9•11后爆发的民族主义浪潮的另一面是，在美国2003年入侵伊拉克后，美国公司的产品和服务遭到敌视。尽管英国石油(BP)在美国投资巨大，但在去年深水地平线(Deepwater Horizon)漏油事件发生后，一些美国批评人士对该公司及其首席执行官唐熙华(Tony Hayward)的英国国籍仍颇有微辞。更近一些，对于成功中国企业进行全球扩张的政治担忧，给中国电信设备制造商华为(Huawei)和国有企业中海油(CNOOC)的投资计划蒙上了阴影。

How can chief executives reap the benefits of a particular nationality? One way is to emphasise positive as­pects of the national stereotype their company represents. Mr Brikho is a Lebanese-born Swedish citizen who sets great store by the diversity of his workforce but, as a British company, Amec is expect­ed to be punctual and reliable. “It’s as­sumed we have that type of culture.”
CEO们如何能够收获某个国籍的好处？一种方法是强调其公司代表的国家固有形象积极的方面。布里科是一位在黎巴嫩出生的瑞典人，他非常看重员工的多样性，但作为一家英国公司，Amec的形象应当是守时而可靠。“外界以为我们拥有那种文化。”

飞雪寒冰

Jeffrey Garten, professor of international trade, finance and business at Yale School of Management, adds: “In most cases, be it Procter & Gamble, Mitsubishi Corp or Siemens, the core management team shares certain perspectives that reflect the laws and cultures and unspoken standards of ... their home societies. And, from the standpoint of the host country, these companies are generally seen as reflecting home qualities such as creativity (US), exquisite precision (Germany), solid reliability and cultural sensitivity (Scandinavian), and so on.”
耶鲁大学管理学院(Yale School of Management)国际贸易、金融和商务教授杰弗里•加滕(Jeffrey Garten)补充称：“在大多数情况下，如果是宝洁(Procter & Gamble)、三菱公司(Mitsubishi Corp)或西门子(Siemens)，核心管理团队共有的某种视角会反映出祖国社会的法律、文化和心照不宣的标准。而从东道国的立场来看，这些企业通常被认为反映了其发源地的特质，例如创造性（美国）、追求精准（德国）、高度的可靠性和文化敏感性（斯堪的纳维亚国家）等等。”

Meanwhile, as the international experience of Mr Brikho, Mr Voser and others suggests, multinationals are evolving towards a more diverse management. Progress is slower than early pioneers of globalisation such as ABB would have predicted in the late 1990s. Analysing the Fortune Global 500 in 2009, analysts with Arthur D. Little, the consultancy, found that only 68 – 14 per cent – had a non-native CEO. Analysis in 2005 of the top 100 non-financial transnational companies found only 10 per cent had boards with a majority of directors from outside their home country.
与此同时，布里科和沃瑟等人的国际经验表明，跨国公司正朝着更为多样性的管理发展。进展可能比ABB等全球化先驱在上世纪90年代末料想的要慢。对2009年全球财富500强(Fortune Global 500)进行分析时，咨询公司Arthur D. Little的分析师发现，只有68家公司（占14%）的CEO为非本国人。2005年对非金融跨国公司100强的分析显示，多数董事并非来自祖国的企业仅占10%

飞雪寒冰

The ultimate goal for such companies would be to evolve into a multinational, led by a diverse international management team, that could use the advantages of its national legacy to make smart, locally focused decisions. That, however, is easier said than done.
这些企业的最终目的是发展成为一家跨国企业，由多样化的国际管理团队率领，能够利用国家传统的优势做出明智、关注本地的决定。不过，说易行难。

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