徐曙光 董事长专业户的成功法则

他曾连续成功创业,并跨越不同的国家、涉足不同的领域。他正是董事长专业户徐曙光。     

Organizing for empowerment: an interview with AES's Roger Sant and Dennis Bakke. Interview by Suzy Wetlaufer.

The topic of empowerment is receiving a lot of attention, but how many employees are truly empowered? At the global electricity giant AES Corporation, the answer is all 40,000 of them. In this interview, chairman Roger Sant and CEO Dennis Bakke reflect on their trials and triumphs in creating an exceptional company and explain how their employee-run company works. When they founded AES in 1981, Sant and Bakke set out to create a company where people could have engaging experiences on a daily basis--a company that embodied the principles of fairness, integrity, social responsibility, and fun. Putting those principles into action has created something unique--an ecosystem of real empowerment. What does that system look like? Rather than having a traditional hierarchical chain of command, AES is organized around small teams that are responsible for operations and maintenance. Moreover, AES has eliminated functional departments; there's no corporate marketing division or human resources department. For the system to work, every person must become a well-rounded generalist--a mini-CEO. That, in turn, redefines the jobs of the people at headquarters. Instead of setting strategy and making the "the big decisions," Sant and Bakke act as advisers, guardians of the principles, accountability officers, and chief encouragers. Can other companies successfully adopt the mechanics of such a system? Not unless they first adopt the shared principles that have guided AES since its inception. "Empowerment without values isn't empowerment," says Sant. "It's just technique," adds Bakke.     

High-performance marketing: an interview with Nike's Phil Knight. Interview by Geraldine E. Willigan

Nike's advertising slogans--"Bo Knows," "Just Do It," and "There Is No Finish Line"--have moved beyond advertising into popular expression. Its athletic footwear and clothing have become a piece of Americana. Its brand name is as well known around the world as IBM and Coke. Behind the slogans and the flashy TV commercials is the vision of its founder, chairman, and CEO, Phil Knight. Since forming the company in 1962, Knight has taken Nike from a small-time distributor of Japanese track shoes to the top of the athletic shoe and apparel market. But not without a stumble. Along the way, Knight discovered that technological innovation alone could not continue to drive growth. When sales stagnated in the mid-1980s, Knight and Nike learned several hard lessons on how to build brands and understand consumers, and they transformed their technology company into a marketing company whose product is its most important marketing tool. "Ultimately," says Knight, "we wanted Nike to be the world's best sports and fitness company. Once you say that, you have a focus. You don't end up making wing tips or sponsoring the next Rolling Stones world tour." To keep the company growing, Nike began splitting its brands into sub-brands. In tennis, Nike divided its shoes into Challenge Court--for younger, more active players--and Supreme Court--for older, more mature players. That approach brought the company to a broader range of consumers while preserving the customer base. And to create an emotional tie with the consumer, Nike started advertising on TV. "Sports is at the heart of American culture," Knight says. "You can't explain much in 60 seconds, but when you show Michael Jordan, you don't have to. It's that simple."     

Execution without excuses. Interview by Thomas A. Stewart and Louise O'Brien

The success of Dell--it provides extraordinary rewards to shareholders, it can turn on a dime, and it has demonstrated impeccable timing in entering new markets--is based on more than its famous business model. High expectations and disciplined, consistent execution are embedded in the company's DNA. "We don't tolerate businesses that don't make money," founder Michael Dell tells HBR. "We used to hear all sorts of excuses for why a business didn't make money, but to us they all sounded like 'The dog ate my homework.' We just don't accept that." In order to double its revenues in a five-year period, the company had to adapt its execution-obsessed culture to new demands. In fact, Michael Dell and CEO Kevin Rollins realized they had a crisis on their hands."We had a very visible group of employees who'd gotten rich from stock options," Rollins says. "You can't build a great company on employees who say, 'If you pay me enough, I'll stay.'" Dell and Rollins knew they had to reignite the spirit of the company. They implemented an employee survey, whose results led to the creation of the Winning Culture initiative, now a top operating priority at Dell. They also defined the Soul of Dell: Focus on the customer, be open and direct in communications, be a good global citizen, have fun in winning. It turned outto be a huge motivator. And they increased the focus on developing people within the company. "We've changed as individuals and as an organization," Rollins says. "We want the world to see not just a great financial record and operational performance but a great company. We want to have leaders that other companies covet. We want a culture that makes people stick around for reasons other than money."     

赵一弘 碧生源的“工匠”

赵一弘用了10年时间,仅凭借着碧生源旗下的2款主力产品,就创造了逾8亿元的年销售额,并将企业带到了香港联交所。从2000年北京房山区窦店镇一个仅1100平方米的厂房,到2010年登陆香港联交所主板,碧生源控股有限公司(以下简称为碧生源)董事长兼CEO赵一弘和创业团队经历了10年时间,在这10年里,除了产品外,他们专心做好了一件事情:在全中国范围内铺设了一个遍布近12万家零售终端     

A Note on the Information Content of Relocating Corporate Domicile: A Trading Volume Approach

Overseas location of corporate domicile is not new for Hong Kong. Before the eighties, some companies operating in Hong Kong, principally shipping companies and financial institutions, registered overseas for tax purposes. Since 1989 there has been a rapid increase in the number of companies deciding to relocate, including industrial companies. This study examinies the association between sharemarket trading and the relocation announcement. The results indicate that unusually large trading volumes are observed immediately after the announcement day.     

Enacting a European supply chain: a case study on the role of management accounting

This study reports on an action research project carried out in two non-Japanese, U.K. manufacturing companies that were considering the establishment of a strategic supply partnership. In the assembler company, materials constituted 80% of manufacturing costs with the result that managing supply chain costs has become a most critical element in overall cost control. The company was seeking closer ties involving information sharing and R&D collaboration with suppliers of strategic components. On its part, the supplier wished to move towards the level of co-operation and trust that the two companies had realized in their U.S. operations. The participation of the researchers as neutral intermediaries between the two companies gave them an opportunity to analyse the role of management accounting in the construction of a strategic partnership. The constitutional role of accounting is highlighted together with the need to develop costing and performance measurement technologies that can be understood and respected by both senior managers and non-accountants involved in the procurement process.     

Do Trading and Power Operations Mix?

The author uses the case of Constellation Energy to show the challenges, and pitfalls, of running an energy and power trading unit as a profit center within a large power company. Sophisticated trading and risk management operations do play important supporting roles in power companies that face competitive wholesale markets. The complicated dynamics of power prices and the complex operations of generation assets and supply obligations require careful assessment of risks and returns. Trading operations can help extract more value from physical assets and supply obligations. But problems are bound to arise when companies attempt to manage the trading function as a stand‐alone profit center. Determining the amount of capital required for proprietary trading portfolios and other elements of trading businesses is complicated. It is easy to underestimate the capital required and so exaggerate the profitability of trading. When profit center trading operations share a balance sheet with other business units—especially units with physical assets like generation—the natural tendency is for the trading operation to piggyback on the capital of the other units. The actual amount of capital consumed becomes apparent only in times of crisis. We have seen this mistake made repeatedly in the short history of trading operations in U.S. power companies. Only truly independent trading operations, with their own balance sheets, can be evaluated clearly and held accountable.     

Sustainable growth, the DuPont way

Like many manufacturers, DuPont traditionally has grown by making more and more "stuff." And its business growth has been proportional to the amount of raw materials and energy used--as well as the resulting waste and emissions from operations. Over the years, though, DuPont became aware that cheap supplies of nonrenewable resources wouldn't be endlessly available and that the earth's ecosystems couldn't indefinitely absorb the waste and emissions of production and consumption. Chad Holliday, chairman and CEO of DuPont, believes strongly in the challenge of sustainable growth and makes the business case for it: By using creativity and scientific knowledge effectively, he says, companies can provide strong returns for shareholders and grow their businesses--while also meeting the human needs of societies around the world and reducing the environmental footprint of their operations and products. In fact, a focus on sustainability can help identify new products, markets, partnerships, and intellectual property and lead to substantial business growth. Holliday describes how DuPont developed a three-pronged strategy to translate the concept of sustainability into nuts-and-bolts business practices. Focusing on integrated science, knowledge intensity, and productivity improvement, the strategy was accompanied by a new way to measure progress quantitatively. Sustainable growth should be viewed not as a program for stepped-up environmental performance but as a comprehensive way of doing business, one that delivers tremendous economic value and opens up new opportunities. Ultimately, companies will find that they can generate substantial business value through sustainability while both enhancing the quality of life around the world and protecting the environment.     

Attracting Long‐Term Investors Through Integrated Thinking and Reporting: A Clinical Study of a Biopharmaceutical Company

Faced with a large percentage of investors that chase short‐term returns, companies could benefit by attracting investors with longer‐term horizons and incentives that are more consistent with the long‐term strategy of the company. The managers of most companies take their investor base as a “given” that cannot be changed through their actions or words. Using the case of Shire, a biopharmaceutical company with a strong commitment to the goals of improving the safety of its products and the reliability of its supply chain, the authors of this article suggest that companies have the ability and the means to change their investor base in ways that are consistent with their strategy. One of the most promising ways of attracting such investors is integrated reporting, which provides companies with a means of credibly communicating the commitment of its top leadership to diffusing integrated thinking across the organization and to building strong relationships with important external stakeholders. In the case of Shire, both a commitment to integrated thinking and the adoption of integrated reporting appear to have helped the company attract longer‐term investors, which in turn has strengthened management's confidence to carry out its strategy of stakeholder engagement and investment.     

A Preliminary Analysis of SASB Reporting: Disclosure Topics,Financial Relevance,and the Financial Intensity of ESG Materiality

At the end of 2018, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) released its corporate reporting standards for material environment, social, and governance (ESG) issues. These SASB standards are analogous to FASB's but deal with ESG activities that help the companies create value over the long term and have been endorsed by large asset management firms such as BlackRock. The authors analyze the quality of ESG reporting by the 91 companies that adopted SASB's framework. While the number of such companies is still small, their results are encouraging, an indication of better things to come. Using three measures of effectiveness, Disclosure Topic Compliance Index (DTCI), Financial Relevance Compliance Index (FRCI), and Financial Intensity Compliance Index (FICI), the authors found that most companies are doing a good to very good job of reporting and companies tend to focus on measures with the highest financial relevance. Scores on these three measures were similar across industry sectors except for a few cases where the DTCI score is low. They presented cases of three SASB standard companies: 1) Sunrun, a residential solar panel company that uses some hazardous materials, 2) Suncor, an integrated oil and gas company, and 3) Target, a retail company in a highly competitive industry needing to keep costs low while also managing an extensive supply chain responsibly. These 91 companies have demonstrated that reporting according to SASB standards can be done well. This success should encourage other companies to follow and the authors offer a seven‐step process to adopt SASB standards.     

股市“隐形人”

上市,一直被赋以"催生千万富翁"的光环。资本市场一夜暴富的神化不可尽数。然而,并不是每一个上市的故事都是完美的童话,有时候,上市"后时代"也许是噩梦的开始。信息披露不完整、不及时,公司业绩不理想,涉嫌信息造假等诸多因素,都可能将上市公司推向难已逾越的深渊,沦为"僵尸公司"。     

Leading a supply chain turnaround

Just five years ago, salespeople at Whirlpool were in the habit of referring to their supply chain organization as the "sales disablers." Now the company excels at getting products to the right place at the right time--while managing to keep inventories low. How did that happen? In this first-person account, Reuben Slone, Whirlpool's vice president of Global Supply Chain, describes how he and his colleagues devised the right supply chain strategy, sold it internally, and implemented it. Slone insisted that the right focal point for the strategy was the satisfaction of consumers at the end of the supply chain. Most supply chain initiatives do the opposite: They start with the realities of a company's manufacturing base and proceed from there. Through a series of interviews with trade customers large and small, his team identified 27 different capabilities that drove industry perceptions of Whirlpool's performance. Knowing it was infeasible to aim for world-class performance across all of them, Slone weighed the costs of excelling at each and found the combination of initiatives that would provide overall competitive advantage. A highly disciplined project management office and broad training in project management were key to keeping work on budget and on benefit. Slone set an intense pace--three "releases" of new capabilities every month--that the group maintains to this day. Lest this seem like a technology story, however, Slone insists it is just as much a "talent renaissance." People are proud today to be part of Whirlpool's supply chain organization, and its new generation of talent will give the company a competitive advantage for years to come.     

The path of kyosei

Many global companies believe they have a moral duty to respond to the world's problems but are unsure how to do that and still pursue a reasonable profit for their shareholders. Ryuzaburo Kaku, honorary chairman of Canon, the Japanese technology company, suggests that companies consider kyosei, a business credo that he defines as a "spirit of cooperation" in which individuals and organizations work together for the common good. Kyosei, Kaku claims, has helped Canon make a significant and positive impact on many world problems as the company has grown to become one of the world's preeminent innovators and manufacturers of technology. The implementation of kyosei can be divided into five stages, with each stage building on the preceding one. In the first stage, companies must work to secure a predictable stream of profits and to establish strong market positions. From this foundation, they move on to the second stage, in which managers and workers resolve to cooperate with each other, recognizing that both groups are vital to the company's success. In the third stage, this sense of cooperation is extended beyond the company to encompass customers, suppliers, community groups, and even competitors. At the fourth stage, a company takes the cooperative spirit beyond national boundaries and addresses some of the global imbalances that plague the world. In the fifth stage, which companies rarely achieve, a company urges its national government to work toward rectifying global imbalances. For each stage, Kaku provides detailed examples from Cannon's own experience in putting the ideas of kyosei into practice.     

An integrated approach to supply chain risk analysis

Despite the increasing attention that supply chain risk management is receiving by both researchers and practitioners, companies still lack a risk culture. Moreover, risk management approaches are either too general or require pieces of information not regularly recorded by organisations. This work develops a risk identification and analysis methodology that integrates widely adopted supply chain and risk management tools. In particular, process analysis is performed by means of the standard framework provided by the Supply Chain Operations Reference Model, the risk identification and analysis tasks are accomplished by applying the Risk Breakdown Structure and the Risk Breakdown Matrix, and the effects of risk occurrence on activities are assessed by indicators that are already measured by companies in order to monitor their performances. In such a way, the framework contributes to increase companies’ awareness and communication about risk, which are essential components of the management of modern supply chains. A base case has been developed by applying the proposed approach to a hypothetical manufacturing supply chain. An in-depth validation will be carried out to improve the methodology and further demonstrate its benefits and limitations. Future research will extend the framework to include the understanding of the multiple effects of risky events on different processes.     

A transparency Disclosure Index measuring disclosures: Chinese listed companies

This study addresses the question whether transparency matters among Chinese listed companies. We construct a comprehensive scorecard, based on the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance, in order to assess the transparency of 100 major Chinese listed companies. Based on the scorecard, we construct a Transparency Index (TI) which is used to assess these major Chinese listed companies during 2004–2007. The results reveal that there is a positive and significant relation between company transparency and market valuation. When we further split the TI into Mandatory and Voluntary Disclosure Indexes, it is found that market valuation is only related to the Voluntary Disclosure Index. Finally, we find that more profitable, overseas-listed, and companies with a separate CEO and board chairman tend to disclose more on a voluntary basis.     

Leading change from the top line. Interview by Thomas A Stewart and David Champion

Most CEOs who specialize in turning around struggling companies focus on costs. But for Fred Hassan, chairman and CEO of Schering-Plough, the primary focus in a turnaround is the top line. Since 2003, when Hassan took the helm at the global pharmaceutical company, he has overseen a remarkable recovery in performance. And consistent with his philosophy, the turnaround started with sales. Considering sales reps as less than crucial to strategy, Hassan cautions, is a big mistake. At Schering-Plough, he has concentrated on motivating and organizing salespeople to create trusting relationships with doctors. "You have to differentiate the salesperson in the customer's mind--just like you differentiate brands," he explains. A doctor may see 60 pharmaceutical reps on a regular basis but actually trust far fewer. To earn a spot in this inner circle, Schering-Plough reps try to turn each customer encounter into an occasion to help doctors provide better care for their patients. Schering-Plough also restructured its sales forces so that reps carry not just one kind of product, as they do in most pharmaceutical companies, but several. Covering a broad range of treatments gives reps more ways to build value-adding relationships with doctors. In this interview, Hassan discusses his success at Schering-Plough and his experiences at other pharmaceutical companies. During his career, he has built a reputation for being in tune with the front lines, as well as for reaching out to the managers who supervise salespeople. He has found that this level of personal attention not only makes reps feel respected but also gives him valuable strategic insights.     

客户集中度、股权再融资与资源配置效率

本文以关系型交易和专有性投资为理论基础,基于供应链视角研究了客户集中度对上市公司股权再融资的作用机理,以我国2003-2017年期间的上市公司与自身披露的大客户为研究对象,然后进行客户集中度对上市公司股权再融资的回归分析,以探究二者之间的联系,最后的主要结论有三点:1、客户集中度与上市公司取得股权再融资的可能性是正相关,说明客户集中度可以有效地帮助上市公司取得股权再融资;2、在上市公司取得股权再融资的情况下,客户集中度与上市公司未来投资水平是正相关,说明客户集中度提高可以提高未来三年上市公司的投资水平;3、在上市公司取得股权再融资的情况下,客户集中度与上市公司未来财务业绩是正相关,说明客户集中度提高可以提高未来三年的上市公司的财务业绩。     

The Determinants of Foreign Currency Hedging–Evidence from Hong Kong Non-Financial Firms

Hong Kong is one of the largest trading economies in the world. Business opportunities attract the presence of more and more multinational companies and different currencies. Hedging currency risks has become an important and vital activity for a success business entity in Hong Kong. This paper empirically tests the determinants of foreign currency hedging for a large sample of Hong Kong non-financial firms. The findings are potentially useful for increasing firms’ economic benefit and shareholders’ wealth as well as improving the economic efficiency of currency hedging for companies in Hong Kong as well as in the mainland of China. JEL classification: F30, G32, G33     

Textual risk disclosures and investors’ risk perceptions

We examine the association between changes in companies’ textual risk disclosures in 10-K filings and changes in stock market and analyst activity around the filings. We find that annual increases in risk disclosures are associated with increased stock return volatility and trading volume around and after the filings. Increases in risk disclosures are also associated with more dispersed forecast revisions around the filings. In contrast to prior literature documenting resolved uncertainties in response to various types of company disclosures, our findings suggest that textual risk disclosures increase investors’ risk perceptions. However, the results are less pronounced for firm-level disclosures that deviate from those of other companies in the same industry and year. These results lend support for critics’ arguments that firm-level risk disclosures are more likely to be boilerplate.