别小看“富二代”
在关于家族企业的逸闻中，能力堪忧的继承人是一个反复出现的主题。当能力强得多的父母退休或离世时，他们性格软弱的子女被推至最高位，却只会奉行逐渐搞砸家业的战略，而老员工会嘀咕“我早就告诉过你会这样”。
People trust family businesses significantly more than they trust business in general, according to an opinion poll by Edelman. More than twice as many people want to work for them as do not — and are more committed. Customers will pay more for their products.
爱德曼(Edelman)的一项民调显示，人们对家族企业的信任度远远高于总体上对企业的信任。希望为家族企业工作的人数是不愿意的两倍多，而且前者更有责任感。客户愿意为家族企业的产品支付更多钱。
But they shudder when introduced to Junior and his siblings. Nearly two-thirds believe the next generation will mismanage the company and just over half of family business employees think scions are less talented than their forebears.
但在这些家族企业被“富二代”接管后，他们感到不寒而栗。近三分之二的受访者认为，富二代将把公司搞乱，而在家族企业的雇员中，略微超过半数认为，富二代不像他们的上一辈那样有才能。
Hang on, though. Throwing out the baby could also be rash. What looks like bath water could in fact be a cocktail of important family traits that gives the business its competitive advantage.
然而，也别太快下结论。泼脏水时可能把孩子一起泼掉。看起来像洗澡水的东西，实际上可能包含各种重要的家族特质，正是这些特质赋予了家族企业竞争优势。
In 2014, I castigated Rupert Murdoch for producing a succession plan that in effect allowed the family to maintain both ownership and management of their media empire. I wrote that he should instead have emulated Leonardo Del Vecchio, founder of the Luxottica eyewear business, who had passed management to trained professionals 10 years earlier.
2014年，我批评过鲁珀特•默多克(Rupert Murdoch)制定的一项接班计划，后者实际上是让默多克家族维持对其媒体帝国的所有权和管理权。我写道，他应该效仿眼镜集团Luxottica创始人莱昂纳多•戴尔•维吉奥(Leonardo Del Vecchio)，后者10年前就把企业管理交给了受过训练的专业人士。
Upsetting my thesis, Mr Del Vecchio, now in his 80s, promptly reversed his hands-off strategy, stepped back in to take control and set off on a dealmaking spree, causing share price and governance turmoil.
推翻我的命题的是，如今80多岁的维吉奥迅速逆转了自己放手不管的战略，重新执掌该集团并发起了一波交易潮，导致公司股价和治理陷入动荡。
Meanwhile, Mr Murdoch, having tested his older offspring — Lachlan, James and Elisabeth — in different parts of the empire, has anointed Lachlan and James as the most likely to lead the group into the future.
与此同时，默多克在其企业帝国的不同地盘考验了较年长的子女——拉克兰(Lachlan)、詹姆斯(James)和伊丽莎白(Elisabeth)，并选定拉克伦和詹姆斯作为最有可能带领该集团走向未来的接班人。
Like me, you may disapprove of the Murdochs’ style, particularly their UK newspapers’ involvement in the phone- hacking scandal. You may worry about James’s potential conflicts of interest at Sky, the pay-TV group, where he is likely to face investor protest as he stands for re-election as chair, despite being chief executive of 21st Century Fox, which is trying to take Sky over.
你或许像我一样不赞成默多克家族的行事方式，尤其是其在英国发行的报纸卷入了电话窃听丑闻。你或许担心詹姆斯在付费电视集团天空电视台(Sky)的潜在利益冲突，他很可能在争取连任集团董事长时面临投资者抗议，因为他也是21世纪福克斯公司(21st Century Fox)首席执行官，该公司正试图收购天空电视台。
But many families are now using a Murdoch succession template. Instead of ditching heirs on the basis of surname alone, they are selecting the siblings best suited for operational roles, testing them in other parts of the business, or setting them free to run their own start-ups first.
但是，如今许多家族都在效仿默多克的接班模式。他们根据子女的具体特点为其选择最合适的运营职位，在企业的其他部分对他们进行考验，或者先让他们自由经营自己的初创企业，而不是仅依据姓氏取舍。
Choosing a favourite remains an emotional decision. The potential for error is still great. King Lear remains a fine case study of succession planning gone horribly wrong.
选择自己最喜欢的接班人仍是一种情绪化的决定。出错的可能性仍然很大。《李尔王》(King Lear)的故事仍是一个关于继承计划发生严重问题的经典案例研究。
But Denise Kenyon-Rouvinez, director of the Global Family Business Centre at IMD business school, points out that removing emotion altogether neuters one element of family business success.
但瑞士洛桑国际管理发展学院(IMD)全球家族企业研究中心主任丹尼丝•凯尼恩-罗维内兹(Denise Kenyon-Rouvinez)指出，完全排除情感会破坏家族企业成功的一个内在因素。
The offspring of founders are increasingly well prepared. “We often pose [the succession question] as family members versus professionals, as if families aren’t professional,” she told me. “But they may have gone to the best schools in the world and be outstanding.”
创始人的后代正准备得越来越充分。“我们经常把(接班问题)视为家族成员与专业人士之间的较量，好像家族成员就不可能成为专业人士一样，”她对我表示，“但他们可能毕业于世界最顶级的学校，而且表现还很优秀。”
Some old assumptions about succession are just a side effect of the business cycle. Handing over to the third generation is often problematic. But many companies have in any case overrun their natural lifespan. Combined with the near-certainty that some of the proliferating branches of the family tree lose interest after a few decades, or decide they need to cash out, dissolution is often unavoidable.
关于家族企业接班的一些陈旧的假设，其实只是商业周期的副作用。将企业交给第三代接班人往往会出现问题。但许多公司的自然寿命本来就已到头了。再加上几乎可以肯定的是，几十年后，家族中的一些后代将失去兴趣，或者认为他们需要套现，解散往往不可避免。
The arithmetic can, however, benefit family businesses that survive. Prof Kenyon-Rouvinez has studied the 30-generation, 700-year-old Frescobaldi wine-growing dynasty. In its 29th generation, the family stopped appointing its firstborn sons to leadership positions, and started tapping a wider sibling group.
然而，这其中的算术规律有利于生存下来的家族企业。凯尼恩-罗维内兹教授研究了历经30代、拥有700年历史的葡萄酒商花思蝶(Frescobaldi)家族。在第29代时，该家族不再任命长子出任领导岗位，而是开始在范围更广的兄弟姐妹群体中物色人选。
Similarly, Central Group, the Thai retailer, employs 51 descendants of the company’s founder. It has traditionally drawn on managers and leaders from the large Chirathivat family.
同样，泰国零售商“中央集团”(Central Group)聘用了该集团创始人的51名后代。传统上，该集团的管理者和领导者都来自庞大的郑氏家族(Chirathivat family)。
“The company is growing faster than our babies,” third generation chief executive Tos Chirathivat told the Nikkei Asian Review recently. It now selects outside managers, too, but with the important caveat that they should be chosen for how well they fit the family culture.
“公司的扩张速度比我们的孩子长得快，”该集团第三代首席执行官郑昌(Tos Chirathivat)最近在接受《日经亚洲评论》(Nikkei Asian Review)采访时表示。如今，该集团也从外面选拔管理者，但一个重要的条件是他们在多大程度上契合该家族的文化。
“Heir underperformance”, as the academics euphemistically call it, is not a myth. The long-running World Management Survey puts family- and founder-owned businesses whose chief executive is also a founder or from the family at the bottom of its ranking of best-managed groups. But implying that heirs are always too selfish or grasping to give up power — or too feeble to hold it — is to underestimate how quickly some family businesses are growing up.
“后代表现欠佳”(学者们委婉的称呼)并非虚构。运行多年的“世界管理调查”(World Management Survey)将家族及创始人所有的企业——首席执行官也是创始人或家族成员——放在其最佳管理集团排行榜的垫底位置。但暗示接班人总是太自私或者太贪心，以至于不想放权——或者太软弱以至于无法掌控权力——就低估了一些家族企业成长的速度。
