MBA为什么会让老板变得“冷血”？

经济学人系列 1 | MBA为什么会让老板变得“冷血”？

在和中国学生沟通过程中，我们发现高中生对与国外的外刊了解甚少，为此我们提灯人团队决定定期推送最新的双语《经济学人》，带中国青年去了解世界、学习英语，扩大视野！

背景介绍：

MBA（即工商管理硕士）教育最初起源于美国，自1908年哈佛大学开设工商管理硕士培训计划至今已有100多年的历史，是商业界普遍认为晋升管理阶层的一块踏脚石。如今，全世界每年有数以万计的MBA毕业于世界各大商学院，成为出类拔萃的工商管理人才，领导着世界各国企业在商场中逐鹿。随着越来越多的MBA成为了各大企业的CEO，许多人开始认为MBA教育会让人变得“冷血”……

(本文选自《经济学人》20240409期)

How MBA-wielding bosses boost profits

持有MBA学位的老板是如何提高公司利润的

Not by increasing sales, investment or productivity

并不是通过提升销售、投资或生产率

Harvard business school is all about its graduates’ “lifelong impact” on society. INSEAD exhorts its alumni to “drive business as a force for good”. Believe these and other MBA prospectuses, and a student arriving as an ordinary human being will leave as a virtuous do-gooder.

哈佛商学院特别其毕业生对社会的“终身影响”。欧洲工商管理学院告诫其校友“推动商业成为一股向善的力量”。如果相信上述这些以及其他MBA的招生简章，那么一个个初来乍到普普通通的学生将在毕业之际成为一个有德行的人。

Such claims have always strained credulity. A new working paper by Daron Acemoglu, Alex He and Daniel le Maire, a trio of economists, puts numbers on the disbelief.

但这种说法总是难以让人相信。由达隆·阿塞莫格鲁、亚历克斯·何和丹尼尔·勒梅尔三位经济学家撰写的一份新的工作报告从数据分析的角度对这种质疑进行了论证。

The authors look at newly appointed CEOs in America and Denmark. They find those with MBAs increase returns on assets in the five years after their appointment—by a total of three percentage points on average in America and 1.5 points in Denmark.

几位作者着眼于美国和丹麦新任命的首席执行官（CEO）。他们发现那些拥有MBA学位的人在被在被任命后的五年内资产回报率有所增加（在美国平均增加了3%，在丹麦平均增加了1.5%）。

But that is not because they boost sales, ratchet up investments or raise productivity. Rather, the higher returns are the result of suppressing workers’ wages, which fall by 6% in America and 3% in Denmark over the five years after an MBA takes charge. In short, ushering MBAs into corner offices seems to boost shareholder value by slicing the pie in certain ways, not by making the pie bigger.

但这并不是因为他们促进了销售、增加了投资或提高了生产率。相反，他们是通过压低工人工资得到了更高的回报率。在MBA学位持有者接任CEO的5年里，美国工人工资下降了6%，丹麦下降了3%。简而言之，将MBA学位持有者引入公司最角落的办公室似乎是是通过以某种方式分割蛋糕（而不是把蛋糕做大）来提升股东价值。

The researchers put this phenomenon down to change in business-school syllabuses. MBA programmes, says Mr He, have over the years grown less focused on technical aspects of finance and management, and more obsessed with maximising shareholder value and corporate leanness.

研究人员将这一现象归因于商学院教学大纲的改变。亚历克斯·何表示，多年来，MBA课程越来越不注重财务和管理的技术方面，而是更专注于股东价值最大化和企业精简化。

The result, he and his colleagues contend, is that workers have increasingly been seen as “costs to be reduced” rather than an investment in human capital.

他和他的同事认为，其结果是，工人越来越被视为“需要降低的成本”，而非人力资本的投资。

People drawn to MBA courses in the first place may, of course, simply be more ruthless than holders of other degrees. But there may be something to the syllabus hypothesis. Chief executives who earned their MBAs after 1980 were likelier to stint on employees than graduates from earlier MBA classes.

当然，一开始就被 MBA 课程吸引的人可能比其他学位的持有者更无情。但教学大纲的假设可能有些道理。1980年后获得MBA学位的CEO们比早期MBA毕业生更可能在员工身上花钱。

If the general shareholder-friendly zeitgeist which took hold around that time were the whole explanation for this intergenerational difference, then MBAs and non-MBAs ought to be equally affected.

如果当时普遍存在的对股东友好的时代精神可以完全解释这种代际差异，那么MBA 和非 MBA 应该受到同样的影响。研究表明事实并非如此。

The study shows this was not the case. Further work will be needed to see whether feeding MBAs modules such as “Reimagining Capitalism” (Harvard) and “Business and Society” (INSEAD) does anything to reverse the trend.

这还需要做进一步的研究，看看为MBA增加“重塑资本主义”(哈佛)和“商业与社会”（欧洲工商管理学院）等课程是否有助于扭转这一趋势。(红色标注词为重难点词汇)

重难点词汇：

alumni [??l?mna?] n. 毕业生

virtuous [?v??rt?u?s] adj. 道德高尚的；有德性的credulity [kr??d(j)ul?di] n. 轻信；易受骗syllabus [?s?l?b?s] n. 课程大纲；教学大纲ruthless [?ru?θl?s] adj. 无情的；残忍的zeitgeist [?tsa?t?ɡa?st] n. 时代精神；时代思潮

目前infoshare提灯人计划已经与30+英美高校合作，致力于大家无信息差的沟通交流。如果想要寻求留学同学校同专业学长学姐1V1帮助，可以添加宾大学长Chris微信????

进群交流更方便

同学和家长也可以添加Chris学长微信，加入“提灯人申请交流群”和“申研、实习群”。（请备注需要加的群）