日常工作保证组织秩序井然

    两位作者探讨了各种棘手的组织问题，其中一个就是激励。这个问题相当麻烦。比如说，如果有一群英国农场工人被告知，他们获得的薪酬将取决于自己相对于其他工人收获的作物，他们会有什么反应？结果是他们都会降低劳动效率。显然，所有的工人会相互串通，对付雇主，放慢收获草莓的速度。

    如何准确衡量和奖励警察和情报专家在预防犯罪方面的表现？在巴尔的摩，警察的表现评估取决于逮捕人数——因此警方逮捕了很多人，不过这些违法行为都微不足道，比如没有安装自行车灯，又或者忘了随身携带身份证。与此同时，巴尔的摩的犯罪率依然居高不下。菲斯曼和沙利文为我们提供了许多实例，表明不恰当的激励会带来很多麻烦，有时甚至是灾难性的影响。只要想想贷款审批和家庭抵押贷款危机，你就能明白这个道理。

    两位作者还详细介绍了升职带来的困扰，尤其是在管理层中间。你可能在目前的工作中表现良好，但是谁会知道你在下一份工作中依然出色？他们把著名的彼得原理（Peter Principle）用于招聘管理者——“在组织架构里，每位员工都会不断晋升，直到他不能胜任的岗位为止”——他们指出，即使是谷歌公司（Google）也受到了这个问题的影响。

    与此同时，菲斯曼和沙利文研究了现代办公室文化中经常受到攻击的特征——会议、中层管理者、开支报告和格子间——探讨了这些特征存在的合理原因。他们表示，如果没有这些特征，组织将进一步恶化。人们会中断交流，财务状况会一团糟，员工会被赶到没有窗户的大房间工作。

    谈到组织问题，就连金色降落伞、首席执行官天价薪酬和商务客机也有某种意义。离职补偿金原本就是给首席执行官的奖励，因为他们在公司合并中失去了自己的工作。从某种程度上来说，首席执行官的薪金在美国证券交易委员会（SEC）关于“同业薪酬”的文件中有所夸大。如果公司没有位于旅游交通枢纽，那么商务客机降低了企业的出行成本。这本书可能让人们对管理者的看法有所改观。

    两位作者也做了出色的工作，分析了最近几起灾难性的组织失误——911事件、金融危机、英国石油公司（BP）漏油事故。读者可能不会就此释怀，但是他们会更细致入微地看待这些事件，明白最初怎么会出现这些失误。

    菲斯曼和沙利文的文笔轻松随意、引人入胜，这种风格让他们的著作（别忘了，这本书是关于组织经济学的）容易阅读，给人留下了深刻的印象，不过在某些情况下，他们的笔调过于随意（比如，他们把马丁•路德简称为“马丁”）。也许在某些人看来，他们讨论了太多不相干的主题。

    在某些地方，两位作者似乎急于得出结论。在关于首席执行官薪酬不断上涨的段落中，菲斯曼和沙利文认为，董事会成员给首席执行官丰厚薪酬的一个原因是为了避免他们由于薪酬太低，在会议或乡村俱乐部中出现不愉快的交流。这也许能说得通，不过在这本书里，每个细节都经过精心论证，获得调查研究的支持，这种逻辑似乎过于懒散，进行了不必要的引申。

    那么组织的未来将会如何？菲斯曼和沙利文认为，组织将发展为无纸化办公，也许有一天，我们会在街角的星巴克（Starbucks）里远程工作。可以预计，组织会出现更多运行失常的情况，更多的合作与让步，以及更多能给组织带来良好秩序的日常琐碎工作。请牢记这段宁静祈祷文。(财富中文网)

    译者：凌云

    One of the thornier organizational issues the authors explore are incentives, which can be quite tricky. For example: When a group of agricultural workers in Britain were told they'd be paid according to how much they picked relative to others, how did they respond? By collectively being less productive. It appeared that all the workers colluded against their employers to harvest strawberries at slower rates.

    And how do you accurately measure and reward performance of police and intelligence professionals who are in the business of preventing crime? In Baltimore, officers were evaluated by number of arrests -- so they made many arrests, but for infractions like not having a bike light or failing to carry I.D. Meanwhile Baltimore's crime rate remained persistently high. Fisman and Sullivan give us example after example of misaligned incentives that lead to troubling and sometimes disastrous effect. Think loan approval and the home-mortgage crisis.

    The authors also detail the trouble with promotions, particularly within managerial ranks. You may be a star in your current job, but who's to know you'll be any good in the next? They apply the famous Peter Principle to hiring managers -- "In a hierarchy each employee will rise to the level of his incompetence" -- and point out that even Google suffers from this problem.

    At the same time, Fisman and Sullivan take on some of the favorite punching bags of modern office culture -- meetings, middle managers, expense reports, and the cubicle -- and argue why there's good reason for them. Organizations would be worse off without them, they say. Communications would break down, finances would be a mess, and employees would be corralled into a windowless bullpen.

    Even golden parachutes, sky-high CEO pay, and corporate jets make some sense when you hear them tell it. Severance packages were born as an incentive for CEOs to merge companies even though they'd lose their jobs. CEO salaries, to some extent, have been inflated by SEC filings on "peer group pay." And corporate jets lower costs for companies in non-travel hubs. It's a book that might just soften one's heart for managers.

    The authors also do a fine job unpacking some of the most catastrophic organizational failures of recent times -- 9/11, the financial crisis, and the BP oil spill. Readers may not find forgiveness, but they will come away with a more nuanced view of events and a sense of how these failures could ever have happened in the first place.

    Fisman and Sullivan write in a casual, engaging fashion, a style that makes their book (let's not forget it's about organizational economics) an impressively easy read, but in some instances a touch too cute (such as when they refer to Martin Luther simply as "Martin"). Perhaps for some, they may also go off on too many tangents.

    In a few places, the authors also seem too eager to make a point. In a passage about the rising salaries of CEOs, Fisman and Sullivan suggest that one reason board members reward chief executives so lucratively is to avoid unpleasant interactions at meetings or the country club if their compensation is too low. That may be true, but in a book where almost every detail is well-argued and backed by studies and research, this logic seems a lazy and unnecessary stretch.

    So what's in store for the orgs of the future? Fisman and Sullivan doubt it will involve paperless-ness or a day in which we all work remotely from the corner Starbucks. You can look forward to more dysfunction, more give and take, and more daily grind that brings order to the org. Hold on to that serenity prayer.