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You would never hear a management consultant advise a company to create a more cutthroat environment. "You know what we need here? Fear. More backstabbing."
管理咨詢師絕對不會建議公司進一步激化內部已然殘酷而激烈的內部競爭。他們絕不會這么說：“知道我們要怎么做嗎？我們得讓員工心生恐懼、勾心斗角。”
No, collaboration seems to be the word of choice for management experts and informed CEOs alike. "Collaboration is fundamentally the best approach towards management," says Michael Serino, executive director of Human Capital Development at Cornell's Industrial and Labor Relations School. Whether it's accurate or not, most people in business today tend to believe that collaborative work delivers better results.
管理專家和明智的首席執行官都會選擇協作，而非競爭。康奈爾大學工業及勞工關系學院（Human Capital Development at Cornell's Industrial and Labor Relations School）人力資本開發執行主任邁克爾·塞利諾稱：“從根本上而言，協作是最佳的管理方式。”不論是否果真如此，而今大多數商界人士都認為，通力協作能帶來更好的結果。
And yet, several Fortune 500 companies foster competitive internal environments. Consulting companies and law firms are famous for this. They tend to have an "up or out" promotion model — everybody wants to make partner, and after a certain point, people either move up to those coveted positions or they are encouraged to find employment elsewhere.
然而，一些財富500強公司卻在培養競爭性的內部環境。咨詢公司和律師事務所在這方面比較典型。他們的晉升模式是“不升職就離職”。每個人都想成為合伙人，到了一定的階段，要么如愿以償，獲得眾人夢寐以求的合伙人地位，要么公司就會鼓勵他們另謀高就。
Take Goldman Sachs (GS). Every couple of years, the company promotes roughly a hundred employees to partner. It's a big deal — those select few receive a significant raise in salary and equity in the company. But there are fewer than 500 partners out of 35,000 employees at the firm. People are weeded out on the way up, and though it's rare, they can even get de-partnered once they reach the top.
以高盛公司（Goldman Sachs）為例。每隔幾年，公司都會提升大約一百位員工成為合伙人。成為合伙人意義重大，他們的薪水和公司股權都會大幅增加。但公司35,000名員工中總計只有不到500名合伙人。員工在晉升階梯上會被逐步淘汰。此外，即使員工已經做到了最高的合伙人職位，也有可能被撤銷職位，當然這種情況比較少見。
Other companies have implemented hiring practices that would seem to spur internal competition. Former GE CEO Jack Welch was known for championing a "forced ranking" system. Top GE (GE) executives would rank employees by performance, and they generally let the bottom 10% go. PepsiCo is also known for having a high churn rate among employees. "It seems to work for them," says Mark Jaffe, president of executive search firm Wyatt & Jaffe, adding that the people who survive the system carry that cachet with them when they look for other jobs.
其他公司采取的一些用人措施可能會激發企業內部的競爭。眾所周知，通用電氣（GE）前任首席執行官杰克??韋爾奇大力支持“末位淘汰制”。通用電氣的高管根據業績對員工進行排名，一般來說，墊底的10%必須走人。百事可樂公司（PepsiCo）的員工流動率也相當高。懷亞特·杰婓高管獵頭公司（Wyatt & Jaffe）總裁馬克·杰婓稱：“這些方法對他們來說似乎同樣奏效。”他還表示，能夠順利通過排名考驗的員工在今后跳槽時也會因此而增加求職的砝碼
That can help mitigate the negative effects of an up-or-out model, such as having your staff feel terrified of losing their jobs. "If you think about McKinsey, it has always been an example of 'up or out,' but 'out' is not such a bad place," Serino says. People who leave often get good offers elsewhere. He adds, "The rules of the game are very clear to everybody coming in. It's up or out, ranked performance, it's, 'go go go.'"
這能降低“不升職就離職”的負面影響，比如員工不會再那么擔憂失去工作了。塞利諾稱：“麥肯錫咨詢公司（McKinsey）就是‘不升職就離職’的典型，但‘離職’也并非一定是壞事。”辭職的員工常常能在其他公司尋得滿意職位。他補充說：“公司每個人都對這個游戲規則心知肚明。不論是‘不升職就離職’，還是末位淘汰制，核心就是‘加油、加油、加油’。”
Still, there is a down side to the competitive environment. For one, employees who feel pitted against one another can devote valuable time and energy trying to figure out how to outshine their peers, instead of trying to figure out how to best contribute to projects, says Serino.
然而，競爭性環境也存在著負面影響。塞利諾表示，如果員工感受到內部競爭的壓力，他們會把寶貴的時間和精力用于琢磨如何搶同事風頭，而不是努力思考如何把工作干好。
Also, there's strong evidence that some employees perform worse just knowing they're going to be ranked. In a controlled study of a randomized group of employees at Amazon's crowd-sourcing website Mechanical Turk, Wharton professor Iwan Barankay found that participants who knew they were ranked were generally less productive than those who didn't, and that's especially true for people who found out that they performed worse than their peers. The news didn't motivate them, they just checked out.
同樣，有明顯的證據表明，如果一些員工得知公司對他們進行排名，他們的業績表現會更差。沃頓商學院（Wharton）教授伊萬·巴蘭吉在亞馬遜（Amazon）旗下的服務網站、機械土耳其人（Mechanical Turk）公司中隨機抽取了一組員工進行對照研究。他發現，如果參與者知道公司對自己進行業績排名，他們的效率會比那些不知情的參與者更低。如果人們發現自己排名比同事還低，那就更是如此。這種信息并未激發他們的積極性，而是促使他們選擇離開。
