Curiosidade do dia

"The adverse judgment on Brexit is not a forecast. It is a reality. "The Economic Impact of Brexit", whose authors include Stanford's Nicholas Bloom, recently published by the US National Bureau of Economic Research, delivers the verdict: its estimates "suggest that by 2025, Brexit had reduced UK GDP by 6 per cent to 8 per cent ... We estimate that investment was reduced by between 12 per cent and 18 per cent, employment by 3 per cent to 4 per cent and productivity by 3 per cent to 4 per cent." If this is even roughly correct, Brexit has been nothing short of an economic disaster. As a thought-provoking paper "Getting Britain out of the hole: A plan for the economy" by Andrew Sissons of the innovation agency Nesta and John Springford of the Centre for European Reform argues, the UK's biggest error has been to make war on its own strengths. Brexit is, arguably, the most striking example of this. 

...

No wonder so many people think Farage cannot be worse than what they have been experiencing. This is a forlorn hope: populists always make things worse. But orthodox politicians have been doing so poorly that it is indeed a perfectly natural temptation.

So, what do I hope for from Wednesday's Budget? Some sight of a workable and coherent long-term economic strategy. I do not expect it. It may already be too late. But, without that, it is hard to be optimistic about the UK's future."

 

Trechos retirados de "How to get the UK out of its economic hole" no FT de hoje. 

ISO 9001: ainda faz sentido para as PME? (parte II)

Ainda antes de ter publicado aqui no blogue "ISO 9001: ainda faz sentido para as PME?" já tinha publicado uma versão mais curta no LinkedIn "Does ISO 9001 still make sense for SMEs?" na manhã de 16 de Junho.

Termino os meus textos com uma referência aos trabalhos de Nicholas Bloom et al sobre a dificuldade no spillover das boas práticas de gestão entre empresas do mesmo sector de actividade económica num mesmo país. Como se existisse uma fricção que diminui a velocidade de propagação.

Entretanto, durante a tarde de 16 de Junho Roger Martin publicou "Influenceability, Society & Strategy - Don't Choose the Path of an Intellectual Hermit":

"the problem with uninfluenceable people

...

Society is what we construct when individual people in it interact with one another. When they interact, they influence one another and that pattern of interaction and influence shapes society.

...

People who are completely uninfluenceable can’t participate in that societal building and shaping process. By definition, uninfluenceable people can’t learn, can’t get better, and get completely stuck. 

...

If you are influenceable, you would want help from others in coming up with the most useful interpretation of the law or Bible or anything else. If you are uninfluenceable, that is simply not an option.

Why it Matters for Strategy

Influenceability is important to contemplate in strategy because strict constructionism dominates in the modern practice of strategy. The mantra is to do the analysis and then do what the analysis says. Anything else is considered to be negligent and abhorrent. The analysis is viewed as providing ‘the right answer.’ If you don’t concur, you are an anti-analysis business floozy. And that reinforces the dominant culture.

My experience of executives is that under this strict constructionist regime, they tend to become more uninfluenceable as their careers progress. They get more inclined to say: I know this business, this is the way it is always done, the analysis agrees with me, so it is what we are going to do."

Talvez exista, afinal, uma ligação entre a fraca difusão das boas práticas de gestão e a incapacidade de muitos dirigentes para se deixarem influenciar por perspectivas externas. Bloom et al mostram-nos que, mesmo dentro do mesmo sector e país, as diferenças de desempenho entre empresas podem ser abissais — não por falta de acesso à informação, mas por falta de absorção. Roger Martin, por sua vez, sugere que a influência mútua — e a abertura à influência — é condição essencial para o progresso individual e colectivo. Quando a cultura organizacional cristaliza em torno de certezas analíticas e de "modelos de sempre", deixa de haver espaço para o verdadeiro diálogo, para a escuta, para a aprendizagem.

Talvez por isso a ISO 9001, apesar da sua natureza genérica e da sua longa história, continue a fazer sentido: porque obriga a escutar, a medir, a rever e a melhorar. E, como lembra Martin, só melhora quem se deixa influenciar.

ISO 9001: ainda faz sentido para as PME?

A norma não está ultrapassada. Mas a forma como muitas empresas a aplicam, sim.

Comecei a trabalhar com a ISO 9001 entre 1989 e 1990. Na altura, Portugal era visto como um país de mão-de-obra barata dentro da recém-alargada Comunidade Económica Europeia, e eu acreditava que a ISO 9001 traria organização e disciplina às PME portuguesas, ajudando-as a competir num mercado cada vez mais exigente.

Era o tempo em que se exaltava a “Normalização” com cartazes em salas de formação — e a crença ingénua de que bastava seguir normas para atingir a excelência. Hoje, sei que isso não basta.

O colapso das PME protegidas

A semana passada assinalaram-se os 40 anos da entrada de Portugal na CEE. Esse momento histórico abriu fronteiras e eliminou barreiras alfandegárias que protegiam milhares de empresas. A consequência foi brutal: uma parte significativa da nata das PME desapareceu, incapaz de competir com as marcas europeias. As que apostavam apenas no preço ainda tiveram algum fôlego — até que a China lhes retirou até esse último trunfo.

Entretanto, muita coisa mudou. Como explica Eric Beinhocker em The Origin of Wealth, o mundo empresarial tornou-se uma paisagem competitiva enrugada, em constante mutação. Quando a vantagem do baixo custo desapareceu, as PME mais ágeis descobriram o valor da flexibilidade, da rapidez, da capacidade de adaptação. Foi esse impulso que permitiu ao peso das exportações no PIB nacional saltar de 27% para cerca de 50% num espaço de poucos anos.

Nesse mesmo período, encerrei um capítulo da minha vida profissional — a marca Redsigma, que havia fundado nos anos 90. Foi o fim de um ciclo. Mas não do meu envolvimento com a qualidade.

A ISO 9001 ainda é útil? Depende.

Hoje, continuo a acreditar que a ISO 9001 pode ser uma ferramenta valiosa para PME que não competem apenas pelo preço. Mas é fundamental que a norma seja aplicada com inteligência e intenção estratégica. O sistema de gestão da qualidade não pode existir por si só. Tem de estar ao serviço da execução da estratégia da empresa.

Infelizmente, vejo com frequência o oposto: empresas onde a ISO 9001 serve apenas para “manter o certificado”. Perdeu-se o sentido original — e, com ele, a oportunidade de transformação.

Felizmente, também tenho participado em projectos onde a ISO 9001 é muito mais do que um exercício burocrático. Nestes casos, torna-se um catalisador para melhorar processos, alinhar equipas e reforçar a competitividade.

A grande lição de Bloom e Oberholzer-Gee

Recentemente, revisitei uma ideia poderosa no livro "Better, Simpler Strategy" de Felix Oberholzer-Gee: há mais variação de desempenho entre empresas do mesmo sector do que entre sectores diferentes. Ou seja, empresas a operar no mesmo país, no mesmo sector de actividade, sob as mesmas leis, impostos e mão-de-obra, apresentam resultados muito diferentes. Porquê? Pela estratégia que escolhem e pelas práticas de gestão que adoptam.

Muitos acreditam que as boas práticas de gestão estão amplamente difundidas. Mas Nicholas Bloom e John Van Reenen demonstraram o contrário em estudos amplamente citados. A sua investigação, publicada no Quarterly Journal of Economics, mostra que as diferenças na qualidade da gestão são profundas — mesmo entre empresas semelhantes.

O que estes dados nos dizem é claro: há milhares de empresas que continuam a não fazer o básico bem feito. A ISO 9001, aplicada com seriedade, pode ser esse “básico” — mas tem de ser usada como instrumento de melhoria do desempenho, e não como um selo decorativo de conformidade.

Se é empresário e sente que o seu sistema de gestão da qualidade já não serve os propósitos actuais da sua empresa — ou se precisa de criar um sistema de raiz que realmente apoie o crescimento sustentável do seu negócio — contacte-me para uma conversa inicial, sem compromisso: metanoia at metanoia.pt

Não basta certificar. É preciso transformar. E isso começa com uma decisão.

O futuro passa por aqui

"Bloom grew out of work pursued by three scientists at Switzerland's École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, where they developed a process to extract lignin and cellulose from plant material - substances commonly discarded as waste, but which can be used to create high-value chemicals.

...

Bloom has now started working with partners, including the European flavourings and chemicals giant DSM Firmenich, to develop plant-based products for use in cosmetics, perfumes, food additives and packaging.

Bloom co-founder Florent Héroguel told me that its future products would be safer for users and less damaging to the environment, in terms of both carbon emissions and toxic waste.

While the technology could also be used to produce liquid fuels, he said,

Bloom will focus for the foreseeable future on low-volume, high-value speciality products. "That's the way to get margins in the development phase," Héroguel said.

...

Flamini argues that his sector has opportunities to benefit as European regulators tighten standards around "forever chemicals" and other potentially toxic products.

...

in order to gain serious scale, they will need to focus on eliminating the cost premium of their product over the existing fossil-based options."

Trechos retirados do FT de hoje em "Switzerland's Bloom hopes to lead a resurgence in biomaterials sector" 

Falta a parte dolorosa da transição

 Um artigo interessante na revista The Economist, "Britain | The low-wage economy - Britain's failed experiment in boosting low-wage sectors":

"Choking off immigration to make low-wage sectors more productive was never going to work

The BREXITEER plan to end free movement from the European Union was not only about satisfying popular hostility to immigration. Leavers also talked of fixing Britain's perennial productivity problems. Boris Johnson, as prime minister in 2021, described a future that was "high wage, high skill, high productivity", and would be realised only if Britain kicked its addiction to cheap foreign labour.

...

Businesses show little sign of investing more or raising wages to attract more domestic workers, says Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics at King's College London.

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A lack of commitment was not the only reason the Brexiteers' experiment failed. The thinking behind it was also faulty. The real productivity problem starts at home. A significant factor is the poor quality of British managers, according to John Van Reenen and Nick Bloom, two economists who have conducted international surveys. Other research suggests that this is especially true in low-wage sectors."

Portanto a ideia de Boris Johnson era:

• 1.A produtividade é baixa porque o acesso a mão de obra barata não impele as empresas a aumentarem a sua produtividade. 2.Então, se cortarmos o acesso a mão de obra barata as empresas vão ter de aumentar a sua produtividade para poderem pagar salários mais altos. 3.Assim, os britânicos poderiam aspirar a "high wage, high skill, high productivity".

De acordo com a minha experiência, na frase acima:

• O período 1 é verdadeiro. É o que vêmos em Portugal, fábricas e turismo a quererem importar mão de obra barata para poder manter as coisas como estão - recordo as bofetadas na cara em - Uma bofetada que recebo como um aviso, Bofetadas e locus de controlo - produtividade é que não., e Mais bofetadas e a turbulência em curso. Este é o quadrante do empobrecimento na figura abaixo, o quadrante em que as empresas são competitivas sem ser produtivas.

• O período 2 é verdadeiro. Mas é insuficiente. Pagar melhores salários implica cobrar preços mais elevados aos clientes e os clientes não estão para aí virados se não houver uma vantagem competitiva por parte das empresas. É o quadrante da baixa produtividade e baixa competitividade. O aumento do preço é feito sem contrapartidas para os clientes, e esse aumento não é desviado para melhorar a competitividade da empresa via produtividade, mas para pagar os custos mais altos. Nunca esquecer o caso do Uganda. É tão fácil e comum os políticos (e não só) confundirem mais competitividade com mais produtividade. O problema é o quadrante do empobrecimento.
• O período 3 é falso, é rotundamente falso porque falta a parte dolorosa da transição. Falta criar as condições para os flying geese (A mudança bottom-up!, The "flying geese" model, ou deixem as empresas morrer!!!). É preciso deixar as empresas morrer (e como isto é dificil politicamente, os desempregados são eleitores). No entanto, o que se faz é apoiar essas empresas para que dêem o salto de produtividade ... a sério?! Quantas usam o apoio, (sem maldade, simplesmente porque é a única coisa que sabem fazer), para manter os preços baixos e aguentar mais um ano, como Spender ilustrou com as fundições inglesas.

        O Japão não ficou rico a produzir vestuário de forma muito, 

        muito eficiente. Taiwan não ficou rica a produzir rádios 

        de bolso de forma muito, muito eficiente.

O tema dos flying geese ilustra bem a quase irrelevância desta frase tão comum em Inglaterra e em Portugal: "The real productivity problem starts at home. A significant factor is the poor quality of British managers". Acham que os melhores gestores do mundo iriam conseguir pôr o sector do vestuário com um nível produtividade capaz de ombrear com a média europeia? Só no Batalha e no Largo do Rato (e na sede nacional do PSD, et al também).

"high wage, high skill, high productivity" tem de ser resultado de outro perfil de economia... olhar outra vez para o esquema dos flying geese. BTW, nem pensem que conseguem aumentar a produtividade para o nível médio europeu com o mesmo perfil de sectores económicos mas em grande.

Recomendo recordar a noite em que, na minha leitura, morreu a chama de primeiro-ministro de Cavaco Silva em Também estava escrito nas estrelas.

Diferentes forças em jogo

Na primeira página do WSJ do passado dia 12 de Abril pode ler-se:

"The idea came to Johnny Taylor Jr. early last year, after one of his employees made a case that her technology position could be done anywhere. She wanted to leave Virginia, where she held job at the Society for Human Resource Management, a professional association based in Alexandria. She asked to work remotely in North Carolina.

"Then a lightbulb went off," said Mr. Taylor, the association's chief executive.

Instead of having the employee work in another state, he outsourced her job to India, where his organization is saving around 40% in labor costs, he said.

Welcome to the next wave of remote work. During the pandemic millions of people in the U.S. worked from home and many decamped to cities such as Boise, Austin and Phoenix. Companies learned that employees could be productive from afar because of remote-working tech like Zoom and Dropbox.

Those moves were usually at the behest of workers who wanted a change of environment, sought more living space or somewhere cheaper. Companies agreed to these arrangements largely to retain employees in a competitive labor market.

Now companies are responding to lingering labor shortages and rising wages by sending jobs overseas, according to labor consultants.

...

The exodus of office jobs overseas is still a trickle. But it is accelerating and some economists see it as the beginning of a new era. About 10% to 20% of U.S. service support jobs such as software developers, human-resources professionals and payroll administrators could move overseas in the next decade, according to Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University."

Entretanto, ontem  durante a minha caminhada matinal li:

• Só 4% das empresas com alta maturidade em people analytics. Falta talento qualificado e compreensão sobre potencial dos dados
• Taxa de desemprego na OCDE em mínimo histórico dos últimos 22 anos
• Playing With Fire - ChatGPT (muito interessante)
• The Great Stapler Crisis: The End Of Tech Company Perks? (muito interessante)

Entretanto, nos últimos dias publicámos aqui:

• Qual será o resultado deste choque?
• Por que se pedem paletes de mão de obra estrangeira barata? (Parte II)

Diferentes forças em jogo e a provocar mudanças ao nível do mercado do trabalho, das empresas e dos trabalhadores. Como é que isto vai influenciar o futuro da sua empresa? 

Entretanto, Carga fiscal dispara para 36,4% do PIB e bate novo recorde em 2022.

O fim da globalização (parte IV)

Recently leaked China's population data confirm my estimates: births began to decline in 1991, with no peak in 2004 or 2011; Population is now less than 1.28 billion, not the official 1.41 billion; Population began to shrink in 2018, not 2031 as officially predicted. pic.twitter.com/xCge7cTRFS

— 易富贤YI Fuxian《大国空巢》 (@fuxianyi) July 9, 2022

Parte I, parte II  e parte III.

"The average grocery store today has about forty thousand individual items, up from about two hundred at the dawn of the twentieth century.

...

Take this concept of utter availability, apply it to absolutely everything, and you now have a glimmer of the absolute connectivity that underpins the modern, globalized economy. The ingredients of today’s industrial and consumer goods are only available because they can be moved from—literally—halfway around the world at low costs and high speeds and in perfect security. Phones, fertilizers, oil, cherries, propylene, single-malt whiskey . . . you name it, it is in motion. All. The. Time. Transportation is the ultimate enabler.

...

The East India Company traded about 50 tons of tea a year at the start of the nineteenth century and 15,000 toward the end of it. Today that same 15,000 tons is loaded or unloaded somewhere in the world every forty-five seconds or so.

...

In the age of globalization, everyone could get in on global access, manufacturing, and mass consumption. No longer was value-added work sequestered to the Imperial Centers. Manufacturing elsewhere required fuel and raw materials. Expanding industrial bases and infrastructure elsewhere required the same. Expanding middle classes elsewhere demanded even more.

...

In a world "safe" for all, the world's "successful" geographies could no longer lord over and/or exploit the rest. A somewhat unintended side effect of this was to demote geography from its fairly deterministic role in gauging the success or failure of a country, to something that became little more than background noise. Those geographies once left behind could now bloom in safety.

...

The ability to diversify supply systems over any distance means it is economically advantageous to break up manufacturing into dozens, even thousands of individual steps. Workers building this or that tiny piece of widget become very good at it, but they are clueless as to the rest of the process. The workforce that purifies silicon dioxide does not and cannot create silicon wafers, does not and cannot build motherboards, and does not and cannot code.

This combination of reach and specialization takes us to a very clear, and foreboding, conclusion: no longer do the goods consumed in a place by a people reflect the goods produced in a place by a people. The geographies of consumption and production are unmoored."

Segundo o autor de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning", Peter Zeihan, a globalização está a descarrilar pelo descalabro demográfico nos países produtores e consumidores, e pelo fim da Ordem Americana. Há muito que escrevo sobre a desglobalização, mas por causa de Mongo. A demografia é uma variável que raramente é considerada como refiro na parte III. 

Porque falham as transformações

"The Four Most Common Failure Modes for Transformative Innovations in Large Organizations

.

Too late.  Leaders recognize the need for new growth but don’t commit to it until their competitors have already seized the opportunity.

Too few resources.  Leaders appropriately organize and adopt long-term growth initiatives but fail to allocate sufficient dollars, the right people, and enough of their own mindshare to sustain them.

Impatience for growth.  Many transformative ventures are slow to bloom. Perhaps an early business experiment fails or has slower than expected results. Instead of redesigning the experiment to learn more, senior leadership pulls the plug. Or maybe it experiences some early-stage success and senior leadership demands that it be scaled up before all of its premises have been thoroughly tested, causing the venture to make a fatal stumble.

Competition from the core.  A challenge with growth in the core may cause resources to be diverted away from a promising new venture. Or, in a misguided attempt to restore organizational efficiencies, leadership might “cram” a successful new venture back into the core prematurely, causing it to lose the unique attributes that were responsible for its success."

Eu acrescentaria um quinto factor: a falta de foco, a falta de instinto de matador. Até se indentifica a necessidade de mudança, mas não se muda, mas não se tem fogo no rabo.

Trecho retirado de “Lead from the Future” de Josh Suskewicz.

Desigualdade, heterogeneidade e produtividade

Um artigo interessante sobre o aumento da desigualdade entre assalariados nos Estados Unidos. As conclusões estarão em linha com outros estudos feitos para o Reino Unido, Alemanha, Suécia e Brasil.

"In this article, we study the contribution of firms and the role of worker composition between firms in the rise in earnings inequality in the United States using a longitudinal data set covering workers and firms for the entire U.S. labor market from 1978 to 2013. Our data set has several key advantages for studying firms and inequality: it is the only U.S. data set covering 100% of workers and firms for the entire period of the rise in inequality,...Our first main result is that the rise in the dispersion between firms in firm average annual earnings accounts for the majority of the increase in total earnings inequality.
…First, the rise in earnings inequality between workers over the past three decades is strongly associated with their employers. Two-thirds of the increase in the variance of log earnings from 1981 to 2013 can be accounted for by a rise in the dispersion of average earnings between firms and one-third by a rise in the differences in earnings between workers within firms..Second, examining the sources of the increase in between firm inequality, we find that it has been driven about equally by increased employee sorting (i.e., high-wage workers are increasingly found at high-wage firms) and segregation (i.e., highly paid employees are increasingly clustering in high-wage firms with other high-paid workers, while low-paid employees are clustering in other firms).…Third, the distribution of firm fixed effects themselves accounts for essentially none of the rise in inequality. Instead, about two-thirds of the rise in inequality is accounted for by rising variance in individual fixed effects, potentially due to rising returns to skill.…Fourth, the rise in within-firm inequality is concentrated in large firms with 1,000+ employees (and even more so in mega firms). This is driven by a fall in the earnings premium in large firms for median- and lower-paid employees and by rising earnings for the top 10% of employees."

Nunca esquecer o quanto os políticos, académicos e paineleiros (a minha famosa tríade) desconhecem esta realidade da heterogeneidade crescente entre empresas, mesmo dentro do mesmo sector. Recordar: "A distribuição de produtividades está a aumentar"

"Firming up inequality" de Jae Song, David Price, Fatih Guvenen, Nicholas Bloom e Till von Wachter, publicado por The Quarterly Journal of Economics - Vol. 134 2019 issue 1

Teorias e periferias

Ontem ao ler "How to Survive a Recession and Thrive Afterward" fixei-me neste trecho:

"In a 2017 study, Raffaella Sadun (of Harvard Business School), Philippe Aghion (of Collège de France), Nicholas Bloom and Brian Lucking (of Stanford), and John Van Reenen (of MIT) examined how organizational structure affects a company’s ability to navigate downturns. On the one hand, “the need to make tough decisions may favor centralized firms,” the researchers write, because they have a better picture of the organization as a whole and their incentives are typically more closely aligned with company performance. On the other hand, decentralized firms may be better positioned to weather macro shocks “because the value of local information increases.”"

Fiz logo a ponte para algo que li em "Seeing around corners" de Rita McGrath:

"Evidence of an emerging inflection point doesn’t present itself neatly on the conference table in the corporate boardroom. It is the people who are directly in contact with the phenomenon who usually notice changes early.
...
If snow melts from the edges, it behooves you to have mechanisms in place to see what is going on there.
...
A very common reason that leaders miss potentially important inflection points is that they are isolated from the people who could tell them what is really going on.
...
Snow melts from the edges. The changes that are going to fundamentally influence the future of your business are brewing on the periphery. To avoid being taken by surprise by an inflection point, you need to be exposed to what is happening at the edges.
The upheavals created by major strategic inflection points usually take quite some time to unfold. They are also not “complete” when you first see them. But if you are paying attention, you can begin to see the implications of their trajectory early on, when it is still possible to influence them."

E pensei nas empresas daqueles sectores que estão com evoluções negativas:

Já têm alguma teoria sobre o que se está a passar?

Quem está na periferia onde a neve derrete primeiro?

Um mar de heterogeneidade (Parte II)

Parte I.

Resolvi ir à procura do paper na origem do artigo citado na Parte I. Assim, cheguei a "What Drives Differences in Management Practices?" de Nicholas Bloom, Erik Brynjolfsson, Lucia Foster, Ron Jarmin, Megha Patnaik, Itay Saporta-Eksten, e John Van Reenen, publicado por American Economic Review 2019, 109(5): 1648–1683, e valeu a pena:

"There are compelling theoretical reasons to expect that management matters for performance. ... management practices are a key reason for persistent performance differences across firms due to relational contracts. ... “engagement traps” can lead to heterogeneity in the adoption of practices even when firms are ex ante identical.
...
The relationship between management practices and performance also holds over time within plants (plants that adopted more of these practices saw improvements in their performance) and across establishments within firms at a point in time (establishments within the same firm with more structured management practices achieve better performance outcomes).
.
The magnitude of the productivity-management relationship is large. Increasing structured management from the tenth to ninetieth percentile can account for about 22 percent of the comparable 90–10 spread in productivity. This is about the same as R&D, more than human capital, and almost twice as much as Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). ... variation in management practices is likely a key factor accounting for the much-discussed heterogeneity in firm productivity. Technology, human capital, and management are interrelated but distinct: when we examine them jointly, we find they account for about 44 percent of productivity dispersion.
...
First, there is enormous inter-plant variation in management practices. Although 18 percent of establishments adopt three-quarters or more of a package of basic structured management practices regarding monitoring, targets, and incentives, 27 percent of establishments adopt less than one-half of  such practices. Second, about 40 percent of the variation in management practices is across plants within the same firm. That is, in multi-plant firms, there is considerable variation in practices across units. ... Third, these variations in management practices are increasing in firm size. That is, larger firms have substantially more variation in management practices. This appears to be largely explained by the greater spread of larger firms across different geographies and industries.
...
To investigate learning spillovers,
...
Comparing the counties that “won” the large, typically multinational plant versus the county that narrowly “lost,” we find a significant positive impact on the management practices of incumbent plants in the county. Importantly, the positive spillovers only arise if the plant is in an industry where there are frequent flows in managerial labor from the MDP’s industry, [Moi ici: MDP = Million Dolar Plant] suggesting that the movement of managers is a mechanism through which learning occurs. We also show positive impacts on jobs and productivity."

Um mar de heterogeneidade (Parte I)

"Why are some companies more productive than others? And why do certain divisions within those companies perform better than others do? Research has shown that top performers tend to invest more in research and development, adopt better technology, and employ a more educated workforce. [Moi ici: Poderíamos resumir, depois do que temos lido de Felin e Zenger que "Top performers haver better theories"]
...
Nicholas A. Bloom [Moi ici: Um velho conhecido deste blogue] ... found that management practices accounted for about one-fifth of the variation in productivity among plants. Management style had the same effect as R&D spending — and twice the impact of technology spending — in explaining productivity differences.
.
“There’s an overwhelmingly strong relationship between structured management and performance,” Bloom says.
...
The researchers found that plants where managers carefully monitored the manufacturing process, production targets, and employee performance, and used that data to inform decisions, were more successful. Plants where leaders infrequently reviewed performance indicators and targets, and promoted employees based on tenure or connections rather than achievement, fared worse. These links remained strong after controlling for workers’ education level, the age of the plant and firm, and a wide range of other factors. Plants with more structured management performed better than other sites within the same firm, and plants that adopted more of these strategies saw their performance improve over time.
...
One takeaway of the study was just how differently plants are managed, even within the same state or industry. In fact, 40% of the total difference in productivity was among plants within the same firm. [Moi ici: Algo sobre o qual escrevemos aqui há milhares de anos] That means that the attributes of a CEO, corporate governance, and company ownership can’t easily explain a large share of the differences in management practices.
.
“It’s astounding,” Bloom says. “Some managers monitor huge amounts of data, and others seem to operate entirely by gut instinct.” [Moi ici: Uma classificação que quem anda no terreno nunca faria, é o pão nosso de cada dia]
...
“You would think all firms would be well-managed and doing the right thing, but they’re not,” Bloom says. “I guess firms are like people — we all have our faults.” [Moi ici: Come on Bloom, esperava que já estivesses mais calejado nestas cenas]"

Trechos retirados de "How Much Does Management Matter to Productivity?"

Desigualdade e empresas

Há anos que escrevo e defendo esta tese "Corporations in the Age of Inequality".

Basta pesquisar o marcador "distribuição de produtividades" e a frase "há maior variabilidade dentro de um mesmo sector de actividade do que entre sectores de actividade"

Na economia do século XX havia basicamente uma estratégia a seguir, a do preço, a do crescimento da quota de mercado, a do aumento da eficiência, a da localização no denominador da equação da produtividade.

Há medida que a economia do século XXI avança, uma economia onde há muito mais estratégias alternativas que não a do preço tout court, e recordo a imagem:

Diferentes abordagens estratégicas geram diferentes distribuições de produtividades e permitem diferentes rentabilidades. Assim, as diferenças entre empresas do mesmo sector começam a aumentar.

"Whereas many economists focus on inequality between individuals, Bloom’s view is filtered through his early work as a consultant at McKinsey, where he became interested in the impact of good management on the economy. “Economists have long dismissed the importance of management practices and were often skeptical of the value of management research,” says Bloom.
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Bloom was amazed by the variation in management practices he saw among clients — and by how convinced each client was that theirs was the best way.
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Bloom shares his research on the role firms and management play in the rise of income inequality. He highlights how competitive forces and corporate decision making have contributed to divergent outcomes for individuals and suggests that inequality can’t be fully understood without thinking about companies.
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Companies can contribute to rising income inequality in two ways. As we’ve just discussed, pay gaps can increase within companies — between how much executives and administrative assistants are paid, for example. But studies now show that gaps between companies are the real drivers of income inequality.
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We found that the average wages at the firms employing individuals at the top of the income distribution have increased rapidly, while those at the firms employing people in the lower income percentiles have increased far less.
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In other words, the increasing inequality we’ve seen for individuals is mirrored by increasing inequality between firms. But the wage gap is not increasing as much inside firms, our research shows. This may tend to make inequality less visible, because people do not see it rising in their own workplace."

Produtividade e gestão

"We turn to a long-standing question in economics, stretching back to at least Walker (1887), of how much of the variation in national and firm performance can be accounted for by di erences in management practices?
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Overall, on average 30% of the cross country gap in TFP appears to be management related. This fraction varies a lot between countries. In general we account for a smaller fraction of the TFP gap between the U.S. and low income countries like Zambia (6.2%), Ghana (9.7%), and Tanzania (12%), which is likely to be because these countries have much greater problems than just management quality. We account for a larger fraction of the TFP gap between the U.S. and richer countries like Sweden (43.9%), Italy (48.9%) and France (52.3%). Figure A4 graphically illustrates this, showing that more developed countries have a higher share of their TFP gap accounted for by di erences in management.
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Economists, business people and many policymakers have long believed that management practices are an important element in productivity."

Trechos retirados de "Management as a Technology?" de Nicholas Bloom; Raffaella Sadun e John Van Reenen. HBS Working Paper 16-133

Curiosidade do dia

Ontem em "Gestores portugueses estão entre os menos competentes" o JdN publicou a seguinte figura:

Segundo o jornal a fonte é "The New Empirical Economics of Management", de Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, Daniela Scur e John Van Reenen, publicado em Abril de 2014.
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Só que a figura da fonte é diferente:

Olha, até estamos à frente da Irlanda e da Espanha... aposto que o JdN preferiu ir buscar a figura do gráfico da versão de 2012, porque lhe dava jeito para a narrativa do "bota abaixo":

Mongo e a dispersão da produtividade

"Bloom et al. (2012) find rising volatility of plant-level TFP shocks in the U.S. manufacturing sector after 1990. Decker et al. (2014b) find that the intra-industry dispersion of plant-level total factor productivity rose, not fell, in the past quarter century."

"We undertake two types of exercises. First, we examine the evolution of the within-industry dispersion in (log) TFP. This is a proxy for the intensity of idiosyncratic shocks impacting establishments. Figure 17 shows the evolution of the within-industry 90-10 gap in productivity and the standard deviation of (log) TFP. Consistent with the literature  there is large dispersion in TFP across plants in the same industry.
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Moreover, the evidence suggests that this dispersion is, if anything, rising over time. One concern might be that this measured dispersion is capturing permanent differences across plants.

Primeiro trecho retirado de "Labor Marlket Fluidity and Economic Performance"
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Segundo trecho retirado de "The Secular Decline in Business Dynamism in the U.S."

"Let a thousand business models bloom"

Este texto "Our Obsession With Scalability Must End" deixou-me sem palavras.

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Encontrar um texto escrito por alguém num outro continente, a 30 de Outubro de 2014, e tão sintonizado e alinhado com o que aqui escrevemos há muitos anos. Quando escrevemos sobre Mongo, sobre o Estranhistão, sobre o eficientismo, sobre o denominador versus o numerador, sobre a interacção para co-criar valor, sobre a polarização dos mercados, sobre o não querermos, como clientes, ser tratados como miudagem, ser tratados como plankton.
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Isto é música celestial para PME, pena que a mensagem não chegue com a celeridade necessária aos empresários:

"Our obsession with scalability is getting in the way of unleashing the potential of the 21st century. [Moi ici: Escala versus interacção, volume versus à medida, vómito versus personalização] We are so fixated with scalability we have taken our eye off of delivering value at every scale including the most important scale of one. [Moi ici: O cliente deixa de ser uma pessoa, uma empresa concreta e, passa a ser um substantivo colectivo, como a miudagem, como o plankton] The Industrial Era did that to us. Reaching the mass market takes precedence over delivering value to each customer.
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The Industrial Era brought us the reign of the predominant business model. Every industry quickly became dominated by one business model that defined the rules, roles, and practices for all competitors and stakeholders. We became a nation of share takers clamoring to replicate industry best practices to gain or protect every precious market share point. Companies moved up or down industry leadership rankings based on their ability to compete for market share. Business schools minted CEOs who became share-taking clones of one another. It was all about scale. Bigger was always better.
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Institutional leaders are even more obsessed with scalability than entrepreneurs. They fixate on protecting their current scale and assess all new customer value creating ideas through the lens of their current business model.  ...  This is why CEO’s are so hungry for merger and acquisition opportunities. It’s all about scale, not changing the customer value equation.  New business models force institutional leaders to rethink scalability.
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We live in an era that screams for less share taking and more market making. Market makers don’t accept the idea that a predominant business model has to dictate the industry landscape.  [Moi ici: E falamos aqui sobre ecossistemas e market scripting, desenhar mercados como um pintor pinta quadros] They create a new market with a different playbook. ... Today’s consumers refuse to accept that there is only one predominant business model in every industry and that they have to take or leave its offerings.  Consumers now demand personalized experiences, products, and services.
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Consumers are bringing the era of the predominant business model to an end. Business models don’t last as long as they used to. Predominant business models are crumbling all around us.
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It’s time end our obsession with scalability. There are too many consumer, student, patient, and citizen needs left unmet by predominant business models in every industry. There are too many new business model concepts stuck on white boards and in consulting decks.  We are still allowing predominant business models to slow down and block the emergence of new business models that can better meet our needs.  It’s time to move from the era of the predominant business model to the era of business model proliferation. Let a thousand business models bloom." [Moi ici: Recordar]

Este texto resume bem as ideias deste blogue e da mensagem de esperança que elas encerram.

Influência da legislação e das instituições portuguesas na dimensão típica das PMEs

Com frequência, encontro nos media o discurso sobre necessidade das PMEs portuguesas crescerem, para serem mais produtivas.
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Entretanto, em "The New Empirical Economics of Management" de Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, Daniela Scur e John Van Reenen, reencontro este facto:

"using data on the population of manufacturing firms for France (following Gibrat) and the US we plot the firm size distribution in Figure 3. 

The power law implies that in log-log space there is a negative linear relationship between firm size and density, which is what we observe for the US data, except for the far right tail. France looks similar except for a break at 50 employees, which is an important regulatory threshold for labor laws. Garicano, Lelarge and Van Reenen (2013) discuss how the presence of many regulatory “taxes” that begin when the firm reaches 50 employees implies a broken power law exactly as described by the data."

Qual será a influência da legislação e das instituições portuguesas na dimensão típica das PMEs portuguesas?

Acerca das barreiras

Recente, deste Abril passado, a versão de 2014 de "The New Empirical Economics of Management" de Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, Daniela Scur e John Van Reenen.
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Algumas ideias:

"management does indeed appear to be important in accounting for the large differences in cross-country Total Factor Productivity (TFP) as well as within-country differences. [Moi ici: Por isso, é importante não erguer barreiras à entrada ou à saída. Por isso, é importante não proteger os incumbentes. Os clientes, com o seu bolso, que escolham livremente quem tem direito a viver]
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Competitive intensity is one important and robust factor in raising management quality,  [Moi ici: Como não pensar no lastro mental de centenas de anos de influência da CoroaEstado para minimizar a concorrência, para manter o status-quo e impedir a destruição criativa. A elite não pode ser prejudicada e correr o risco de perder] as is ownership and governance (e.g. family firms appear to have weak management on average).
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Much of aggregate productivity growth is from the reallocation of output away from less productive firms towards more productive firms.  [Moi ici: Por isso, é importante não erguer barreiras à entrada ou à saída. Por isso, é importante não proteger os incumbentes] This reallocation can take place on the extensive margin as less productive firms exit and more productive firms enter. ... But reallocation can also take place on the intensive margin as market shares get reallocated among incumbents away from the least efficient and towards the more efficient firms.
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analyzed data from US manufacturing plants and argued that over a five year period about half of a typical industry’s TFP growth was due to the reallocation of output between plants rather than ongoing incumbent within plant productivity growth."  [Moi ici: Por isso, é importante não erguer barreiras à entrada ou à saída. Por isso, é importante não proteger os incumbentes]

Continua.

We will be weird

Regressando ao primeiro postal em que usei a designação "Estranhistão", recupero esta figura do livro "We are all weird" de Seth Godin:

Tudo por causa deste trecho:

"The most-downloaded e-books in the three months were Inferno and titles by self-published authors using Kindle Direct Publishing, including No-One Ever Has Sex On a Tuesday by Tracy Bloom and The Magpies by Mark Edwards."

O que resta da massa compra o Dan Brown, mas o que a massa compra é igualado pelo que as tribos compram.
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Este trecho, também é um sintoma do que se passa:

"As lojas de discos independentes (Moi ici: Não são comandadas centralmente por uns gestores que só lêem folhas de excel e não têm grunhos ignorantes a aturar clientes nas lojas, têm à frente do balcão gente que fala com os clientes e que tem acesso a quem decide a vida da loja. Lojas independentes cheira sempre a David e a estratégias de guerrilha) no Reino Unido registaram um aumento homólogo de 44% nas vendas nos primeiros seis meses do ano, apoiadas sobretudo na venda de álbuns em vinil. (Moi ici: Tribos, tribos, tribos)
De acordo com uma análise da associação de retalhistas do Reino Unido, hoje noticiada pela revista britânica Uncut, a queda de 1,5% no global das lojas contrasta com um aumento expressivo de vendas nas lojas independentes. (Moi ici: Um contraste significativo!!! Este é o sintoma que devia ser o alvo das atenções. É o excêntrico que está a crescer não o mainstream!!!)
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Em 2012, as vendas de vinil em todos os géneros subiram 15% no Reino Unido, o maior avanço desde 2004, revela a associação de retalhistas." (Moi ici: Parece um fenómeno em ascensão)