O crescimento da desigualdade

Quando se fala no aumento da desigualdade social eu penso logo nisto "‘Gazelles’ widen company growth gap" como a verdadeira causa:

"The divide between midsized UK companies that are merely surviving and the better-performing “gazelles” is widening, according to a new report.
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Figures compiled by Experian, the credit checking agency, noted that although the overall number of medium-sized companies – defined as those with turnover of £2.5m-£100m – has been broadly flat at 24,955 over the past 12 months, the number of businesses within that group which have achieved high levels of growth has increased by 10 per cent to 4,353."

É a velha história que os macroeconomistas não incluem nos seus modelos, qualquer sector de actividade económica está carregado de heterogeneidade, de variabilidade, de diversidade de abordagens, de diversidade de visões, de diversidade de interpretações do que é problema e do que é solução. E é essa diversidade que torna as sociedades e as economias resilientes.
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Recordar a série "Lugar do Senhor dos Perdões", com especial relevo para as partes II e III.

Resultados da concorrência imperfeita

Um tema que me é muito querido, "Corporate Inequality Is the Defining Fact of Business Today".
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Em Maio de 2010 comecei a usar o marcador "distribuição de produtividades" com "Clientes-alvo e Valor (parte II)" depois de no dia anterior ter escrito "A realidade e a teoria".
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Em Junho de 2010 comecei a usar o marcador "idiossincrasias" com "Lugar do Senhor dos Perdões (parte II)"
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Assim, na linha de "Desigualdade e estratégia" é quase estranho perceber que para muito economista teórico isto é uma barbaridade:

"Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of economic inequality has been the role that firms play in it.
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The best-performing companies seem to be pulling away from the rest, according to a growing body of research, and that fact explains a large part of the growth in inequality between individuals. The result, at least in developed nations, is a highly unequal corporate landscape, where some firms are incredibly productive and the amount of money a person makes is tied to the company they work for, not just the job that they do." [Moi ici: E por trás disso estão empresas que praticam a concorrência imperfeita e que à custa disso conseguem aumentar e manter por mais tempo margens interessantes - a minha tese]

O interessante, como relata o artigo é não haver uma explicação cabal e pacífica, reconhecida pelo meio académico.

Lugar do Senhor dos Perdões (parte I)

Daqui:
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"IAPMEI torrou 2 milhões de euros em empresa falida.

Quem fez plano de recuperação? Quem deu autorização? Os dois milhões foram para pagar a quem? Que outras situações de «alto risco» semelhantes existem? Que critérios são utilizados para essas operações? Há algum caso de sucesso?"

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Continua.

Let be careful out there

"A separate but equally indicative failing is to incessantly cite Apple and Steve Jobs to any and all clients as a paragon of excellence and instruction for brand building. If you find yourself sitting through a ninety-minute sermon on the power of Apple’s branding and its relevance for your portable toilet business it may be time to press the escape button."

Recordar "Cuidado com o título" e "Pensamento contrário"

"First, any mention of millennials means you are dealing with a marketing moron and should lead to immediate cessation of all discussions. I’m serious about the “moron” tag. Anyone dumb enough to think that the 14 million British millennials qualify as a segment needs their head examined. They fail every possible test of segmentation and anyone who refers to them in any context other than to point out that they are a total load of clichéd bollocks should not be trusted."

Recordar "Voltar ao Lugar do Senhor dos Perdões"

Trechos retirados de "Mark Ritson: The seven unmistakable signs of a shit brand consultant"

Curiosidade do dia

O anjinho, je, pensava que era erro ou má gestão, "Lugar do Senhor dos Perdões (parte I)". Afinal, estava tudo "bem" encaminhado:

"ainda beneficiou de um último "balão de oxigénio" em Setembro de 2009, quando o IAPMEI injectou na empresa mais 750 mil euros, num total de quase dois milhões de euros, elevando a sua posição accionista para cerca de 40%. Mas o dinheiro acabou por ser integralmente utilizado na amortização de passivo bancário."

Trecho retirado de "Cheyenne "back on track" mete Angola no bolso da frente"

Não será mais fácil optar pela via negativa?

Parece que cada vez mais pessoas despertam para o papel da gestão, da idiossincrasia, na distribuição de produtividades e no desempenho intra-sectorial. Desta vez temos "Choque de gestão":

"Este estudo sugere-nos que os problemas estruturais que enfrentamos atualmente na economia portuguesa (e também na brasileira) são acompanhados por um défice na qualidade da gestão. A crise atual não é apenas política. Empresários, gestores e académicos fazem parte da realidade que as ruas denunciam. É preciso humildade para reconhecermos esta realidade sem desculpas; é preciso determinação para fazermos as mudanças que são necessárias; é preciso criatividade para inovarmos nas práticas de gestão (podemos sempre copiar os americanos, mas este é o momento em que o mundo está ávido por novos modelos). É preciso um choque de gestão!"

Apetece perguntar, será que pretende intervir nas empresas? Será que pretende uma intervenção top (Estado) - down (empresas)?
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Não será mais fácil deixar a concorrência intervir e decidir? Não será mais fácil optar pela via negativa e deixar os clientes premiar quem entendam? Não será mais fácil e barato acabar com os casos-tipo Senhor dos Perdões?

Distribuição de produtividades - Parte I

Ele há coisas tão absurdas, mas tão absurdas, que só podem ser aceites por quem vive em estufas e redomas afastado da realidade.
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O arranque deste texto "Productivity Dynamics in Manufacturing Plants" de Martin Neil Baily, Charles Hulten, David Campbell, Timothy Bresnahan e Richard E. Caves, publicado por Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Microeconomics, Vol. 1992 (1992), pp. 187-267, é de chorar de gozo por um lado e de preocupação por outro.
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De gozo porque não há nada de mais afastado da realidade e, de preocupação porque se imaginam quantos modelos mentais, quantas decisões são tomadas tendo por base linhas de orientação deste tipo:
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"Much of the traditional analysis of productivity growth in manufacturing industries has been based explicitly or implicitly on a model in which identical, perfectly competitive plants respond in the same way to forces that strike the industry as a whole. The estimates of growth obtained with this framework are then used as the basis for discussions of policy concerning capital accumulation, research and development, trade, or other issues. (Moi ici: Tolice pegada, como recorda a série do Senhor dos Perdões) This contrasts markedly with the literature of industrial organization in which perfect competition is seen as an unusual market structure and in which the differences among firms are examined in detail."
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"We will explore the heterogeneity among plants to see how individual plants move within an industry, which plants account for most of the productivity growth, and how important entry and exit are to industry growth.
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As we have examined this data, we have been impressed by the diversity among plants and among industries. Some industries in our sample have achieved huge improvements in productivity; in others productivity has fallen sharply. There are high-productivity entrants and low-productivity entrants, high-productivity exiters and low-productivity exiters, plants that move up rapidly in the productivity distribution and plants that move down rapidly. Many plants stay put in the distribution. Both in level of and rate of change in productivity, plants manifest significant differences. The aggregate productivity performance of the manufacturing sector reflects the average of diverse economic outcomes at the plant level." (Moi ici: A vida real é assim, plena de diversidade, plena de diferença, impossível de conter dentro das equações que retratam modelos artificiais onde se simulam realidades que não existem)
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Continua.

Uma realidade heterogénea. muito mais complexa do que nos pintam

Neste postal "Lugar do Senhor dos Perdões (parte III)" escrevi:
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"Quando os macro-economistas falam sobre o desempenho, sobre a produtividade de um sector de actividade, como o calçado, como o têxtil, como o mobiliário, falam de um bloco homogéneo, coerente, maciço... como se todas as empresas, imersas no mesmo ambiente competitivo, tivessem o mesmo comportamento"
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Pois bem, acabo de descobrir este artigo "Measuring and Analyzing Aggregate Fluctuations: The Importance of Building from Microeconomic Evidence" de John Haltiwanger:
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"A pervasive finding in recent research using longitudinal establishment level data is that idiosyncratic factors dominate the distribution of output, employment, investment, and productivity growth rates across establishments.
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Seemingly similar plants within the same industry exhibit substantially different behavior on a variety of measures of real activity at cyclical and longer-run frequencies. In the fastest-growing industries, a large fraction of establishments experience substantial declines, whereas in the slowest growing industries, a large fraction of establishments exhibit dramatic growth."
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"The observed tremendous withinsector heterogeneity raises a variety of questions for our understanding and measurement of key macro aggregates. Much of macroeconomic research and our measurement of aggregates is predicated on the view that building macro aggregates from industry-level data is sufficient for understanding the behavior of the macroeconomy. The implicit argument is that, at least at the level of detailed industry, the assumption of a representative firm or establishment is reasonable.
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the accumulating evidence from recent establishment-level studies of employment, investment, and productivity growth suggests that this canceling out is far from complete. It is becoming increasingly apparent that changes in the key macro aggregates at cyclical and secular frequencies are best understood by tracking the evolution of the cross-sectional distribution of activity and changes at the micro level."

Acerca da concorrência imperfeita

Roger Martin em "Is Strategy a Zero-Sum Game?", publicado no final de Dezembro passado, toca vários temas clássicos deste blogue.

"The first critique I get is that my insistence on pursuing a winning strategy is just too aggressive. The thought is that if the organization I am encouraging to win manages to figure out how to win, then someone else will lose in a zero-sum game in which society is no better off. [Moi ici: Gente que não conhece as toutinegras de MacArthur ou as paramécias de Gause, gente que continua no século XX e ainda pensa numa paisagem competitiva com um único pico] 

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[Moi ici: Agora até o tema da concorrência perfeita ele mete ao barulho] Economists love ‘perfect competition.’ [Moi ici: A malta da tríade, lembram-se? Ainda ontem escrevi sobre eles] This is when numerous competitors compete in a given space — what I would call a particular Where-to-Play (WTP) ... Without competition, a monopoly provider would set price at B (the volume at which marginal revenue and marginal cost are equal) and the market would clear at a lower volume. Hence fewer customers would benefit from the offering, and all would pay a higher price than under vigorous competition. Thus, the absence of vigorous competition in this WTP results in a deadweight cost to society.

Thus, economists don’t like winning either! They dream of having competition in a given space look like this, in which (for example) six competitors duke it out in almost identical WTPs, approximating perfect competition. Nobody wins — they just play.

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[Moi ici: Entra a concorrência imperfeita] My Dream is industries that evolve like the following:[Moi ici: Como não recordar o Senhor dos Perdões]

Customers are heterogeneous and when I think about a company’s WTP, I think of it as a circle with the customer who thinks the company’s offering is absolutely perfect, and hence puts the highest value on it, at the center of the company’s WTP circle.

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In My Dream, rather than compete head-to-head with the same WTPs and same/similar HTWs, the six competitors spread out and reduce their overlap. Each competitor wins in a somewhat different WTP. Many more customers get an offering that is perfect for them. Competition happens — but it the boundary territories at the intersections of the individual WTPs, rather than across each competitor’s entire WTP. That ensures that while the competition won’t be as intense as in the Economist’s Dream, it will still be meaningful.[Moi ici: É isto que as toutinegras de MacArthur ilustram]

If each company pursues a winning strategy in its carefully defined WTP, each can prosper and achieve a level of profitability that enables it to innovate and move the market forward on behalf of its customers. [Moi ici: O meu clássico "Viver e deixar viver"]

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Playing to win isn’t zero-sum or obsolete. It is the most positive sum thing that you can do. Winning sets up a competitive dynamic that makes customers, employees, communities, and investors better off over time and opens up possibilities for rather than works against productive partnerships."

"the Age of Diverse Markets" (parte VII)

 Parte I, parte II, parte II, parte IV, parte V e parte VI.

"Cost reduction provides another landmark example of the power of transaction-based profit analytics. In virtually all supply chain projects, the objective is to reduce costs. The analytical process is to identify the costs that are above average and reduce them to at least average levels. What could be wrong with this?

The answer is that neither simply reducing higher-than-average costs nor reducing costs across the board will maximize profitability. The reason is that the Profit Peak customers are often more costly to serve—and rightly so because the extra customer service costs are a great investment."

Como não regressar ao Senhor dos Perdões e ao discurso monolítico sobre um todo homogéneo:

"Most strategic analyses are based on an assessment of a company as a whole. This is an artifact of the Age of Mass Markets. So-called strengths-weaknesses- opportunities-threats (SWOT) analysis, and even Michael Porter’s powerful Five Forces framework, illustrate this approach. Profit contour analysis significantly enriches these analytical models because it shows the composition of a company’s component segments and activities, allowing managers to see their underlying patterns of profitability, which have historically been hidden by aggregate, average metrics.

Companies are not monolithic. For example, profit contour analysis indicates how much a company would be helped by better positioning (for example, which segments are helped, which would suffer profit erosion in the absence of repositioning, and which are well positioned already). It also indicates how difficult, costly, or time-consuming the transition will be (for example, what proportion of the products or vendors have to be changed). This is especially important in addressing the specific problems and opportunities that the currents of change pose.

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In analyzing possible strategic groups in both your current and transformed industry, it is very instructive to focus on the value-to-cost relationship of your major profit segments: Profit Peaks, Profit Drains, and Profit Deserts."

Trechos retirados de “Choose Your Customer: How to Compete Against the Digital Giants and Thrive” de Jonathan S. Byrnes.

Acerca da heterogeneidade

"This situation raises the crucial question of why firms pursuing unsuccessful strategies do not change to more successful strategies, including possibly imitating the winners. Another way of stating this question is in terms of firm heterogeneity: why do firm differences persist once strategic and organizational recipes for success become known?
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The first point to recognize is that heterogeneity does not always persist. In some industries, imitation is relatively easy and firms simply follow the leaders. In others, selection processes are so severe and rapid that unsuccessful firms are eliminated before their managers can figure out what is going on. This appears to be the case especially in industries driven by strong economies of scale, such as beer brewing, where thousands of firms have gone under in a relatively short period, reducing heterogeneity enormously. In many instances, however, firm heterogeneity persists for long periods."

Um tema que sempre me fez espécie, tanta gente que olha para um sector económico como um todo homogéneo. Recordar o Senhor dos Perdões.
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Trecho retirado de "A Sociological View On Why Firms Differ" de Glenn R. Carroll e publicado no
Strategic Management Journal, Volume 14, Issue 4 (May, 1993), 237-249.

There will be surprises!

"At the individual level Austrians have taken sharp exception to the manner in which neoclassical theory has portrayed the individual decision as a mechanical exercise in constrained maximization.
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Such a portrayal robs human choice of its essentially open-ended character, in which imagination and boldness must inevitably play central roles. For neoclassical theory the only way human choice can be rendered analytically tractable, is for it to be modeled as if it were not made in open-ended fashion, as if there was no scope for qualities such as imagination and boldness. Even though standard neoclassical theory certainly deals extensively with decision making under (Knightian) risk, this is entirely consistent with absence of scope for the qualities of imagination and boldness, because such decision making is seen as being made in the context of known probability functions. In the neoclassical world, decision makers know what they are ignorant about. One is never surprised. For Austrians, however, to abstract from these qualities of imagination, boldness, and surprise is to denature human choice entirely."

Como anónimo engenheiro da província, apaixonado pelo mundo do turnaround, sobrevivência e sucesso das empresas, sempre me espantei com o "basicismo" da abordagem económica do mainstream ao mundo da concorrência. Recordo, por exemplo, "muitas vezes escandalizo-me com a forma como os economistas tratam a economia real" o que me leva logo a um clássico deste país: o Senhor dos Perdões. Recordo, por exemplo. Recordar também um clássico de 2010, "Realidade e teoria".

Trecho retirado de "Entrepreneurial Discovery and the Competitive Market Process: An Austrian Approach" de Israel Kirzner, publicado por Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XXXV (March 1997), pp. 60-85

Lugar do Senhor dos Perdões (parte V)

Continuado daqui: parte I, parte II, parte III e parte IV.

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Voltando ao livro "Job Creation and Destruction" de Steven Davis, John Haltiwanger e Scott Schuh:

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"Like most people, policymakers and bureaucrats evince a reluctance to acknowledge mistakes. Consequently, targeted policy programs tend to persist beyond the point of economic desirability, and they are likely to be managed in a way that obscures evidence of policy failure. (Moi ici: Qimonda, Aerosoles, ...) Once again, this political economy argument is not new, but it acquires added force in light of the dominant role of idiosyncratic determinants of business performance. To minimize job loss and business failure - thereby helping to preserve the image of a successful policy - the least successful businesses in targeted sectors often receive more generous subsidies or other forms of assistance."

Lugar do Senhor dos Perdões (parte IV)

Continuado daqui, daqui e daqui.

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Voltando ao livro "Job Creation and Destruction" de Steven Davis, John Haltiwanger e Scott Schuh:

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"First, the great heterogeneity of plant-level job growth and productivity outcomes suggests that businesses probably exhibit sharply different responses to policy interventions, even within narrowly defined industries or other sectoral groupings. Because businesses are not easily classifiable into sectors with homogeneous behavior, policies that grant preferential treatment to identifiable groups of firms can be poor tools for encouraging or discouraging particular economic activities. For example, when an industry successfully lobbies for import protection in the name of protecting jobs, some firms may not use the resulting increase in cash flow to preserve jobs."

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"the large role played by idiosyncratic factors makes it more difficult to discern the impact of policy interventions on the performance of affected firms."

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"the idiosyncratic determinants of business performance exacerbate the cost and difficulty of evaluating targeted commercial policies. As a consequence, useless or harmful targeted policies are more likely to persist over time before recognition of their inefficay sets in."

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"Debates about targeted industrial policy often center on the government's capacity or lack of capacity to identify potential winners. (Moi ici: Pois, o Grande Planeador, o Grande Geometra que tudo sabe) In our view, an even more serious problem with targeted industrial policies involves the government's ability to respond appropriately to economic losers. By their nature, targeted policies engender political constituencies with a special interest in preserving the benefits of preferential tax, subsidy, or regulatory treatment. Once organized, these political constituencies continue to press for preferential treatment regardless of whether the targeted policy continues to promote greater economic efficiency. Thus, targeted policies encourage the formation of special interest groups that, in turn, undermine the application of economic efficiency criteria to future economic policy decisions. (Moi ici: Como diz o miúdo do filme "O Sexto Sentido", "All the time!!!" )

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This line of argument is not new, but it acquires greater force from the evidence of heterogeneity in plant-level employment and productivity outcomes. The large magnitude of job creation and destruction, including the important role of births and deaths, suggests that trial and error play a central role in economic growth and in the evolution of businesses and industries. Put differently, large-scale business failure and job destruction are normal, probably essential, elements of a successful market economy. But targeted policies impede the trial-and-error process by inhibiting business failure and job destruction when such outcomes are economically desirable. ... Market mechanisms for dealing with economic failure are likely to operate more efficiently and expeditiously than political mechanisms."

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Continua.