Digital technology is redrawing the boundaries of the firm
Companies are reorganising themselves in the wake of digital upheaval
Jan 8th 2023
TECHNOLOGY AND business are inextricably linked. Entrepreneurs harness technological advances and, with skill and luck, turn them into profitable products. Technology, in turn, changes how firms operate. Electricity enabled the creation of larger, more efficient factories, since these no longer needed to depend on a central source of steam power; email has done away with most letters. But new technologies also affect business in a subtler, more profound way. They alter not just how companies do things but also what they do—and, critically, what they don’t do.
fuzzy
adj. 模糊的；失真的；有绒毛的
redraw
v. 重新描绘
upheaval
n. 动荡, 剧变, 激变, 动乱
inextricably
adv. 不可分开地, 密不可分地
harness
v. 控制利用; 给（马等）上挽具, 用挽具把…套到…上；利用，驾驭
n. 马具, 挽具, （用于人，起固定或保护作用的）背带
技术和商业是密不可分的。企业家利用技术进步，并凭借技能和运气，将其转化为有利可图的产品。反过来，技术也改变了公司的运作方式。电力使规模更大、效率更高的工厂得以诞生，因为这些工厂不再需要依赖集中的蒸汽动力;电子邮件使大多数信件消失了。但新技术也以一种更微妙、更深刻的方式影响着商业。它们不仅改变了公司做事的方式，还改变了公司做事的内容——更重要的是，还改变了公司不做事的内容。
The Industrial Revolution ended the “putting-out system”, in which companies obtained raw materials but outsourced manufacturing to self-employed craftsmen who worked at home and were paid by output. Factories strengthened the tie between workers, now employed directly and paid by the hour, and workplace. The telegraph, telephone and, in the last century, containerised shipping and better information technology (IT), have allowed multinational companies to subcontract ever more tasks to ever more places. China became the world’s factory; India became its back office. Nearly three years after the pandemic began, it is clear that technology is once again profoundly redrawing the boundaries of the firm.
telegraph
n. 电报（通信方式）
v. 打电报, 电告, 用电报发送（电文）, （无意中）流露（思想）
subcontract
v. 分包, 转包
n. 分包合同, 转包合同
工业革命终结了“外包体系”，在这种体系下，企业获得原材料，但将制造外包给在家工作的个体工匠，并根据产出获得报酬。工厂加强了工人与工作场所之间的联系，工人现在被直接雇佣，按小时计酬。电报、电话，以及上个世纪的集装箱运输和更好的信息技术(IT)，使得跨国公司能够将更多的任务分包给更多的地方。中国成为了世界工厂;印度成了它的后台。在大流行开始近三年后，很明显，技术再次深刻地重新划定了企业的边界。
In the rich world, fast broadband and apps like Zoom or Microsoft Teams are allowing a third of working days to be done remotely. Jobs are trickling out from big-city corporate headquarters to smaller towns and the boondocks. And the line between collaborating with a colleague, a freelance worker or another firm is blurring.
broadband
n. 宽带
adj. 宽带的, 宽频的
headquarter
v. 设总部；在…设总部；把…放在总部中
n. 总部；指挥部；司令部
boondocks
n. 偏僻地区;
collaborate
v. 合作，协作；勾结；通敌
freelance
adj. 特约的, 自由职业（者）的
v. 做特约工作, 从事自由职业
n. 自由作家，自由记者
blurring
v. （blur的现在分词）（使）变得模糊不清, （使）视线模糊, （使）看不清, （使）难以区分
adj. 模糊的
在富裕国家，高速宽带和Zoom或微软Teams等应用程序使得三分之一的工作日可以远程完成。工作机会正从大城市的公司总部慢慢转移到小城镇和边远地区。与同事、自由职业者或另一家公司合作之间的界限正在模糊。
Companies are drawing on common pools of resources, from cloud computing to human capital. By one estimate, skilled freelance workers in America earned $247bn in 2021, up from about $135bn in 2018. The biggest firms in America and Europe are outsourcing more white-collar work. Exports of commercial services from six large emerging markets have grown by 16.5% a year since the pandemic began, up from 6.5% before it (see chart 1). On January 9th Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), an Indian IT-outsourcing giant, reported another bump in profits.
企业正在利用从云计算到人力资本等公共资源池。据估计，2021年美国熟练自由职业者的收入为2470亿美元，高于2018年的约1350亿美元。美国和欧洲的大公司正在外包更多的白领工作。自疫情爆发以来，六个大型新兴市场的商业服务出口每年增长16.5%，高于疫情爆发前的6.5%(见表1)。1月9日，印度it外包巨头塔塔咨询服务公司(TCS)报告利润再次大幅增长。
A useful lens for understanding these changes was offered by Ronald Coase in his paper from 1937 entitled “The nature of the firm”. Stay small and you forgo the efficiencies of scale. Grow too big and an enterprise gets unwieldy—think of Soviet-style command-and-control economies. Most commerce happens in between those extremes. Coase, whose insights earned him a Nobel prize in economics, argued that firms’ boundaries—what to do and what not to do yourself—are determined by how transaction and information costs differ within firms and between them. Some things are done most efficiently in-house. The market takes care of the rest.
forgo
v. 弃绝（想做的事或想得之物）
transaction
n. 交易，生意；处理，办理
罗纳德·科斯(Ronald Coase)在他1937年的论文《企业的性质》(The nature of The firm)中为理解这些变化提供了一个有用的视角。保持小规模，你就放弃了规模效益。规模太大，企业就会变得笨重——想想苏联式的命令控制经济吧。大多数商业活动都在这两个极端之间进行。科斯的真知灼见为他赢得了诺贝尔经济学奖，他认为企业的界限——自己该做什么，不该做什么——是由企业内部和企业之间的交易和信息成本的差异决定的。有些事情在内部完成效率最高。剩下的由市场来处理。
For example, between the 1980s and the 2010s, globalisation and the IT boom boosted economies of scale, which encouraged market concentration. But they also increased competitive pressures and cut the cost of communication and collaboration between firms. The net result was for many companies to shrink their scopes. In research published last year Lorenz Ekerdt and Kai-Jie Wu of the University of Rochester found that the average number of sectors in which American manufacturers were active fell by half between 1977 and 2017. By the 2000s many sprawling industrial conglomerates like Germany’s Degussa, which had a hand in everything from metals to medicine, or British Aerospace, which was poking at cars, had untangled themselves and picked the knitting to stick to (chemicals and aircraft, respectively).
collaboration
n. 合作, 协作, 合作成果（或作品）, 通敌
scope
n. (活动、影响等的)范围; 眼界; 理解范围; 余地, 机会; 观察仪器(显微镜、望远镜等)
v. 仔细看; 彻底检查; 查清
sprawling
adj. 蔓延的, 杂乱无序拓展的
v. “sprawl”的现在分词
conglomerate
n. 砾岩, 企业集团, 联合大公司, 合成物
adj. 【地】砾岩(性)的, 成球(状)的, 结成团块的, 混杂会聚在一处的
v. 聚集；聚结
例如，在上世纪80年代至2010年代之间，全球化和IT繁荣推动了规模经济，从而鼓励了市场集中。但它们也增加了竞争压力，降低了公司之间沟通和合作的成本。最终结果是许多公司缩小了业务范围。在去年发表的一项研究中，罗切斯特大学(University of Rochester)的洛伦兹·埃克特(Lorenz Ekerdt)和吴凯杰(Kai-Jie Wu)发现，从1977年到2017年，美国制造商活跃的行业平均数量下降了一半。到21世纪初，许多庞大的工业集团，如德国德古赛(Degussa)，涉足从金属到医药的所有领域，或英国航空航天(British Aerospace)，涉足汽车行业，已经摆脱了困境，选择了继续从事的业务(分别是化工和飞机)。
Today Coasean forces are ushering in a new type of corporate organisation. It resembles a 21st-century putting-out system—not for artisan craftsmen but for the white-collar professionals who epitomise modern Western economies. Micha Kaufman, boss of Fiverr, an Israeli marketplace which matches freelances with business around the world, observes that firms are getting better at measuring workers’ performance based on their actual output rather than time spent producing it. This is true both of employees and subcontractors. The result is a reorganisation of businesses both internally, and in relation to other companies in the economy.
usher
n. 引座员, 门房, 男傧相
v. 把…引往, 引导, 引领
resemble
v. 与……相似，类似
artisan
n. 工匠, 手艺人
epitomise
v. 成为…的典范（或典型）
subcontractor
n. 分包商, 分包人
今天，Coasean的力量正在引领一种新型的公司组织。它就像一个21世纪的失业系统——不是为手艺人，而是为代表现代西方经济的白领专业人士。Fiverr是一家为自由职业者和世界各地的企业配对的以色列市场，其老板Micha Kaufman注意到，公司越来越善于根据员工的实际产出来衡量他们的表现，而不是花在生产上的时间。雇员和分包商都是如此。其结果是企业的内部重组，以及与经济中其他公司的关系。
Start on the inside. Using data from America’s Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, The Economist has examined jobs in three sectors particularly compatible with remote work: technology, finance and professional services. We find that such jobs have become far more distributed across America since the pandemic. Big metropolitan areas have lost out to smaller cities and even the countryside. Since the fourth quarter of 2019, the number of jobs in the three sectors has grown by six percentage points more in rural areas than in San Francisco and New York.
compatible
adj. 可共用的；兼容的；可共存的；关系好的，和睦相处的
metropolitan
adj. 大城市的；大都会的
从里面开始。根据美国就业和工资季度普查的数据，《经济学人》调查了三个特别适合远程工作的行业:科技、金融和专业服务。我们发现，自大流行以来，这类工作在美国各地的分布更加广泛。大城市已经输给了小城市，甚至农村。自2019年第四季度以来，这三个行业的就业岗位在农村地区的增长比旧金山和纽约多了6个百分点。
Firms are also distributing more work across borders. Oswald Yeo, who runs Glints, a recruiting startup in Singapore, says his firm hires employees in batches by country. That helps the new recruits to form in-person bonds with compatriots, while expanding Glints’s talent pool, Mr Yeo explains. There is a premium for places with a small time difference. In Glints’s case, that is countries like Indonesia.
recruit
v. 吸收（新成员）, 征募（新兵）, 动员…（提供帮助）, （通过招募）组成
n. 新兵, 新警员, 新成员
batch
n. 批, 一批, （食物、药物等的）一批生产的量
v. 分批处理
compatriot
n. 同胞, 同国人
adj. 同国的
premium
n. 保险费, 额外费用, 奖金, 津贴
adj. 优质的, 昂贵的, 价格更高的
公司也在跨境分配更多的工作。新加坡招聘初创公司Glints的经营者Oswald Yeo说，他的公司按国家分批招聘员工。杨荣文解释说，这有助于新员工与同胞建立面对面的联系，同时扩大了Glints的人才库。时差小的地方会有额外的费用。在Glints的案例中，就是印度尼西亚这样的国家。
For American firms, it is often Canada. Microsoft, which opened its first Canadian office in 1985, created a big new one in Toronto in 2022. Google is tripling its Canadian workforce to 5,000. A study last year by CBRE, a property firm, of the 50 cities in America and Canada with the most tech workers found that four of the top ten were Canadian. Together, the four added 180,000 tech jobs between 2016 and 2021, an increase of 39%, while the top four American cities gained just 86,000 jobs, or 8%. Lower living costs help; the Canadian quartet were among the 16 cheapest cities in the group in terms of housing.
对于美国公司来说，通常是加拿大。微软于1985年在加拿大开设了第一个办事处，并于2022年在多伦多开设了一个新的大办事处。谷歌在加拿大的员工人数增加了两倍，达到5000人。房地产公司世邦魏理仕(CBRE)去年对美国和加拿大50个科技工作者最多的城市进行了一项研究，发现排名前十的城市中有四个是加拿大城市。在2016年至2021年期间，这四个城市共增加了18万个科技工作岗位，增幅为39%，而美国前四大城市只增加了8.6万个工作岗位，增幅为8%。较低的生活成本有所帮助;加拿大的这四个城市是该集团中房价最低的16个城市之一。
Barriers to immigration are another factor forcing firms to look abroad, says Prithwiraj Choudhury of Harvard Business School. Mr Choudhury has documented a growing class of firms that help employers forge stable relationships with foreign employees without hiring them directly. One example is MobSquad, a firm that enlists skilled workers unable to obtain visas to America and employs them in Canada instead. Its American clients include Betterment, an investment firm, and Guardant Health, a biotechnology company.
forge
v. （尤指努力地）制造，生产；伪造，假冒；突然向前猛冲
n. 锻造车间；锻造工厂
enlist
v. 争取, 征募, （使）入伍, 从军
哈佛商学院的Prithwiraj Choudhury说，移民壁垒是迫使公司将目光投向海外的另一个因素。乔杜里记录了越来越多的公司帮助雇主与外国雇员建立稳定的关系，而不是直接雇佣他们。MobSquad就是一个例子，这家公司招募无法获得美国签证的技术工人，并将他们雇佣到加拿大。它的美国客户包括投资公司Betterment和生物技术公司Guardant Health。
MobSquad’s recruits sit somewhere between outsourced temps and full-time employees. This sort of arrangement points to the bigger Coasean shift—to how firms demarcate which tasks they perform on their own account and which they subcontract.
MobSquad的新员工介于外包的临时工和全职员工之间。这种安排指向了更大的科斯转移——公司如何划分哪些任务是自己完成的，哪些是分包的。
A survey of nearly 500 American firms by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta last year found that 18% were using more independent contractors than in previous years; 2% said they used fewer. On top of that, 13% relied more on leased workers, compared with 1% who reduced this reliance. MBO Partners, a workforce-management firm, estimates that the number of American workers engaged in independent work for at least 15 hours a week increased from 15m in 2019 to 22m in 2022. Figures from the Bureau of Labour Statistics are more conservative, but still show that nearly 1m more Americans are self-employed than at the start of 2020. Pandemic-era job losses forcing people into less desirable work arrangements cannot be the whole story; a similar surge in self-employment did not occur after the global financial crisis of 2007-09.
contractor
n. 承包商, 承包人, 承包公司
reliance
n. 依赖, 依靠, 信任
亚特兰大联邦储备银行去年对近500家美国公司进行的一项调查发现，18%的公司比前几年使用了更多的独立承包商;2%的人说他们用得更少了。最重要的是，13%的企业更加依赖租赁工人，而1%的企业减少了这种依赖。劳动力管理公司MBO Partners估计，每周独立工作至少15小时的美国工人数量从2019年的1500万增加到2022年的2200万。美国劳工统计局(Bureau of labor Statistics)的数据更为保守，但仍显示，与2020年初相比，自雇的美国人增加了近100万。大流行时期的失业迫使人们接受不太理想的工作安排，这不是问题的全部;在2007-09年的全球金融危机之后，自雇人数并没有出现类似的激增。
The shift is again made possible by technology, notably the spread of platforms for freelance work. Having grown slowly, from 9% of America’s labour force in 2000 to 11% in 2018, self-employment is becoming more common. Gig work is no longer just about ride-hailing or food delivery. Whereas earlier platforms, such as Taskrabbit, focused on routine tasks, emerging new ones recruit freelances for complicated work. Upwork specialises in web development; Fiverr is known for media production. Amazon turned to Tongal, another freelancing platform, when it needed a team to rapidly produce social-media content for its Prime TV shows.
notably
adv. 特别, 非常, 尤其, 极大程度上
Gig
n. 现场演唱会, 现场喜剧表演, （尤指临时的）工作, 单马双轮轻便马车
v. 坐小快艇, 乘轻便二轮马车, 给…以记过处分, 用鱼叉叉(鱼)
科技再次使这种转变成为可能，尤其是自由职业平台的普及。自雇从2000年占美国劳动力的9%增长到2018年的11%，增长缓慢，正变得越来越普遍。零工不再只是叫车或送餐。Taskrabbit等早期平台专注于日常工作，而新兴平台则招募自由职业者来处理复杂的工作。Upwork专门从事网页开发;Fiverr以媒体制作而闻名。当亚马逊需要一个团队为其Prime电视节目快速制作社交媒体内容时，它求助于另一个自由职业平台Tongal。
Besides making it easier to tap non-employees, technology is enabling companies to collaborate more seamlessly with other businesses. In 2020 Slack, the messaging platform of choice in many a workplace, launched a feature that lets users communicate with outside firms as they would within their own organisations. More than 70% of the Fortune 100 list of America’s biggest firms by revenue use the feature. The Atlanta Fed’s survey found that 16% of responding firms had increased domestic outsourcing and 6% had offshored more. Already, combined revenues for six big IT-services firms with large operations in India—Cognizant, HCLT, Infosys, TCS, Tech Mahindra and Wipro—grew by 25% between the third quarter of 2019 and the same period last year.
tap
n. 水龙头, 轻拍, 轻敲, 轻叩, 窃听
v. 开发, 轻拍, 轻敲, 轻叩, 窃听，利用（资源、知识等）
seamlessly
adv. 无缝地
除了更容易利用非员工之外，技术还使企业能够与其他企业更无缝地合作。2020年，许多工作场所首选的消息平台Slack推出了一项功能，让用户可以像在自己的组织内部一样与外部公司沟通。在美国收入最高的财富100强公司中，超过70%的公司都使用了这一功能。亚特兰大联邦储备银行的调查发现，16%的受访公司增加了国内外包，6%的公司增加了海外外包。在印度拥有大规模业务的六家大型it服务公司——cognizant、HCLT、Infosys、TCS、Tech Mahindra和wipro——的总收入在2019年第三季度与去年同期相比增长了25%。
Pinning down just how much firms depend on outsiders is tricky—companies do not advertise this sort of thing. To get an idea, Katie Moon and Gordon Phillips, two economists, look at a firm’s external purchase commitments in the upcoming year as a share of its cost of sales. As a snapshot of the economy, this measure of “outsourcing intensity” must be treated with caution; it does not capture all types of outsourcing and different firms account for external purchases in different ways. But it usefully illustrates changes over time.
pin
n. 大头针, 饰针, 旗杆, 胸针
v. 别上, 使不能动弹, 按住, 钳住
abbr. (=personal identification number)个人标识号
snapshot
n. 简介, 简要说明；快照
确定公司对外界的依赖程度是一件棘手的事情——公司不会在这类事情上大肆宣传。为了了解这一点，两位经济学家凯蒂•穆恩和戈登•菲利普斯考察了一家公司在即将到来的一年里对外采购承诺占其销售成本的比例。作为经济的一个缩影，这一衡量“外包强度”的指标必须谨慎对待;它没有涵盖所有类型的外包，不同的公司以不同的方式解释外部采购。但它有效地说明了随着时间的推移而发生的变化。
The Economist has calculated the measure using data from financial reports for a sample of large listed firms in America and Europe. They are indeed growing more reliant on others. Average outsourcing intensity in our sample has doubled from 11% in 2005 to 22% in the most recent year of data. This growth is especially pronounced among tech titans such as Apple and Microsoft; businesses that grew more slowly, such as Walmart, a retailing giant, saw small increases. This is consistent with research which finds that as firms grow larger and adopt more technologies, thus becoming more complex and unwieldy, they outsource more operations—precisely as Coase would have predicted.
《经济学人》利用美国和欧洲大型上市公司的财务报告样本数据计算出了这一指标。他们确实越来越依赖其他国家。在我们的样本中，平均外包强度从2005年的11%增加到最近一年的22%，翻了一番。这种增长在苹果(Apple)和微软(Microsoft)等科技巨头中尤为明显;而增长较慢的企业，如零售业巨头沃尔玛，则有小幅增长。这与一项研究相一致，该研究发现，随着公司规模的扩大和采用更多的技术，从而变得更加复杂和笨重，他们会外包更多的业务——这正是科斯所预测的。
As technology evolves further, so will the contours of the firm. Companies may gain more flexibility to seek out new workers for new tasks in new places. Portugal has created a visa for digital nomads, who will be able to work from the country for a year. Argentina wants to introduce a preferential exchange rate for freelance workers selling their services abroad: the “tech dollar” would ensure that they were not exposed to the rapidly devaluing peso.
contour
n. 轮廓, 外形, （地图上连接相同海拔各点的）等高线
v. 描画…的轮廓, 画…的等高[等值]线, 顺等高线(作业)
adj. (表示[循着])等高线的, 与轮廓相合的
Portugal
n. 葡萄牙, 【国】葡萄牙, 葡萄牙共和国
nomad
n. 牧民, 流浪汉
preferential
adj. 优先的, 优惠的, 优待的
n. 优先权, 特惠税率
随着技术的进一步发展，公司的轮廓也会随之变化。公司可能会获得更大的灵活性，在新的地方寻找新员工来完成新任务。葡萄牙为数字游牧民提供了一种签证，他们可以在该国工作一年。阿根廷希望为在国外销售服务的自由职业者引入优惠汇率:“技术美元”将确保他们不会受到迅速贬值的比索的影响。
For Western white-collar types, stiffer competition for jobs may compress pay. According to a working paper published last year, by Alberto Cavallo of Harvard Business School and colleagues, wages differ less between countries for occupations that are more prone to outsourcing. That means higher living standards for workers in poorer countries and, possibly higher profits for their employers. And for Coase, it means continued relevance. ■
stiff
adj. 不易弯曲的；硬的；挺直的；僵硬的
adv. 非常；极其；（冻）僵；（冻）硬
v. 诈骗；不还钱
n. 死尸
relevance
n. 适切, 现实意义, 有关系, 实质性
对于西方白领来说，更激烈的就业竞争可能会压缩薪酬。根据哈佛商学院的Alberto Cavallo及其同事去年发表的一篇工作论文，对于那些更倾向于外包的职业，各国之间的工资差异较小。这意味着贫穷国家工人的生活水平将提高，雇主的利润也可能提高。对科斯来说，这意味着持续的相关性。■
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