【英语社会】奖金文化弊大于利

As a young Oxford don, I was chairman of the panel assessing the preliminary examination that students took at the end of their first year. We failed the son of a particularly noxious third-world dictator. There was an opportunity for him to resit at the end of the summer. I waited in trepidation for a threat or an offer from a distant land. None came. Presumably the tyrant dealt with his son's problem in a more appropriate way, since the boy passed on the second occasion.

Like most teachers, I received the occasional token gift from a grateful – usually foreign – student but never anything of significant monetary value. No one has ever suggested I might receive a bonus on the successful completion of a student's course; although the effect of high examination grades at a prestigious university on lifetime earnings is extremely large. And, like most teachers, I would have felt insulted by the proposal if it had been made.

Many teachers would say that such a bonus would not affect their behaviour. I doubt this is true, and it certainly would not have been true of me. If the bonus were large, I would have kept a particular eye on that student's progress. I would have taught to the tests, ignoring any broader educational objectives.

Still, when I had a medical operation, it did not occur to me to suggest a success fee to the surgeon. If I had, I expect he would have thought I was making a poor joke: and if he had realised I wasn't joking he would probably have become angry. I do tip taxi drivers and restaurant staff. The law, and the word “gratuity”, imply that the payment is non-contractual, although the tip you give to a New York cab driver is as contractual as the protection money a shopkeeper pays to the Mafia.

At one time, the offer and receipt of a gratuity was a statement of social and economic superiority on the part of the giver, its acceptance a statement of social and economic inferiority on the part of the recipient. To be salaried – to be trusted to do the job for which you had been contracted and paid – was a mark of status. Contractually agreed performance-related pay – commissions and piece work – was widespread in shops and factories, but has now largely been abandoned.

The common outcome was that employees came to care more about the quantity of the product than its quality. The system polarised the conflict between the interests of the organisation and of those who worked in it: the film I'm All Right Jack celebrated this dysfunctional culture. Remuneration was the subject of constant and acrimonious dispute: the fictional Mr Kite of the movie imitated the all too red “Red Robbo” (shop steward Derek Robinson) of British Leyland. All this gave way to the harmonious ethos of the Japanese car plant whose employees celebrated their arrival at work by singing the company song. The verdict of the consumer marketplace favoured the Japanese production system.

Teachers and doctors strongly resist the introduction of a bonus culture: not just because they resent measurement of performance and accountability for their activities – although they do, and with little justification – but because they oppose importing the culture of assembly lines. They fear an environment in which they would be encouraged to focus on narrowly quantifiable objectives at the expense of the underlying needs of clients.

Even if many teachers and doctors are incompetent and lazy, many others are seriously committed to the organisations for which they work, the subjects and specialisations to which they are devoted, and to a broader sense of professional ethics: and it is only people like these who establish the kinds of schools and hospitals we want as parents or patients. In education and medicine, both employees and customers sense that the disadvantages of the systemic consequences of large personalised incentives on values in organisations are likely to outweigh the benefits of such incentives for individual motivation.

Of course, financial services and boardrooms are completely different. Or there again, perhaps they aren't.

我年轻时曾在牛津(Oxford)任教，担任过预备考试评估小组的主席，学生们会在第一学年结束时参加这个考试。我们曾给一位男生打出不及格的分数，他爸爸是第三世界一位臭名昭著的独裁者。学校给了这位男生在暑期结束时参加补考的机会。我曾惴惴不安地等待那个遥远国度向我发出威胁，或给我开出条件，但什么都没等到。那位暴君大概用一种更恰当的方式解决了儿子的问题，因为这位男生在补考中过关了。

与大多数教师一样，我偶尔会收到学生为表达谢意送来的礼物（通常是些外国学生），但从来没有什么很贵重的东西。从未有人向我暗示，如果我能让某位学生顺利结业，就可收到一笔“奖金”——尽管在名牌大学考到高分，对一个人一生的收入影响极大。而且，与大多数教师一样，如果真有人向我做出上述暗示，我会感到自己受到了侮辱。

许多教师会说，此类“奖金”不会影响他们的行为。我对此表示怀疑，这无疑会影响我的行为。如果“奖金”数额巨大，我就会特别关注那位学生的进展，会为考而教，而忽视更广泛的教育目标。

然而，当我接受一次手术时，我却没向外科医生暗示，如果手术成功会给他红包。如果我这样做了，我猜那位医生会认为我在开一个糟糕的玩笑；如果他意识到我没开玩笑，很可能会对我大发雷霆。我的确会付小费给出租车司机和餐厅服务员。根据法律和“赏钱”(gratuity)一词的词义，这种支付是非合同性的——尽管你付给纽约出租车司机的小费，可以视为具有合同性，就像店主付给黑社会的保护费一样。

曾几何时，收、付赏钱的行为体现了支付者优越的社会及经济地位，这种行为得到接受，体现了接受者社会及经济地位的低下。工薪族曾是一种地位的象征，它意味着别人信任你做这份工作，并为此与你签订劳务合同、向你支付薪酬。由合同约定的绩效薪酬制（佣金和计件薪酬）曾在商店和工厂里广为采用，但现在基本已被摒弃。

绩效薪酬制的常见后果是，员工们变得更关心产品数量，而不是产品质量。它激化了机构和员工之间的利益冲突。影片《老兄，我没事》(I'm All Right Jack)就展示了这种畸形的文化。薪酬是人们始终激烈争论的话题，该影片中凯特先生(Mr Kite)的原型是激进分子“红色罗博”(Red Robbo)，即当时英国利兰汽车公司(British Leyland)的工会代表德里克?罗宾逊(Derek Robinson)。所有这一切，最终都被日本汽车制造厂的和谐精神所取代——在那里，员工们唱着厂歌到工厂上班。消费市场做出了选择，受青睐的是日本式生产制度。

教师和医生强烈抵制引入奖金文化，这不仅是因为他们反感以绩效和可说明性(accountability)来评价他们的工作（尽管他们确实是这样来评价的，而且没给出什么理由），还因为他们反对引入流水线文化。他们担心自己会陷入这样一种境地，即被鼓励去关注可精细量化的目标、而不理会客户的深层次需求。

尽管在教师和医生中有不少人无能而又懒惰，但也有很多人，对自己所供职的机构和自己所专注的课题及专业认真负责，并坚守更广泛意义上的职业道德——正是这些人建立起了我们作为家长或患者所希望看到的那种学校和医院。在教育业和医疗业，员工和客户都感受到：机构以高额奖金激励个人所产生的系统性后果存在种种弊端，与这类激励在提升个人积极性方面的好处相比，很可能是弊大于利。

当然，金融服务业和企业管理层的情况与此截然不同。但或许，它们可能并没有本质的不同。

译者/汪洋