【英语财经】企业需要“唱反调董事” Tiny signs of a coming scandal — and how to spot them

Habitual lateness, mild abuse of the corporate credit card, a little grousing by outgoing employees about low pay or overwork: the day to day dysfunctions of many large businesses. But could these be warning signals of a coming collapse in corporate culture or an imminent scandal? If so, how should companies detect and act on them?

The board obviously has a role in steering away from impending disaster.

Enron, for instance, had a “truth spreadsheet”, an internal guide to how the energy company was reconciling its off-the-books finances with the deliberately obfuscatory public balance sheet. Andrew Fastow, Enron’s former finance director, told the FT’s Camp Alphaville conference earlier this month that when he presented it to the board, one director gleefully called him a genius.

Enron needed a devil’s advocate — a contrarian director as one recent governance paper calls it — to cry foul. Chuck Prince, then Citigroup chief executive, could also have used such a counsellor in 2007, when he made his notorious remark that as long as the music is playing “you’ve got to get up and dance”. On the contrary, a contrarian director could have pointed out, this would be a good moment to quit the ballroom.

But these were flagrant examples of rottenness. Directors — particularly non-executives — cannot easily spot less obvious early signs of cultural decay. Handing this job to the audit or risk committee would simply reassert the primacy of the numbers people. The soft stuff is always harder to measure and manage, after all, and culture has no line on the profit and loss statement.

I was naturally sceptical, therefore, about a short study by the Institute of Business Ethics, launched this week. It suggests internal auditors could help spot the symptoms of incipient malaise.

If auditors are grey, internal auditors are greyer. They have the reputation of being compliance geeks or intrusive killjoys — the equivalent of the internal affairs bureau that cramps the style of the brilliant but unconventional detective in some police thrillers.

This is not how internal auditors see themselves, of course. Their chartered institute uses the words “passionate”, “dynamic” and “exciting” within the first three sentences of describing what its members do. Its chairman says in the IBE paper that they can be “the eyes and ears” of directors.

But still, as Sarah Hogg, chair of retailer John Lewis’s audit committee, tells the IBE, it is “a very fine line” between being an over-friendly consultant and a “hostile invader”. Enron’s internal audit was outsourced to

Andersen, the accounting group that also did its external audit and was ultimately brought down by the scandal.

The limits of the role need to be clear, too. The UK’s corporate governance code now specifies that the board help establish tone from the top. It is up to senior managers to set the cultural framework. Sometimes even that is hard to do, if the strategic demands of the company pull it in a different direction. The chair of Barclays’ audit committee told the IBE, that “very few if any large organisations have a monolithic culture”. Perhaps this is one obstacle Barclays’ outgoing chief executive Antony Jenkins encountered when trying to impose some of his retail banking values on the investment bank division.

Properly directed, what are the other faint alerts expert insiders may pick up? Lone wolf behaviour may point to a breakdown in teamwork. Skimped paperwork could hint at a lax attitude to more important controls. Skewed incentives may be driving unhelpful behaviour, unnoticed by the executives who set the reward structure. None of these is fatal in itself, but could infect the whole group if left unremarked and uncorrected.

Yes, people who monitor, measure and police behaviour may be viewed as an army of board-appointed busybodies. But that risk is easily dealt with by rotating managers from other divisions into and out of such roles. In any case, Grazia Vittadini, an engineer who is now head of corporate audit at Airbus, says the welcome given to her team and its report is also a measure of the strength — or weakness — of the culture: “It’s not the finding, it’s how the company reacts to it which is the real indicator,” she says. Bear that in mind, the next time you are tempted to gripe to your team about a request to justify your travel expenses.

习惯性迟到，企业信用卡轻微滥用，即将离职的员工稍许抱怨薪水低或者工作太累：这是许多大公司每天都会出现的问题。但这些问题是否可能是企业文化即将崩溃或者丑闻即将发生的报警信号？如果是这样，企业该如何察觉这类信号并采取相应行动？

显然，董事会有责任带领企业避开即将发生的灾难。

比如，安然(Enron)有一个“真相电子表”，这是一份关于这家能源公司如何将表外账目和故意混淆不清的公开资产负债表调节一致的内部指导文件。安然前首席财务官安德鲁?法斯托(Andrew Fastow)在本月早些时候召开的英国《金融时报》Camp Alphaville会议上表示，当他把这份文件展示给董事会以后，一位董事高兴地夸他是个天才。

安然需要一个唱反调的人大声抗议错误的做法，最近一份有关公司治理的论文将这样的人称为“逆向董事”(contrarian director)。花旗(Citigroup)前首席执行官查克?普林斯(Chuck Prince) 2007年在任时发表了臭名昭著的言论——只要音乐还在放，“你就得站起来跳舞”，那时如果他有一名唱反调的顾问，也会对他有益。一名逆向董事本可以指出，那是退出舞会的好时机。

但这些是企业堕落的极其明显的例子。董事们，尤其是非执行董事，无法轻易发现企业文化堕落不那么明显的早期征兆。将这份工作交给审计人员或者风险委员会，只会重申财务人员的首要地位。软性的事物总是更难以衡量和管理，毕竟，损益表中是没有文化这一项的。

因此，我对商业道德研究所(Institute of Business Ethics)近日发表的一篇简短的论文自然有所怀疑。这篇论文认为，内部审计人员可以帮助企业发现早期问题的迹象。

如果说审计师是沉闷无趣的，内部审计人员就更是如此。要么是执着于合规的怪人，要么是扫兴的入侵者，他们以此闻名——就好比一些侦探片里让有才华却不走寻常路的探员无法放开手脚的警局内务调查局。

当然，内部审计人员不是这么看待自身的。特许内部审计师协会(Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors)在描述其会员的工作时，在头三个句子里使用了“激情”、“活力”和“令人兴奋”这样的字眼。该协会主席在商业道德研究所的那篇论文里表示，内部审计师可以充当董事的“耳目”。

但是，正如零售商John Lewis的审计委员会主席萨拉?霍格(Sarah Hogg)告诉商业道德研究所的那样，过于友善的顾问和“恶意入侵者”之间是“一条非常微妙的界线”。安然的内部审计被外包给会计师事务所安达信(Andersen)，后者也做安然的外部审计，并最终因安然丑闻而破产。

职责范围也有必要明确。英国的公司治理法规现在明确规定，董事会帮助确定高层基调。建立文化框架是高级经理的职责。如果公司的战略需求将公司拉向别的方向，有时候这一点也很难做到。巴克莱(Barclays)审计委员会主席向商业道德研究所表示，“即使有大型机构有整体文化，也是凤毛麟角”。或许这是巴克莱即将离职的首席执行官安东尼?詹金斯(Antony Jenkins)，在试图将其部分零售银行业价值观强加于投资银行部门时遭遇的一个障碍。

如果得到正确指导，专业内部人还可能发现哪些其他微弱预警信号？孤狼行为可能意味着团队合作的崩溃。文书工作减少可能意味着对更重要的控制态度松懈。倾斜的激励可能推动无益的行为，却被制定奖励架构的高管们忽视。所有这些本身都不是太严重的问题，但如果不予理会和纠正的话，就可能影响整个集体。

然而，监督、评估和行为纠察人员可能被视为一群由董事会任命的多管闲事者。但让其他部门的经理轮流担任此类角色可以轻松解决这种风险。现任空客(Airbus)企业审计主管的工程师格拉齐亚?维塔迪尼(Grazia Vittadini)表示，无论如何，她的团队及所撰写报告的受欢迎程度，也是衡量企业文化优劣的指标，她说：“真正的衡量指标，不是报告结论，而是公司对结论的应对方式。”当下一次你的团队要求你证明差旅费合理、而你忍不住抱怨的时候，要记住这一点。

译者/何黎