序言一

蔡济铭（Jess Chua）

加拿大卡尔加里大学财务学教授、浙江大学企业家学院学术委员会主席、浙江大学管理学院兼职讲座教授

When Prof. Chen Ling first told me about this ambitious project to study the organizational health of family firms in China, I had just begun to think about the same subject because of an invitation to join a similar project in an international context. I would like to congratulate Prof. Chen and his colleagues for so quickly achieving their results because our own has barely begun. Thus I was quite interested in what their project uncovered and it was fortuitous that Prof. Chen asked me to write a preface for the study, allowing me to see the report before it is made public to everybody.

当陈凌教授初次对我提及中国家族企业组织健康这个雄心勃勃的研究项目时，我正好因受邀参加类似项目而开始思考国际背景下的相关问题。我要恭喜陈教授和他的同事这么快就取得了研究成果，而我们自己的研究才刚刚开始。我对他们的项目研究发现很感兴趣，同时我也很荣幸受邀给研究报告作序，让我能在报告公开发表前看到研究成果。

Health, even in the case of a person, is not easy to define or measure. The World Health Organization（WHO）defines it as:“... a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”So the definition transcends freedom from illness and pain which is how health is actually defined in medical practice as implied by the pronouncement of health when one's annual physical checkup screens out diseases and their near causes. But even the WHO's definition has been criticized for setting an ideal that is unachievable or unachievable by most. Thus, many experts now work with a concept of health that is somewhere between the definition as practiced in medicine and as defined by the WHO.

健康，即便是针对个人也不容易定义和测量。世界卫生组织（WHO）对健康的定义是：“……生理、心智和人际等全方位状态良好，而不只是没有疾病和免于身体虚弱。”这个定义超越了医疗实践对健康的事实定义，即无病无痛，直白地说就是年度体检对疾病和病因排查后做出的健康结论。不过即便是WHO的定义也被批评者认为是为健康设置了一个无法达到或绝大多数人无法达到的理想状态。因此许多专家所用的健康概念仍界于医疗实践定义和WHO定义之间。

The idea that organizations should also be viewed in terms of its health rather than simply its economic performance is around fifty years old, quite young in terms of science. If experts are still unable to agree on a definition of health for individuals, we should not expect them to do better in terms of organizational health. Clearly, it cannot be a case of an organization without problems because, especially in today's global economy, organizations all face the constant need for adapting to changes in the business environment. Some combination of direction, self-identity, productivity and adaptability in their financial, psychological, social and cultural contexts appear to be present in most definitions. These ingredients are certainly reflected in the measures used in this study.

管理学关注组织的健康而不仅是简单地用经济绩效来评价组织的思想已经流行了近半个世纪，但是用科学的方法来研究组织的健康状况还是非常新的尝试。既然医学专家们在个人健康的定义上尚且不能达成共识，我们也不该太指望管理学专家们在组织健康的定义上能做得更好。而且很明显，组织不可能没有问题，特别是在今天这种全球化经济背景下，所有组织都需要不断适应商业环境的变化。大多数的企业健康定义都会融合财务、心理、社会和文化这些方面的目标、身份、生产力、适应力等因素，这些因素在本研究的方法中都有所体现。

One of the most important difficulties in studying organizational health arises from the fact that organizational health requires both the organization as a whole and the individuals who make up the organization to be“healthy”. This requires a delicate balancing of the interests of the organizational members and the organization itself or else the interests of one would end up being enhanced at the expense of those of the other. This balancing act cannot escape influence from the cultural heritage of the family and the community at large. Thus the uneven scores found for the different dimensions measured in the study may be the result of differences in interests as affected by cultural orientations of the founders, the potential successors and the non-family workers. For example, as the study observes, there may be a conflict between the collectivist orientation of the founder and the western-influenced more individualistic one of the potential successor.

组织健康研究的关键难题之一是组织健康要求组织整体和组织成员都要“健康”这个事实。该事实要求巧妙平衡组织成员和组织本身的利益冲突，否则必然导致一方得益一方受损。平衡方案逃不脱家族文化遗产和社会文化传统的影响，因此本研究各测量维度上的不同得分可能是不同利益群体差异的体现，反映了创始人、潜在接班人和非家族成员等群体的不同文化倾向。比如本研究观察到的创始人的集体主义倾向和潜在接班人受西方文化影响而表现出来的更个人主义的倾向之间就可能存在冲突。

When the object of study is complicated by the presence of a second organization—the family—the subject becomes interesting and challenging indeed. Now, the situation studied involves conflicts between interests of the family firm as an organization, the family as another organization, the individual family members working in the business, the individual family members not working in the business, and the non-family workers of the firm. As a result of the complexities, the conclusions made in the study are going to be controversial. First, this is because they will reflect the Chinese culture with respect to whose interests are more important. Second, arguments are needed to approach the truth. Thus, although controversy could be frustrating for family firms and their consultants, it excites researchers because it is where we live. So I believe that this report is going to receive a lot of attention from family business researchers in China. And researchers should thank Prof. Chen and his colleagues for leading us toward this very important, new, challenging and controversy prone topic of research.

当研究目标必须要考虑另一个组织—家族—而变得复杂时，研究主题事实上也变得有趣和富有挑战。此时所研究的情景涉及家族企业和家族这两个组织之间的利益冲突，涉及企业内的家族成员、企业外的家族成员以及企业内非家族成员之间的利益冲突。研究情景复杂造成的结果是研究结论和对结论的解释必然存在争议。出现争议首先是因为情景中的冲突反映了中国文化中谁的利益更重要的价值判断，其次是因为学术界必须通过争论来接近真理。所以，虽然争议的结论可能让家族企业和企业顾问无所适从，但却让我们这些研究者很兴奋，这正是我们要研究的天地。因此，我认为这份研究报告必将会受到中国家族企业研究者的诸多关注，而且研究者应该感谢陈教授和他的同事们在这个重要、崭新、富有挑战和必然充满争议的研究领域为我们开路。