经济学人下载:熊彼特专栏-绿色增长

One could quibble with BCG’s analysis. Phil Rosenzweig of Switzerland’s IMD business school has argued that management writers are prone to “the halo effect”: they treat the temporary success of a company as proof that it has discovered some eternal principle of good management. The fact that some successful companies have embraced greenery does not prove that greenery makes a firm successful. Some firms, having prospered, find they can afford to splurge on greenery. Some successful firms pursue greenery for public-relations purposes. And for every sustainable emerging champion, there are surely 100 firms that have prospered by belching fumes into the air or pumping toxins into rivers, as a visit to China or India will show only too vividly.

有人对波士顿咨询公司的这份分析颇有异议。瑞士IMD商学院的Phil Rosenzweig就认为，管理作家倾向于“光环效应”：他们把企业短暂的成功用来证明其发现了优良管理的永恒法宝。一些成功企业支持环保事业的事实无法证明环保事业可以使企业获得成功。一些具有前景的企业认为它们有钱玩环保。还一些企业基于公共关系追求环保事业。至于这些“可持续发展领跑者”，可以肯定有100家企业是通过排放废气或有毒污水来壮大的。去中国或印度看看，那种场景再形象不过了。

Nonetheless, the central message of the WEF-BCG study—that some of the best emerging-world companies are combining profits with greenery—is thought-provoking. Many critics of environmentalism argue that it is a rich-world luxury: that the poor need adequate food before they need super-clean air. Some even see greenery as a rich-world conspiracy: the West grew rich by industrialising (and polluting), but now wants to stop the rest of the world from following suit. The WEF-BCG report demonstrates that such fears are overblown. Emerging-world companies can be just as green as their Western rivals. Many have found that, when natural resources are scarce and consumers are cash-strapped, greenery can be a lucrative business strategy.

不管怎样，世界经济论坛和波士顿咨询公司的这份研究的主旨---发展中国家中最好的一些企业将环保与盈利结合---令人深思。许多环保主义批评者认为这只是发达国家的奢侈品：穷人需要超洁空气之前要先解决温饱问题。甚至有些人将环保事业看作是发达国家的阴谋：西方通过工业化和污染致富，但现在却想要阻止不发达国家走同样的路线。该研究表明这些担忧被夸大了。发展中国家的企业也可以和西方的竞争者一样追求绿色。很多人早就发现，当自然资源日益短缺且消费者捉襟见肘的时候，环保事业不失为一项有利可图的商业策略。