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Business
商业版块
Bartleby
巴托比专栏
A firm for all seasons
公司的四季
Companies run to their own annual rhythms.
企业有各自的年度节律。
Seasonality is a big part of business.
季节性是商业中很重要的一个部分。
For some industries, seasonal patterns are a defining feature.
对于一些行业来说，季节模式是决定性的特征。
Agriculture is one obvious example; tourism another.
一个显而易见的例子是农业，另一个例子是旅游业。
Western toymakers notch up a huge proportion of their annual sales in the run-up to Christmas.
西方玩具制造商在圣诞节前夕的销售量占全年销售量的一大部分。
Construction is harder during cold weather, which is why that industry employs fewer people in the winter.
在寒冷的天气里建房子更困难，这就是为什么建筑行业在冬天雇佣的人更少。
Firms that are less obviously tied to the seasons can still be deeply affected by them, as a recent review by Ian Hohm of the University of British Columbia and his co-authors makes clear.
不列颠哥伦比亚大学的伊恩·霍姆及其合著者最近发表的一篇评论明确指出，那些看起来不太受季节性影响的公司仍然会受到季节性的深刻影响。
An analysis of social-media posts on Twitter, now X, found that dieting-related tweets peak in the spring, as the season of body dysmorphia (ie, summer) approaches.
一项对推特帖子（推特现在叫做X）的分析发现，随着身材变形症季节(即夏季)的临近，与节食瘦身相关的推文在春季达到顶峰。
Condom sales and online searches for pornography in America tend to rise in the summer and around Christmas.
在美国，避孕套的销量和色情内容的在线搜索量往往在夏季和圣诞节前后上升。
Even when overall demand does not vary greatly between the seasons, preferences change.
即使总体需求在不同季节变化不大，偏好也还是会发生变化。
Beef-eaters buy diced meat and roasts in the slow-cooking winter season and plump for steaks during the summer grilling months.
牛肉消费者在冬季会购买肉丁和烤肉来小火慢炖着吃，在夏季则会精心挑选牛排用来做烧烤。
Starbucks is among those firms that make seasonality a marketing event.
星巴克是将季节性作为一种营销活动的公司之一。
The pumpkin-spiced latte is a reliable sign that autumn is on its way, along with falling leaves and glum faces at condom manufacturers.
南瓜风味的拿铁咖啡是秋天即将到来的可靠信号，落叶和避孕套生产商的阴沉表情也预兆秋天的来临。
Seasonality also leaves a less obvious imprint inside organisations.
季节性也会在组织内部留下不那么明显的印记。
Just as there are daily and weekly patterns of activity, from slumps in concentration during the late afternoons to the ebb and flow of hybrid workers coming to the office, so annual cycles leave their mark.
员工在一天内和一周内的活动都有一定规律，比如下午注意力会下降、混合办公人员来办公室的人数在一周内会起起伏伏，同样一年中的周期循环也会留下印记。
One is occurring this week, with the World Economic Forum’s annual shindig in Davos.
其中一个活动在本周举行，即世界经济论坛在达沃斯的年度盛会。
Public holidays aside, in no other week in the working year are so many CEOs of large organisations reliably away.
除去公共假期不谈，一年中没有哪个星期像本周一样，有这么多大型机构的CEO确定不在公司。
The corporate world is briefly without a government, a concentrated version of Belgium in the early 2010s.
企业界暂时无人管理了，这是2010—2011年比利时无政府状态的浓缩版本。
This may well be Davos’s real contribution to improving the state of the world: with so many bosses stuck on a mountain for a few days, productive employees can get on with some work and lazy ones can relax.
这很可能是达沃斯对改善世界状况的真正贡献：在这么多老板被困在山上好几天的时候，效率高的员工可以继续完成工作，懒惰的员工可以趁机放松。
School holidays offer an obvious form of seasonality, although in that case people throughout the organisation are off.
学校假期也带来了一种明显的季节性，尽管在这种情况下，整个学校的人都休息了。
Mass absences make it hard to schedule meetings in Brazil in the period between Christmas and the start of Carnival; it is a similar story in August in Europe.
在圣诞节和狂欢节开始之间的这段时间，巴西的大规模人员缺席使得组织很难安排会议，欧洲8月份的情况与此类似。
These patterns of clustered absences show up inside organisations in big ways and small.
这种集体性缺勤模式在组织内部有或大或小的表现。
Second-fiddle employees are more likely to get their chance to run the show; fewer big initiatives are likely to be launched when the holidays are in full swing.
二把手员工更有可能获得掌控大局的机会，当假期全面开始时，很少有重大举措会被推行。
Employees without children are resentful that they are covering for colleagues on holiday; colleagues on holiday are resentful that they have children.
没有孩子的员工要为去度假的同事顶班而感到愤愤不平，去度假的同事因为自己有孩子而感到愤愤不平。
There is some evidence that people feel more creative after returning from holiday—but you need to schedule that brainstorming session quickly.
有证据表明，人们度假归来后会感觉更有创造力，但你需要尽快安排好头脑风暴会议。
A paper from 2010 by Jana Kuhnel of Goethe University and Sabine Sonnentag of Universitat Mannheim reckoned that the benefits of a break fade within a month.
歌德大学的贾娜·库内尔和曼海姆大学的萨宾·索南塔格在2010年发表的一篇论文认为，休假产生的好处在一个月内就会消失。
Set-piece events mark the corporate calendar, too.
固定时间的活动也会在公司日历上留下记号。
Some are public: annual general meetings and shareholder letters, say.
有些活动是公开的：比如年度股东大会和致股东的信。
Others are internal.
其他活动的则是公司内部的。
At many companies the annual budgeting process involves a gathering organisational effort, in which more and more people spend more and more time arguing about numbers that are certain to be wrong.
在许多公司，年度预算编制越来越多的组织力量，越来越多的人花费越来越多的时间争论肯定有差错的数字。
It is almost a season in itself.
这个活动本身几乎就是一个季节。
A pre-pandemic estimate fromAPQC, a benchmarking organisation, reckoned that the median firm spends around 30 days on this effort; at plenty of firms, it takes an awful lot longer.
基准评估公司APQC在疫情前估计，中等规模的公司在预算编制上花费的时间约为30天，而在许多公司，花费的时间要长得多。
Pay decisions are seasonal events, too.
关于薪酬的决策也是季节性事件。
The time when employees find out their salary rises and bonuses sets off ripples of disappointment and happiness in all workplaces.
当员工看到自己的加薪和奖金情况的时候，各个工作场所都会泛起失望或幸福的涟漪。
In some, they are more like tsunamis.
在某些情况下，涟漪更像是海啸。
The bonus round on Wall Street, when bankers find out what they will get for their work the previous year, is under way now and is predated by months of internal wrangling and gossip.
华尔街的奖金季--银行家们这时会知道他们前一年的工作将带来多少报酬--现在正在进行，在此之前已经进行了好几个月的内部争执和互相打听。
The actual date on which bonuses are paid matters, too—once the money is safely deposited in the bank, people are more likely to move jobs.
发放奖金的实际日期也很重要，一旦钱被安全地存入银行，人们就更有可能跳槽。
There are other forms of corporate seasonality.
还有其他形式的企业季节性。
The office Christmas party signals another wind-down in activity.
办公室圣诞派对预示着团建活动的又一次缩减。
Some firms shorten the workweek during the summer months.
一些公司在夏季缩短每周的工作时间。
Yearly calendars are punctuated by sales conferences and leadership retreats.
企业年历上散落标记着销售会议和领导层静修活动。
There is not much research on the impact of seasonality within firms.
关于公司内部的季节性有何影响的研究并不多。
That they have their own annual rhythms is indisputable.
但公司都有自己的年度节律，这是无可争辩的。
