【Editor's Note】In the modern economic system, enterprises are an important cornerstone; behind the prosperity of thousands of enterprises, entrepreneurs play a key role. Entrepreneurship is the comprehensive literacy of entrepreneurial organizations to establish and operate enterprises, which is not only manifested as a collection of skills, but more importantly, it is a kind of spiritual condensation. In a large number of outstanding entrepreneurs in China, we can find a common trait and feeling - "industry to serve the country". This sentiment has both "development" and "promising", "responsibility" and "responsibility", which is the unique gene of China's entrepreneurial group, and it is also a powerful answer to the propositions of the current era.
Looking back at history, this entrepreneurial spirit of serving the country with industry originated in the late Qing Dynasty, from "Chinese business father" Sheng Xuanhuai to Zhang Xiao, who advocated "industry to save the country", from Lu Zuofu, the forerunner of the "people's livelihood spirit", to Fan Xudong, the "father of China's national chemical industry", from them we see the entrepreneurial spirit of daring to be the first in the world, is the feeling of home and country and national consciousness, is the development and inheritance of The Chinese entrepreneurial spirit of serving the country with industry, during the tenth period, this magazine will launch a special topic of "inheritance and return of the national roots of industry serving the country". With a variety of new styles of pictures, texts and videos, the commercial legends of many business giants in China will be deeply understood by these "business masters" who serve the country and the people's industrial feelings and national roots.
Lu Zuofu: To see a person's success is to see how much he has served society
Minsheng Company is China's national capital shipping enterprises, in the 1920s and 1940s, with an amazing speed of development to create a miracle of the development of China's national enterprises, this miracle is largely due to the Minsheng Company's deeply rooted corporate culture - the spirit of people's livelihood, so that the "people's livelihood spirit" that has attracted the attention of the Chinese people has become a fruitful example of modern corporate culture construction. Many of the cultural innovations of people's livelihood still have strong reference significance, and Lu Zuofu is a pioneer in the construction of corporate culture in China and even the world.
Lu Zuofu (1893-1952), a native of Hechuan, Chongqing, was a patriotic industrialist, educator, and social activist. By 1949, minsheng company, which he founded, had 148 ships and invested in more than 60 enterprises and institutions, and was one of the largest and most influential private enterprise groups in China at that time. In his youth, he proposed education to save the country and fought for it, from self-taught to the creation of schools, libraries, museums, and popularization of culture and education. He used Beibei as a base to engage in theoretical exploration and social practice of rural construction, and spent his life frugal and diligent, public and selfless, serving society and the crowd, advocating pragmatism and scientific spirit.
From the beginning of the 20th century to the 20th century, the Chuanjiang shipping market was monopolized by several british, American and Japanese steamship companies, who excluded and controlled Chinese shipping companies by virtue of their technological and financial advantages, systems, and military privileges. Regardless of the number of manufacturers, the circulation of resources, or the characteristics of products and the mode of competition, the shipping market during this period was a market controlled by the monopoly of foreign capital. What is surprising is that Minsheng Company has no financial advantages and no foreign capital or bureaucratic background, but from a small freighter when it was founded in 1925, it has developed into the main force of Sichuan River shipping in only ten years, integrated and developed the Sichuan River shipping industry, and at the same time widely invested in more than 70 enterprises such as steel, smelting, machinery, shipbuilding, coal, textile, food, construction, insurance, etc., becoming one of the largest capital groups in China's modern history. By 1949, Minsheng had 9,000 employees and its routes extended from the Yangtze River to China's coastal areas (Taiwan), Southeast Asian countries and Japan, becoming the largest and most influential private shipping enterprise in China at that time.
The development of Minsheng Company benefited from the "spirit of people's livelihood" advocated by Lu Zuofu, which was vividly expressed in the "Yichang Evacuation" known as "China's Dunkirk". In order to save the country's perilous people's livelihood, only in the first three years of the War of Resistance, the people's livelihood transported more than 1.5 million people and 1 million tons of materials, while it lost 16 ships and sacrificed more than 100 employees, making great contributions to the War of Resistance. In 1952, the minsheng company public-private partnership, the same year Lu Zuofu died, the minsheng company gradually faded out of people's vision... Until February 1984, Lu Guoji, the son of Mr. Lu Zuofu, gathered about 6 employees of the old Minsheng Company and applied to the Chongqing Municipal Government for the reconstruction of the Minsheng Company for approval, and the new Minsheng Company was formally established on October 1, 1984.
The founder Lu Zuofu was praised by Mao Zedong as one of the four Chinese industrialists (Zhang Zhidong, Zhang Xiao, Fan Xudong, Lu Zuofu), the advocate of the theories of "industry to save the country" and "education to save the country", and the first person to introduce educational ideas into enterprise management in the history of modern enterprise management. As an industrialist and educator, Lu Zuofu does not have a clear concept of "corporate culture" in his concept, but his views on cultural construction are advanced. Many original ideas and initiatives have created history, played an exemplary role in the development of modern Chinese enterprises, and are a valuable spiritual heritage in the history of modern operation and management in China, and still have strong reference significance for modern enterprises today.
The formation and deepening of the "people's livelihood spirit" has benefited from Lu Zuofu's advocacy and personal practice, and more importantly, this spirit has accompanied every step of the practice of the development of the people's livelihood, and has become the consensus and spiritual force of the people's livelihood, and has penetrated into the operation and management, rules and regulations and cultural and sports activities of the people's livelihood, and is reflected in all aspects of the employee behavior. Minsheng did not clearly list the corporate culture framework and system at that time, but from the perspective of modern enterprise management, Minsheng actually had its own distinctive cultural system. This system covers the elements of enterprise development goals, business philosophy, management system and spiritual culture. The corporate vision of Minsheng is to develop the national shipping industry and national industry on the basis of The Minsheng Company and realize the modernization of the country as soon as possible; to establish a modern group life and carry out experiments in social reform with the Minsheng Company as the center; the purpose of the enterprise is to serve the society, facilitate the people, develop the industry, and enrich the country... This concept of combining the interests of enterprises, the state and the nation was undoubtedly dazzling in old China. In terms of management concepts, Lu Zuofu does not hesitate to learn modern management methods, requiring strict systems and scientific management, while emphasizing the role of people. Lu Zuofu's business philosophy is different, he does not simply pursue corporate interests, but "to meet the needs of the people as the goal", "to see a person's success is to see how much he has served the society, to see the success of a cause to see how much this cause has helped the society." Lu Zuofu summarized corporate values as saying that the ultimate meaning of people's livelihood is by no means to help itself, but to help society. He demanded that enterprises must have patriotic spirit and collective spirit, and required employees to work hard for the society, the country and the nation to work hard and dedicate themselves. In 1949, 45 employees of the people's livelihood died in the fire to protect the national property and the safety of the people. Lu Zuofu introduced Western management methods as his rigid enterprise system, and at the same time inherited a large number of traditional ethics and morals such as "the world rises and falls, the pirate has the responsibility", "the world is public", "both good to the world", "the world is worried and worried, after the world is happy and happy" and other ideas as its spiritual core, the two different cultural concepts are integrated with each other, and gradually extract the essence of the "people's livelihood spirit" of "adults reach themselves, home and country isomorphism" in the practice of people's livelihood, and guide the behavior of people's livelihood enterprises.
"Adult self-improvement" - in the process of achieving others, contributing to society to strengthen themselves, through the promotion of others, social development to promote their own improvement, this is a kind of interpretation of Lu Zuofu's social responsibility to the people's livelihood; "home country isomorphism" - the combination of patriotism and enterprise development, is the specific embodiment of Lu Zuofu's "industry to save the country" thinking in corporate culture. According to this concept, the people's livelihood will closely integrate the interests of individuals, families, enterprises and the country and the nation, not only to cultivate employees to become moral, mutually caring, and love the country, but also to build a family-like enterprise, and through such an enterprise to build a home-like society, and ultimately achieve "home-country isomorphism". Lu Zuofu put forward two requirements for the people's livelihood, the first is to make the backward countries move forward and run to the forefront of the world; the second is to use modern technology and management to do a good job in modern undertakings and influence society. He pointed out that "these two experiments are not only for our wages or our surpluses, but we are to stop all the competition of material life, to leave the original social material temptations and to form a new social life of interdependence.". He hopes to establish a "group life organization in the era of industry and commerce" that transcends the family and the relationship between relatives, neighbors and friends, and this group life is not based on the family, relatives and friends as the core, but on the dependence on society and the state as the core. The moral standard in the life of the new group is not only for the interests of the family, relatives and friends in the past, but only for the interests of the family, relatives and friends and the interests of the society and the country, but for the welfare of the society and the country, even at the cost of life.
Lu Zuofu put many of his social ideals into the people's livelihood corporate culture, so that the company culture transcends its own value to a new height, so that the people's livelihood is no longer a commercial entity that simply pursues profits, but a social group that shares the fate and lives and dies with the country. In the social context at that time, this corporate culture and the patriotic spirit expressed undoubtedly resonated with people, and also became the reason for the rapid development and growth of people's livelihood in adversity.
Article/Reporter Su Dajun
This article was published in Sino-Foreign Enterprise Culture, Issue 09, 2021
The roots and inheritance of industry to serve the country (1) | Sheng Xuanhuai: Open up the atmosphere of China to reap the interests of foreign countries
The roots and inheritance of industry to serve the country (2) | Zhang Xiao: China must revitalize its industry, and its responsibility lies with the scholars