The Correct Understanding of Entropy and Negative Entropy in Enterprise Management

Entropy is a two-sided thing for enterprises, as it arises from the disorder and chaos of the enterprise. Increasing entropy makes the enterprise even more chaotic and develops slowly. Therefore, enterprise management must have a correct understanding of entropy and entropy increase, and scientifically reduce entropy one by one.

Abstract: The correct development of enterprise management is open, diverse, non-linear, and unbalanced. It requires fully absorbing useful information from external sources such as knowledge, information, technology, and the environment, improving internal governance, innovating and enhancing technological capabilities, breaking the balance, reducing internal entropy in enterprise management, effectively reducing entropy, and returning enterprise management to a scientific, healthy, and orderly path, while also increasing negative entropy flow. Whether it is an individual or a company, working in isolation, excluding dissidents, and closing oneself off will inevitably increase the entropy within the individual or the company. Individuals will be full of laziness, and their innovation ability and wisdom will be sluggish, losing their value. The increase in entropy of enterprises will lead to chaos and disorder in management, which will constrain the development of enterprises and even prevent them from recognizing the right path of development, causing them to be eliminated by technology or the market.

What are entropy and negative entropy?

Entropy is one of the parameters that characterize the state of matter in thermodynamics, and its physical meaning is a measure of the degree of disorder in a system. Entropy is a measure used to represent the state of certain material systems or to indicate the degree to which they may occur. (Or to describe the degree of disorder of matter in an isolated system).

Negative entropy, also known as entropy reduction, is the negative change in the entropy function.

Negative entropy is a measure of the ordered, organized, and complex state of a material system.

Negative entropy is the opposite of entropy, where entropy represents disorder and negative entropy represents order. Absorbing negative entropy can be simply understood as reducing the entropy of the system and making it more orderly after absorbing matter or energy from the outside world. Entropy increase refers to the weakening of function, human aging, tissue laxity, and so on, all of which reflect the loss of function.

The entropy of life includes three aspects: material negative entropy, which includes eating, drinking, breathing, sleep, and exercise; Negative entropy of information, including learning knowledge and skills, frequent communication, sharing, and collision with others to generate ideas; Psychological negative entropy, positive attitude, etc.

Therefore, what we eat must be very orderly in itself, that is, food must have low entropy, so we animals can only eat life. Plants are different, for plants, the most fundamental negative entropy comes from the sunlight of the sun. Sunlight is the fundamental source of negative entropy absorbed by all living organisms on Earth. Therefore, in the future, we should not only thank the sun for bringing us infinite energy, but also add a sentence at the end, thanking the sun for bringing us negative entropy!

The application of entropy theory is very wide, including cosmology, physics, biology, environmental science, etc. Introducing entropy theory from natural sciences to social sciences and business management is a new innovation. The law of entropy can be roughly divided into four aspects: the first law is that only open systems can experience entropy reduction; The second law is that negative entropy breaks the balance and promotes entropy reduction. The third law is that the introduction of negative entropy should be moderate and of high quality. The more negative entropy, the better. The quality of negative entropy is very important. The fourth law is the confrontation between entropy increase and entropy decrease We mainly focus on how to construct a dissipative structure regarding the application of the law of entropy. The entropy of isolated systems always develops in the direction of entropy increase, but in reality, why living organisms can recover from injuries and why enterprises can move from aging to rebirth are all due to the effect of entropy reduction. By constructing dissipative structures, introducing negative entropy flow, moving away from equilibrium, generating tension, and constructing elements such as active factors, the system entropy can be reduced and value can be effectively created again.

Entropy increase is an inevitable trend in the development process of enterprises. Internally, due to the expansion of business scale, the complexity of management has also increased, and there will be more redundant and non value creating things in the historical process, with diminishing marginal benefits; In addition, external technological advancements, emerging new business models, and industry cycle patterns will continue to pose various threats to enterprises, ultimately resulting in the failure of their value creation function. When entropy increases to its extreme value, enterprise collapse can occur at any time. Therefore, effective understanding of the manifestation of enterprise entropy, targeted treatment, and effective entropy reduction can lead to healthy and orderly development of enterprises.

The specific manifestation of enterprise entropy:

Firstly, corporate reform is facing difficulties. When it comes to the path of enterprise reform, the management of the enterprise will make passionate and high pitched remarks. It can be said that there is a strong sense of leadership, but implementing it at the local level is fraught with difficulties. Due to the potential impact of existing interests, complex organizational personnel, and conflicts at various stages and nodes, reform and innovation are always stillborn.

Secondly, learning and skills are stagnant. Due to the habitual thinking and strong sense of comfort among internal personnel of enterprises after experiencing entrepreneurship, germination, early childhood, growth, and maturity. The strategic transformation of a company requires its personnel to undergo a transformation and learn to enhance their technology and improve their skills. The need to transition from one's original major to a new one is not simply a business transformation, but a comprehensive transformation of talent and skills. Even if companies realize the need for transformation in their future development, if they only stay in writing or language, they will be like Kodak and unable to enjoy the feast of digital technology again. But it is reported that Kodak has innovation in this area. The world's first digital camera was invented by Kodak in 1975. It was due to the lack of learning and decision-making errors of internal management personnel that the company ultimately missed the stage of the digital technology market. On the contrary, some new start-up companies are thriving despite being incomplete in all aspects. The innovation and learning of small companies are constantly changing, breaking through every day, and the technological innovation is not comparable to that of ordinary large companies. Small companies focus on innovation and technological creation, while large companies seek stability and short-term benefits with too many constraints. Currently, most of the "unicorn" companies are small business innovation models.

The third issue is the bloated organization, which hinders the innovation of the enterprise in terms of work efficiency. Complicated management, manifested as lengthy and rigid processes, layers of royal structure organization, dozens or even hundreds of different departments and leaders' reviews, PPT flying everywhere, reporting and re reporting without making decisions, selectively implementing and distorting decisions layer by layer, thus giving rise to a variety of control institutions. Within the enterprise, numerous police and supervisory agencies have emerged, not only causing the new IDEA to die on the way, but also invisibly increasing the internal management costs of the enterprise and losing more opportunity costs. The increase in enterprise entropy is mainly reflected in:

·Internal management is becoming increasingly complex, often indicating problems with corporate culture, a lack of trust between each other, and a weakening of the team's career pursuit. Departments form cliques, pursue small interests of gangs, and form informal organizations that are not conducive to enterprise management;

·Protectionism is manifested in the formation of independent systems among departments within the enterprise, where departmental interests are prioritized over corporate interests, resulting in poor communication across departments;

·Loose organization, unable to effectively manage strategic objectives.

·Organizational laziness, silence in balance, loneliness in stagnant water.

· 流程僵化，缺少灵活性，效率低下。

· 技术创新乏力，没有核心技术能力，在低端死拼。

· 高层管理者有私心，凌驾于制度之上。

· 各谋私利，只顾个人，不要集体。

· 企业文化落后，没有团队精神等。

企业为了弥补信任的这些熵增缺失，就增加更多的管理动作，而这些管理动作如果设计不当，可能会进一步削弱相互信任，把内驱力、事业心变成考核驱动，没有激励就不干活，不监管就违规，责任权力的碎片化等等，如此陷入恶性循环周而复始。

四是制度滋生了太多的企业熵。企业的激励机制与福利制度是有两面性的，好的一方面就是让企业全员努力工作，创造更好的价值。不好的一方面是随着时间的推移，由于年资的增长与薪水提升以及稳定的福利制度，人的惰性就会出现，沉沦于现有的工作与生活，对新生的事物与创新麻木，更多是千方百计的阻碍。让企业的熵流无限增加，企业的创新与活力缺乏，企业的成长动力也必将减弱。况且即便是企业员工积极的配合，但是由于年龄的增长，人的智慧与创新也不是无穷无尽的，相对也是比较慢的，与市场发展的速度未必一致。华为公司就意识到此问题，在2008年新的劳动法颁布之前，辞退了较多的企业员工，并给予了丰厚的补偿，后重新签订合同，避免了员工安逸的思维。而且华为公司也明确规定了企业中高层最高任职年龄的限制，还有对于福利制度也有5年期限的一个规定，由于企业中高层薪水是工资+股权+奖金，为了避免后期股权即得利益的隐患，故对股权是有一个5年期限的制约规定。让所有时有风险意识，减少安乐隐患对企业创新的影响。

耗散结构理论指出，系统从无序状态过渡到这种耗散结构有几个必要条件，一是系统必须是开放的，即系统必须与外界进行物质、能量的交换；孤立的系统势必熵增，相反就会熵减；二是系统必须是远离平衡状态的，系统中物质、能量流和热力学力的关系是非线性的；没有温差就没有风的流动，没有地势差就没有水的流动。三是系统内部不同元素之间存在着非线性相互作用，并且需要不断输入能量来维持。非线性意味着要洞察技术突破、商业机会爆发等产业周期拐点和宏观经济周期拐点，调整资源配置策略。

企业熵减措施

一是必须坚持改革之路。改革之举需要在企业整个发展历程之中，不是朝夕之举，需要萌芽-幼童-成长-成熟-衰落各个环节。即需要在逆境中从企业管理、技术、人力、战略、文化不断进行科学有序的改革，也要顺境中，用放大镜的模式从细节到长远规划来进行全面的改革，让企业核心力持续领先，决不在低端产品用臂膀与人血战，用先进的管理与创新的技术来引领行业。华为花费巨额费用，从1998年开始引入IBM对华为进行再造。20多年的时间让华为插上了翅膀，销售额从创业之初的10亿人民币到2018年的7500亿，几百倍的增长也已超过了IBM，这是一个商业奇迹。据说IBM都有点后悔指导华为的改革之路。

二是建立有效的学习型企业。任正非曾说：用最优秀的人培养更优秀的人。国家是这样，企业更是如此，企业需要引入较好的培训资源，加大科研与技术的创新投入，决不在科研与技术创新方面妥协。并且在建立学习型组织方面引入较好的激励机制，可以让学习者无后顾之忧。因为科研与技术创新是需要时间的，如果企业不能正视此问题，就会出现因利益而尴尬的情况，降低了学习型组织有积极性并增加消极性。华为在引进IBM管理改革之时，亦从社会与高校引入了高端人才，特别是人大的博士引入为最。目前华为不仅有自已的大学，仍在世界各高校用高薪招聘天才。

三是组织变革，有效的放权。中国有句古话，用人不疑，疑人不用。企业需要懂得适当的放权，权力过于集中，就会出现层层的监管机构与人员，有效的决策与建议及发明制造被影响、耽搁、放置。就如柯达错过数码相机，微软错过搜索引擎，诺基亚错过智能手机。不是这些企业的科研人员没有此方面研究，而是企业高层的决策效率让机会从身边流走，并致企业此类的科技人员被迫离开公司或被其它企业高薪挖走。有效的组织变革及合理的授权，必将让企业的活力重展，从而减少了熵增的出现，熵减与负熵流重整企业从无序到有序。

four战略决策必须适时快捷，不可以盲从。

企业的高管与专家大多数是从传统业务成长起来的，对于新业务未必都有深刻的洞察和知识更新，新业务也必然引发新的权力分配，这导致公司原有的思想话语权、决策权的重新调整。对此需要企业对这些老人进行因地制宜学习培养，培养变革领导力用适者生存，不适者淘汰来进行引导，不迁就任何一个违背企业战略的人或事。决策需要快捷，不能拖沓，否则机会就会失去。还有决策不能盲从，需要有慧眼，需要是引领行业技术前端，否则就会如惠晋公司一样。惠晋企业本身就有惠普之道：1、重视技术创新，坚持在研发上的大幅投资；2、创立之初就倡导要激发员工的个人主动性；3、为员工提供优先入股权和利润分享等等，鼓励大家分享价值来共同创业。但就是因为战略的摇摆与不确定，持续更换CEO，不同的战略决策让公司在错误的路上越走越偏，文化与技术创新不前，企业的凝聚力降低，恶性循环加剧。

五核心竞争力战略明确。做企业不是要做到大而全，需要要某一方面找到差异化优势或竞争力。核心竞争力战略不可以朝三暮四的摇摆不定，要有挥刀斩臂的黄盖气魄。企业的管理做不到满树开花，必须要该裁剪的裁剪，该去除的去除，做必要的熵减，一味的固守在既定的轨道或专业，缺乏新洞察，新思想，新管理，新技术，那就是熵增。不然即便满树结果而果实残缺不一没有核心竞争力，失去机会也失去市场。

六构建内部熵减系统

内部熵减系统的构建或者说自由整合，需要企业有催生此熵减活动的沃土，让熵减活动在企业内部自由生长，当然这里的熵减都是有价值的，过多的熵减也是不利的。也就说当企业出现局部的熵增之时，如管理效率低下，技术创新落后等之时，由于企业较好的激励机制让企业一些有智慧的人自发的来进行改进或变革，即进行熵减。导入负熵流，企业进行自愈式改善。故有效的激励机制（从股权，红利，奖金进行鼓励），将会让企业构建起一个有效的熵减系统，有效杜绝熵增，让企业始终在有序中运行。

总而言之，熵对企业来说一个具有两面性的东西，它生于企业的无序混乱之中，熵增让企业更加紊乱，发展迟缓。因此企业管理必须正确认识熵与熵增，并科学逐一熵减，让企业，走在开放、创新、融合之中的有序之路，保持耗散结构，打破平衡状态，为企业腾飞保驾护航。

文章来源：世界经理人

作者：张培泉