Conventional views on luck and business hold that luck involves unsystematic variance that cannot be measured or analyzed. Furthermore, top performers, according to conventional wisdom, perform the best because they are the most skilled. It is not a matter of luck that Bill Gates or Usain Bolt is successful; they are among the best at what they do. Along these lines, business schools deemphasize the role that luck plays in outcomes and focus, instead, on topics like skill and leadership. This seems sensible. Focus on what you can control—and luck, by definition, is uncontrollable. Chengwei Liu argues that conventional views on luck are mistaken; luck is a key idea for business and society. First, luck can be measured via regression to the mean. The basic idea behind regression to the mean is that outlying firm performances are often not indicative of actual skill. As such, we should expect future performance to regress toward the mean. This is because continued streaks of good or bad luck are unlikely to occur. Being lucky is not a repeatable skill. Second, businesspersons can strategize around luck because the ways in which people are fooled by randomness are predictable. Third, in luck-dependent fields (such as business), extreme outcomes are not the result of exceptional skill or the lack thereof but are due to exceptionally lucky circumstances. This is not to say that skill is irrelevant. Top performers are skilled, but conventional views about the relationship between skill and luck only apply for the moderate range of performances. These three claims make up what Liu calls the “unconventional wisdom of luck” and are the main themes of his book. In chapter 1, Liu highlights the differences between conventional views on luck and his own unconventional approach. He also outlines the plan for subsequent chapters of the book. In chapter 2, Liu reviews five common ways in which luck is defined in the business management literature, that is, luck as attribution, randomness, counterfactual, undeserved, and serendipity. A strength of this chapter is its interdisciplinary appeal. Psychologists will be interested in Liu’s claims regarding cognitive biases and luck attributions. Liu discusses many of the ways in which people are fooled by randomness, for example, via self-serving biases, hot-hand fallacies, halo effects, and ignorance when it comes to regression to the mean. Philosophers who work on the nature of luck will be interested in Liu’s discussion of luck as a counterfactual. Liu raises the criticism of modal accounts that “perfect counterfactual analysis is impossible if one cannot specify all of the initial conditions that could have altered the course of history” (15). Liu is on the right track. For themodal account, the extent to which an event is a matter of luck will depend on what initial conditions one holds constant across possible scenarios (Hill 2020). However, modal theorists, such as 316 Business Ethics Quarterly

中文翻译：

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运气：商业和社会的关键思想，刘成伟着。纽约：劳特利奇，2020 年。124 页。

关于运气和商业的传统观点认为，运气涉及无法衡量或分析的非系统性差异。此外，根据传统观点，表现最好的人表现最好，因为他们最熟练。比尔盖茨或尤塞恩博尔特成功不是运气问题；他们在他们所做的事情上名列前茅。沿着这些思路，商学院不再强调运气在结果中的作用，而是将重点放在技能和领导力等主题上。这似乎是明智的。专注于你可以控制的事情——而运气，顾名思义，是无法控制的。刘成伟认为，传统的运气观是错误的；运气是商业和社会的关键理念。首先，运气可以通过回归均值来衡量。回归均值背后的基本思想是，离群索居的公司表现通常并不代表实际技能。因此，我们应该预期未来的表现会向均值回归。这是因为不太可能出现连续的好运或坏运。幸运不是一项可重复的技能。其次，商人可以围绕运气制定策略，因为人们被随机性愚弄的方式是可以预测的。第三，在依赖运气的领域（如商业），极端的结果不是特殊技能或缺乏技能的结果，而是由于非常幸运的情况。这并不是说技能无关紧要。表现最好的人是熟练的，但关于技巧和运气之间关系的传统观点只适用于中等范围的表现。这三个主张构成了刘所说的“非常规的运气智慧”，也是他这本书的主题。在第一章中，刘强调了传统的运气观点与他自己的非传统方法之间的差异。他还概述了本书后续章节的计划。在第 2 章中，刘回顾了企业管理文献中定义运气的五种常见方式，即运气作为归因、随机性、反事实、不值得和意外。本章的优势在于其跨学科的吸引力。心理学家会对刘关于认知偏差和运气归因的说法感兴趣。刘讨论了人们被随机性愚弄的许多方式，例如，通过自私偏见、热手谬误、光环效应和对均值回归的无知。研究运气本质的哲学家会对刘将运气作为反事实的讨论感兴趣。刘对模态解释提出了批评，即“如果不能详细说明可能改变历史进程的所有初始条件，则不可能进行完美的反事实分析”（15）。刘正走在正确的轨道上。对于模态帐户，事件在多大程度上是运气问题将取决于在可能的情况下保持不变的初始条件（Hill 2020）。但是，模态理论家，例如 316 Business Ethics Quarterly 刘对模态解释提出了批评，即“如果不能详细说明可能改变历史进程的所有初始条件，则不可能进行完美的反事实分析”（15）。刘正走在正确的轨道上。对于模态帐户，事件在多大程度上是运气问题将取决于在可能的情况下保持不变的初始条件（Hill 2020）。但是，模态理论家，例如 316 Business Ethics Quarterly 刘对模态解释提出了批评，即“如果不能详细说明可能改变历史进程的所有初始条件，则不可能进行完美的反事实分析”（15）。刘正走在正确的轨道上。对于模态帐户，事件在多大程度上是运气问题将取决于在可能的情况下保持不变的初始条件（Hill 2020）。但是，模态理论家，例如 316 Business Ethics Quarterly