America's most-hated companies美国最招人厌的公司

America's most-hated companies
美国最招人厌的公司
The very bottom line
恰是底线
A roll-call of commercial vilification
商业毁誉大盘点
Dec 20th 2005 | NEW YORK | from the print edition 

AMERICA loves a winner. Almost every business magazine and trade publication compiles its annual list of the fastest-growing or the finest-managed or the farthest-seeing companies in its universe. But what happens at the other end of the scale? Which are America's most hated companies, and why? None claims the title publicly, yet some must deserve it. This deeply unscientific stab at an answer relies mainly on a searching of databases, a trolling of blogs, and conversations with business-school professors across the country. Polling and focus-group data have been sought but not always obtained. “Our clients would so like not to be included in this project”, explained one corporate-reputation consultant. Any conclusions which may inadvertently be reached should be viewed as provisional, anecdotal and, above all, not actionable.
美国青睐赢家。几乎每一本商业杂志和贸易出版物都会有一份年度名单，上面列出在其领域要么是成长最快的公司，要么是管理最佳的公司，在要么是最具长远眼光的公司。但是有另一个极端，哪些公司是全美最召人厌的，为什么？鲜有人公开指出这一点，但有些公司就是不骂不行。这样做往深里说并不科学，对该问题的解答主要依赖于搜索数据库，博客上的高调宣扬以及与全美商学院教授们的谈话等途径。我们搜寻了投票及小组访谈的的记录，但不总是有结果。“我们的客户可不乐意被列入到这个项目中。”一位企业声誉顾问解释道。任何漫不经心的结论都应当被当做是一时好玩，而不至于因此对薄公堂。

James Hoopes, a professor of business ethics at Babson College in Massachusetts, suggests reaching back to the end of the 18th century for the first enterprise to provoke public loathing. That, he says, would be the First Bank of the United States, founded in 1791, which did the work of a central bank even though private investors held most of its shares. Jeffersonians denounced it as an unconstitutional victory of commerce over farming. Refounded in 1816 as the Second Bank of the United States, it over-lent wildly and then called in its money, sparking financial panic. President Andrew Jackson ended its special status in 1836. Five years later, as an ordinary commercial bank, it went bust. 
詹姆斯·霍佩斯（James Hoopes）是马萨诸塞州巴布森大学（Babson College in Massachusetts）的商业道德教授，他提出回溯到18世纪末第一家引起公众反感的企业。他指出，这家公司是成立于1791年的美国第一银行，该行的绝大多数股份由私人投资者持有，却扮演着中央银行的角色。杰弗逊学派抨击它是商业驾驭农业的不合宪法的成功案例。该行于1816年重新成立，更名为美国第二银行，其盲目、过度放贷，又随即收回资金，这样的行为引发了金融混乱。安德鲁·杰克逊总统（President Andrew Jackson）于1836年终止了该行的特殊地位。5年后，其作为一家普通商业银行走向破产。

That was a true one-off. Big business in a rough-edged version of its modern form arrived with the robber barons of the late 19th century. That era's most-hated company, though by no means the worst of them, was Standard Oil, a monopoly founded by John D. Rockefeller in the 1870s, and finally broken up by court order in 1911. Standard Oil was America's “first and reigning champion of public wrath”, says George David Smith, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business.
这是一个真实的一次性事物范例。19世纪晚期，初具现代形式的大企业与强盗男爵一同出现。那个时代最招人厌的公司——尽管不是最坏的——是标准石油公司（Standard Oil），这是由约翰·D·洛克菲勒（John D. Rockefeller）于1870年代成立的一家垄断企业，于1911年被法院命令分拆。标准石油公司是美国“在引发公众愤怒方面当仁不让的第一个冠军”，纽约大学斯特恩商学院（New York University's Stern School of Business）教授乔治·大卫·史密斯（George David Smith）是这么来形容的。

To corner the market in infamy (as well as in refining capacity) might seem a harsh fate for a company that was not particularly malevolent by the exacting standards of its time, and really quite laudable in an historical perspective. (For a bona fide bad-hat, Jay Gould was probably the top contender; see article.) The efficiencies and economies of scale achieved by Standard Oil helped the whole world to industrialise and grow richer. The firm's success may well have left all Americans better off, save for the competitors that it drove out of business. 
对一家并非出于某种恶意而细化其所处时代的标准，并在历史上享有赞誉的公司而言，垄断恶名市场（以及在净化能力方面）对其来说似乎是严酷的命运（作为一个真实的流氓，杰·古尔德（Jay Gould）估计就是其头号竞争对手了；见相关文章）。标准石油公司在效率和经济性上取得的成就帮助世界走向工业化，变的更加富裕。该公司的成功让所有美国人受益，也让竞争中的落败者省钱了。

But still Americans chafed at it, says Mr Smith, because “Throughout our history we don't mind that people become rich but we do mind that people become powerful. Standard Oil had the first real problem with that among public companies.” Rockefeller's empire became, says Mr Smith, “a proxy for everything that Americans feared—and what they feared was a concentration of power.”
但史密斯说，美国人仍然对其怒气未消，因为“纵观我们的历史，我们并不反对这种人致富，但反对他们揽权。标准石油公司碰上了公共企业中首个现实难题。”史密斯指出，洛克菲勒的帝国变成了“一切的代理人，这让美国人恐惧——他们害怕的是权力集中。”

Here Americans diverged sharply from Europeans, who have been much more comfortable with concentrations of power manifested in big government and nationalised industries. Where Americans fret about trusts and combinations that stifle future winners, Europeans fret about unbridled competition that guarantees future losers. 
在这一点上，美国人与欧洲人截然不同，欧洲人更乐于接受一个权力集中的大政府和国有化的工业。美国人担心垄断和集中会扼杀未来的成功者，而欧洲人想的无序竞争会产生未来的失败者。

To be fair on Standard Oil, it could also be a pretty nasty operator when it chose. Rockefeller conspired with railway companies to ensure that his rivals would pay much higher freight charges than he did, and that their payments would secretly cross-subsidise discounts for Standard Oil. That cost disadvantage left independent refiners with a choice between going bust over time, or selling out to Standard Oil for the scrap value of their plant. And the more Standard Oil grew, the more people's feet it stepped on. If it cut prices, competitors complained about unfair competition. If it raised prices, consumers complained about gouging. A top Standard Oil manager, William Warden, wrote in 1887 that the firm, albeit “a success unparalleled in commercial history”, was viewed almost everywhere as “the representative of all that is evil, hard hearted, oppressive [and] cruel.”
公平地来说标准石油公司，它也可以选择成为一家非常险恶的企业。洛克菲勒与铁路公司合谋，让其竞争对手支付比自己更高的运费，对手的费用被用来补贴对标准石油公司的折扣。成本的劣势迫使独立炼油厂不得不在倒闭或卖给标准石油公司以获取残存的价值之间做出选择。标准石油公司越壮大，就有越多的人被它踩在脚下。假如它减价，对手就抱怨竞争不公平；假如它加价，消费者又抱怨被欺诈。一位标准石油公司的高层经理，威廉·沃顿（William Warden)在1887年写道，这家公司尽管“享有商业史上无与伦比的成功”，但却在几乎任何地方都被视作“一切邪恶、冷酷、压迫和残忍的代名词。”



The Wall Street Crash of 1929 spread its shock and misery so indiscriminately that no one corporation could be held accountable for it—though National City Bank, and its president, Charles Mitchell, did more than their share of running the market up. The system took the blame, as it did for the depression which followed in the 1930s. The 1940s and 1950s were golden decades for big business, when America's leading companies basked in the admiration of a diligent public. Prosperity was advancing more evenly across society, and no industrial revolution intervened to create a provocative new monopoly in a leading industry, in the manner of Standard Oil and, later, Microsoft. 
1929年华尔街大崩溃（Wall Street Crash）所带来的震荡和痛苦波及了所有人，没有哪一家公司可以独立承担责任——尽管花旗银行（National City Bank）及其总裁查尔斯·米歇尔（Charles Mitchell）尽了超过其自身能力的努力力图使市场回升。整个体系承担了责任，其行为导致了1930年代的大萧条。1940年代和1950年代是大企业的黄金时期，在这一时期，美国的领先企业享受着勤劳大众的赞誉。繁荣更加公平地惠及社会各个阶层，没有工业革命的干涉使得在领先行业没有出现向标准石油公司那样挑拨神经的新的垄断企业，后来微软（Microsoft）出现了。

Hostilities between business and society resumed in the 1960s with the Vietnam War and the rise of rebellious baby-boomers. Student demonstrators marched against many things that decade, but rarely as often as they did against Dow Chemical, maker of napalm and Agent Orange. Dow was on its way to earning a lifetime achievement award for the courting of controversy. In the 1980s and 1990s the silicone breast implants which it produced jointly with Corning, a glass company, gave rise to an unfounded public health scare and class-action suits costing up to $3.2 billion. In 2001 Dow Chemical bought Union Carbide, operator of a plant at Bhopal in India, where a leak of toxic chemicals in 1984 produced the biggest industrial disaster of modern times. If Dow Chemical did not find itself in the headlines from time to time, that was scarcely for want of trying. 
1960年代，伴随着越战和叛逆婴儿潮的崛起，商业与社会间的敌视依旧如故。学生们在那个年代游行反对过很多事物，但若论游行次数，鲜有比得上道化学公司（Dow Chemical）的，这家公司生产凝固汽油弹和橙剂（Agent Orange）。道化学在引发争议方面都快可以获得终身成就奖了。1980年代和1990年代，其与玻璃生产商康宁公司（Corning）一起生产了植入用硅胶乳房，这种产品引发了关于公众健康的无根据的恐慌以及集体诉讼，耗费了32亿美元的代价。2001年道化学收购了联合碳化物公司（Union Carbide），这家公司运营着印度博帕尔（Bhopal）的一家工厂，这家工厂于1984年在当地发生了有毒化学品泄漏，造成了现代史上最大的工业灾难。假如道化学有时在新闻标题上找不到自己的名字，那只能说是不想找而已。

No smoke without fire无风不起浪

Between the mid-1960s and the mid-1990s the American public went sour on a whole industry: big tobacco. Fair enough, many would say. “If you are killing people, it doesn't matter whether you are creating shareholder value, you are still bad,” observes Mason Carpenter, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business. Yet the American public has gone on liking alcohol companies and, for the most part, fast-food companies, even though their products also ruin many people's heath. The key difference, probably, was the growing belief in the dishonesty of tobacco firms. The industry had fought off private lawsuits for 30 years by insisting, in effect, that it knew no more about the hazards of smoking than anybody else did. But as scientific evidence mounted and company documents were leaked, the public lost faith. Now, “probably everybody thinks of tobacco companies as being intrinsically bad,” says Stern's Mr Smith. 
从1960年代中期到1990年代中期，美国公众的怒火指向了一个行业：烟草业。公平来讲，许多人会说，“如果你在杀人，那么不管你是否为股东创造价值，你都是个坏蛋”。威斯康辛大学麦迪逊商学院（University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business）的教授梅森·卡朋特（Mason Carpenter）就是这么来看的。但是美国公众还是继续钟爱酿酒企业，并且在很大程度上也青睐快餐企业，尽管快餐业损害许多人的身体健康。关键的区别可能是越来越多的人认为烟草公司不诚实。该行业排斥私人诉讼达30年之久，其坚持的一个有效策略就是始终认为自身对吸烟危害的了解不必别人多。但随着科学证据的揭示和公司文件的泄露，公众不再相信这些话。斯特恩商学院的史密斯教授说，目前，“几乎所有人都认为烟草公司坏到根了”，。

Set against big tobacco, Microsoft looks positively benign. And, in every significant way, it is. Its frequent designation as a most-hated company from the late-1980s onward always owed more to the quality than to the quantity of its critics—computer users with infinite scope to air their views through e-mail and the internet. Probably never was a company insulted so ingeniously and elaborately. Type “hate Bill Gates” into Google even now, and you will probably get over 15,000 hits. Type “love Bill Gates”, and on a good day (for Mr Gates) you may get 2,000. 
相比烟草巨头，微软看起来相对好些。并且在所有重要衡量标准上来看都是如此。其从1980年代晚期开始频繁被列为最招人厌的公司，这总是更多归咎于其遭受批评的质量，而非数量——神通广大的用户通过电邮和互联网传播看法。估计绝没哪家公司被骂的这么有才这么巧妙。即使是现在往谷歌里输入“讨厌比尔·盖茨（Bill Gates）”，你能得到超过1万5千条结果。输入“喜欢比尔·盖茨，即使是在好日子（对盖茨来说），估计也才2000条。

The ubiquity of Microsoft's operating system was frustrating enough for consumers accustomed to exercising choice elsewhere in their lives. The company made things worse by managing its ruthlessness clumsily, trying to conquer every other software and internet market worth having. But the verdict of history will be kind. By popularising and standardising personal computing, Microsoft laid the foundations of an industrial and technological revolution too big for any one company to control. Most Americans applauded this achievement, even while the federal government was trying to break up Microsoft (see chart).
无处不在的微软操作系统，对那些习惯于在生活中做选择的消费者来说，是够抓狂的。该企业就其冷酷作风的笨拙处置让事情变得更糟，其总想占领其他任何有价值的软件及互联网市场。但历史的结论还算仁慈。通过普及并标准化个人电脑，微软奠定了一个大得令任何公司都无法控制的行业和技术革命的基础。大多数美国人赞赏这一成就，即使联邦政府试图分拆微软（见图）依然不改。




But enough of even-handed judgments. The end of the 1990s brought a company with nothing to be said for it whatsoever. Few would dispute Enron's right to the title of America's most-hated company, at least since Standard Oil. Nominally an energy company, Enron filed for bankruptcy in 2001 after inflating its balance sheet with so many dodgy asset-financing deals that nobody outside the boardroom understood quite what it was doing other than misusing shareholders' money. “Basically bandits”, says Mr Carpenter. “There is a BS factor there that makes people feel very strongly negative,” says David Kirsch, a professor at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. “An authentic emblem of corporate corruption, and will remain so another hundred years from now,” according to Stern's Mr Smith.
但是公正地来评价，1990年代末有一家公司无论如何都让人无话可说。鲜有人会质疑安然（Enron）作为美国至少是自标准石油以来最召人厌的公司的地位。作为一家名义上的能源公司，安然于2001年破产，其原因是利用众多的虚假资产融资交易在资产负债表做假，这些交易是局外人看不懂的，只有公司董事会才知道他们是如何滥用股东资金的。卡朋特指出，“这基本就是强盗行为”，马里兰大学罗伯特·H·史密斯商学院（University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business）教授大卫·克奇（David Kirsch）说，“这是一个让人们深感负面的商业因素”，而斯特恩商学院的史密斯认为，“这是企业腐败的一个象征，即使再过100年依然如此”。

Much the same might be said of WorldCom, a telecoms firm which combined the worst features of the dotcom boom with those of an Enron-style accounting scandal. After declaring bankruptcy, Worldcom was reborn as MCI, then bought in 2005 by Verizon, another big telecom firm. Its former boss, Bernie Ebbers, was jailed for 25 years. 
同样该挨板子的还有世界通信公司（WorldCom），这家通信企业将网络泡沫中的恶习与安然式的会计丑闻结合在了一起。在宣告破产之后，世通公司以MCI的名字重生，并于2005年被另一家通信巨头Verizon收购。其前老板伯尼·艾博斯（Bernie Ebbers）被判入狱25年。

A straw poll by Fred Bateman, a professor of economics at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business, brings us to the present. He asked three classes in economics, about 100 students in all, which company they thought was the most hated in America. They almost all said Wal-Mart. 
一段针对乔治亚大学特里商学院（the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business）经济学教授弗雷德·贝特曼（Fred Bateman）的采访将我们带回到目前。他问到3个经济学课堂上的总共100名学生，他们认为在美国最召人厌的企业。结果异口同声是沃尔玛（Wal-Mart）。

And, in its darker moments, Wal-Mart might almost half-agree. For the past two or three years it has endured spikes of public hostility provoked by labour unions that want to organise in its stores, communities that want to shut it out to safeguard local commerce, and by periodic rows over claims that Wal-Mart was using illegal immigrants as cleaners, paying its staff so little that they relied on welfare benefits, and systematically underpaying female workers. Having tried at first to stare down its critics, Wal-Mart has moved in the past year to recruit a high-powered team of lobbyists and consultants, including former advisers to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, to manage its image and interests more actively. 
即使情况差一点，沃尔玛也得到了半数的认同。在过去的两三年里，沃尔玛经历了公众反对情绪的顶峰，这种情绪是由想要在其店铺建立组织的劳工联盟和想要将其店铺关闭以保护本地商业利益的社区所激发的，此外还有周期性出现的指责，认为沃尔玛雇佣非法移民做清洁工，支付给员工的薪水过低使他们还得依赖福利生活，还有有组织地给女性员工少付工资。在初次审视批评声之后，沃尔玛在于去年采取行动，招募了一支精力充沛的团队，团队由说客和顾问组成，其中包括了里根及克林顿的前顾问，沃尔玛利用这支团队更加积极地维护其形象和利益。

As with Microsoft, Wal-Mart is loved at least as much as it is hated, often by the same people. You can hate its market power while loving its low prices, though these are two sides of the same coin. “What they do, they do really well,” says Mr Kirsch, “and they share the benefits. If they can get a thing 10% cheaper, then 5% goes to the shareholders and 5% to the customers. It's that simple. But we get back to the inherent problem of size. Big boxes in small towns. When you get very big you are bound to do things that will piss people off.”
同微软一样，对沃尔玛的爱和对其之恨至少旗鼓相当，而且通常是又爱又恨。你可以再讨厌它的市场地位的同时又喜欢它的低价，尽管两者是同一事物的两个方面。克奇说，“看看他们做的事，真的很棒”，“他们分享了利益。假如他们能让某件商品便宜10%，那么其中5%到了股东手里，5%留给了消费者。就这么简单。但是让我们固有的问题——规模。小镇上的大块头。当你块头很大的时候，想做点事情就会别人挤走。



Any trot this brisk through a century of pissed-off people will risk neglecting many corporate reputations worthy of separate discussion—Manville, McDonald's and Martha Stewart, for example, to pause only at the Ms. But still, a few general truths emerge. The main one is that Americans are generally accepting of big business, but only so long as they feel in control of it, as citizens or as consumers. They lose that sense when a company wins a monopoly for its products, or when it comes busting into a community and displacing local commerce, or when its officers break the law. When that happens, they are disproportionately shocked and hostile, because they see it as a violation both of the natural order of things, and of their trust. But so long as that does not happen, business can get on with its job of making and selling things, almost whatever they may be. Americans are not unduly excited about arms makers, for example, or sellers of genetically modified crops. Monsanto may be the most-hated American company in Europe, but it is scarcely noticed in America. 
任何人只要快速浏览一下一个世纪以来被挤走的人，就容易忽视许多值得被分别讨论的企业声誉，比如曼维尔（Manville），麦当劳（McDonald's），玛莎·斯图瓦特（Martha Stewart），他们只停留在了微软的程度。但是仍然有一些总体的事实浮现出来。主要的一个就是，美国人总的来说是接受大企业的——但是只有是在作为公民或者消费者，他们觉得可以掌控这些企业时才行。当一家公司以产品取得垄断，或该公司进入一个社区，取代了当地的商业利益，再或其员工触犯法律的时候，他们就不淡定了。当这些事情发生时，他们就表现出过分的震惊和敌意，因为他们是这些行为不仅侵犯了事物的自然规律，也伤害了他们的信心。但是只要这些事情没发生，企业就能随心所欲地生产和销售产品。比如美国人就不会对武器生产商或是基因改进企业表现出过分的激动。孟山都（Monsanto）是在欧洲最招人厌的美国公司，但是在美国却少有关注。

Where is public hostility turning next? Big oil is one target. Unlike in Europe, where governments get most of the blame for high petrol prices, because taxes account for so much of the final cost, the American public holds oil firms mainly responsible. No surprise, then, that while oil prices have been soaring in 2005, esteem for oil companies has been plummeting. A Gallup poll in August found that 42% of Americans disliked the oil industry, including 35% who disliked it very much indeed. Plus ça change, as John D. Rockefeller might say.
公众敌视的下一个领域是什么？大型油企算一个。不像在欧洲，政府对高油价承担着大多数职责，因为在最终价格上税收占了很大一部分，美国民众任务油企该负主要责任。毫不吃惊的是，在油价高涨的2005年，对油企的敬意直线下滑。八月份盖洛普（Gallup）的一项民调指出，有42%的美国人讨厌石油行业，其中有35%的人非常讨厌。约翰·D·洛克菲勒估计该说还得改变了。