快餐丑闻福喜为何会在中国出事

2014-09-11 11:59:11来源：可可英语

　　I met one as a friend from college, so I won’t use their names. But we talked at length aboutthe crises. Their explanation of what went wrong is the story of a U.S. company that didn’tknow what local Chinese managers were doing—and in some cases, couldn’t figure out. Localplant documents and rules weren’t translated from Chinese into English, and even if they hadbeen, OSI’s American managers didn’t often visit.

　　这里面有一位是我大学时期的同窗好友，我不会在此透露他们的姓名。但我们详细地探讨了此次危机。对于为什么会出此纰漏，他们的解释是，作为一家美国公司，福喜集团不知道中国本地经理人在做些什么，有时候也没法搞清楚。中国本地工厂的文件和条例不会从中文翻译成英文，即便翻译了，福喜的美国经理人也不会经常浏览。

　　OSI is working to fix the problems, but most recently its China business was at a standstill,losing millions of dollars a day in revenue.

　　这家公司正在努力解决这些问题，但最近它的中国业务陷入停滞，每天亏损达数百万美元。

　　Media reports followed two narratives in the latest China food safety scandal. The first was thatMcDonald’s, KFC, Starbucks, and the rest of the U.S. restaurants getting supplies from OSIwere victims of China’s crackdown on foreign companies—a trend over the past year and a halfstarting when Starbucks was criticized by Chinese media for the price of its coffee. This wasthe argument favored by Westerners defending American brands.

　　在这起最新的中国食品安全丑闻中，媒体报道分为两派。一派认为，从福喜获得原料供应的麦当劳、肯德基、星巴克(Starbucks)和其他美国餐饮公司是中国掀起打击外资公司风潮下的牺牲品，而此类行动从1年半前中国媒体批评星巴克咖啡定价就开始了。这是为美国品牌辩护的西方人喜欢的论调。

　　The second, offered mostly by Chinese media, argued that foreign fast food had gotten sloppyin China, and that OSI was guilty of the same food quality and food safety issues plaguingChina’s domestic food companies.

　　另一派以中国媒体为主，它们认为，洋快餐在中国大失水准，福喜存在与众多中国本土食品公司一样的食品质量和安全问题。

　　After a night with the two OSI executives, it was clear the Chinese media were right—OSI wassometimes clueless about its operations in China, probably guilty as charged, and pretty openabout needing to change.

　　与福喜的两位高管谈了一晚之后，有一点很清楚了——中国媒体是对的。福喜有时对于其在中国的经营状况确实一无所知，可能确实存在被指控的问题，但他们对需要做出的改变持开放态度。

　　OSI was clueless because the private company gave managers a lot of autonomy. Sometimesthat works, like on Wall Street, where investment companies allow individuals to independentlywager on stocks to avoid groupthink. But in Big Food Processing, OSI’s business, globalstandards need to be exactly followed by everyone—and verified.

　　福喜对丑闻毫无头绪，因为这家私有公司给了经理人很大自主权。有时候这种做法很管用，比如在华尔街，投资公司允许个人独立决定股票投资，无需集体决策。但在福喜这样的大规模食品加工业务中，全球标准需要每个人严格遵守，并确保落实。

　　The private OSI’s decentralized business model allowed Chinese managers leeway to make theirown decisions. The strategy that helped OSI expand quickly in China since the early 1990s.But it’s now clear there were problems. OSI didn’t audit enough to ensure Chinese plantsfollowed standards coming from OSI’s Illinois headquarters and didn’t monitor its plants located6,600 miles from headquarters in Aurora, Illinois.

　　私有企业福喜的这种权力分散型业务模式给中国经理人留出了自行决策的空间。这一策略曾帮助福喜于上世纪90年代初在中国实现了快速扩张。但如今看来，显然其中是有问题的。福喜没有进行足够的检查，无法确保公司伊利诺伊州总部制定的标准得以贯彻，也没有对距其6600英里之遥的中国工厂进行监控。

　　Even the language barrier was an issue: Chinese managers wrote documents in Chinese anddidn’t translate them, so English-speaking employees often couldn’t understand operations ordata.

　　语言障碍也成为一个问题：中国经理人用中文起草文件，不作翻译，因此，只会英文的员工往往不了解相关的具体经营情况或数据。

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