1998年Text 2

Well, no gain
without pain, they say. But what about pain without gain?
Everywhere you go in America, you hear tales of corporate revival.
What is harder to establish is whether the productivity revolution
that businessmen assume they are presiding over is for
real.

人们说，不劳就无获。但是，如果劳而无获又会怎样呢？在美国，无论你走到哪里都会听到关于企业复苏的故事。但是，更加难以确定的是商家自认为他们发动的这场生产率革命是否真的名副其实。



The official
statistics are mildly discouraging. They show that, if you lump
manufacturing and services together, productivity has grown on
average by 1.2% since 1987. That is somewhat faster than the
average during the previous decade. And since 1991, productivity
has increased by about 2% a year, which is more than twice the
1978-87 average. The trouble is that part of the recent
acceleration is due to the usual rebound that occurs at this point
in a business cycle, and so is not conclusive evidence of a revival
in the underlying trend. There is, as Robert Rubin, the treasury
secretary, says, a “disjunction” between the mass of business
anecdote that points to a leap in productivity and the picture
reflected by the statistics.

官方的统计数字却有点不容乐观。这些数据表明，如果把制造业和服务业加起来，那么自1987年以来，生产力平均每年增长1.2%。这比前10年的平均增长速度要略快。自1991年来，生产力每年上升约2%。这比1978年—1987年的平均增长速度高出两倍以上。而问题在于，近年出现的生产力快速增长部分是由于商业周期通常到了这时候常出现的反弹造成的，因而还不能以此作为最终的证据来证明这种趋势预示出经济复苏的姿态。正如财政部长罗伯特•鲁宾所说的那样，生产力发生大幅提高的商业传奇与官方的统计数字所反映的情况之间存在着一种“脱节”。



Some of this can be
easily explained. New ways of organizing the workplace -- all that
re-engineering and downsizing -- are only one contribution to the
overall productivity of an economy, which is driven by many other
factors such as joint investment in equipment and machinery, new
technology, and investment in education and training. Moreover,
most of the changes that companies make are intended to keep them
profitable, and this need not always mean increasing productivity:
switching to new markets or improving quality can matter just as
much.

这其中的一些原因很容易解释。新的工作场所组织方式——包括所有那些重组和缩小规模的做法——只是促进某一个经济实体的综合生产力水平的一项措施，因为这种生产力的提高还受到许多其他因素的驱动，如对机械设备的联合投资，采用新技术，以及在教育和培训上的投资。另外，公司的大部分改革以赢利为目的，而达到赢利的目的不一定总是要提高生产力：转入新的市场或改善产品质量也可以达到同样的效果。



Two other
explanations are more speculative. First, some of the business
restructuring of recent years may have been ineptly done. Second,
even if it was well done, it may have spread much less widely than
people suppose.

另外两种解释更让人深思熟虑。一种解释认为，近年来一些公司进行的重组也许并未奏效。另一种则认为，即使有所成效，效果也不像人们所设想的那样得到了广泛的推广。



Leonard Schlesinger,
a Harvard academic and former chief executive of Au Bong Pain, a
rapidly growing chain of bakery cafes, says that much
“re-engineering” has been crude. In many cases, he believes, the
loss of revenue has been greater than the reductions in cost. His
colleague, Michael Beer, says that far too many companies have
applied re-engineering in a mechanistic fashion, chopping out costs
without giving sufficient thought to long-term profitability.
BBDO’s Al Rosenshine is blunter. He dismisses a lot of the work of
re-engineering consultants as mere rubbish -- “the worst sort of
ambulance chasing.”

哈佛大学学者、发展迅速的美味面包连锁店前任总裁莱昂纳多•施莱辛格说，许多“公司重组”都很粗糙。他认为很多情况下，企业在效益上的损失远远超出了成本的降低。他的同事迈克•比尔说，太多的公司用简单机械的方式进行重组，在没有充分考虑到长期赢利能力的情况下降低了成本。BBDO的艾尔•罗森夏恩更加直率，他把许多重组咨询专家所做的工作视为垃圾——“典型的劳而无获”。