Everybody loves to boo and hiss a corporate villain; especially amid scandal. Five years ago the hunt was on for baddies in banking. Then when BP caused a terrible oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, there was more hand-wringing – and a search for villains.

所有人都喜欢对企业恶人发出嘘声；特别是在曝出丑闻期间。5年前，人们嘲讽的对象是银行业的恶人。接着，当英国石油(BP)在墨西哥湾发生可怕的石油泄漏后，人们变得更为焦虑，大力寻找谁是其中恶人。

Now, the chase is on again, this time at General Motors. Last week Anton Valukas, a former federal prosecutor, released a 315-page report on the carmaker’s scandalous failure to withdraw faulty ignition switches from several of its models, even though some employees knew about the technical problems for a decade.

如今，人们又开始竖靶子了，这一次是通用汽车(GM)。这家汽车制造商未能及时召回几款车型的故障点火开关，尽管一些员工早在10年前就知晓了这些技术问题。最近，前联邦检察官安东•沃卢克斯(Anton Valukas)就通用汽车这一不光彩的失误发表了一篇长达315页的报告。

Before the report emerged, some observers expected that Mr Valukas would reveal dastardly villains. After all, it was claimed, it was hard to imagine that corporate mistakes on this scale could have occurred for so long – and caused many needless deaths – without deliberate malfeasance.

在报告发表前，一些观察人士预计，沃卢克斯会揭露出卑鄙的恶人。毕竟，据称，很难想象在没有故意渎职行为的情况下，这种程度的企业失误能够存在这么长时间，并导致很多不必要的死亡。

Mr Valukas, however, blamed events not on an evil plot, but on the “silos” created by GM’s profoundly fragmented structure. The group’s culture and organisational matrix was so dysfunctional, he said, that employees failed to pass crucial information to each other or take responsibility for flaws. “GM personnel’s inability to address the ignition switch problem for over 11 years is a history of failures,” observed Mr Valukas.

然而，沃卢克斯没有将这些事件归因为一场罪恶的阴谋，而是将其归咎于通用汽车严重分立的结构所产生的“竖井”(silo)。他表示，通用汽车的文化和组织结构严重运转不良，以至于员工未能互相传递关键信息或为缺陷承担责任。沃卢克斯认为：“通用汽车员工未能在11年多的时间内解决点火开关问题，这是一连串的失败造成的。”

That will be of little comfort to the families of the deceased; it is also unlikely to appease politicians calling for GM to be punished. But if Mr Valukas is correct – and nobody has yet proved otherwise – his report makes disturbing reading for the corporate world beyond Detroit.

这几乎不会给逝者家属带来丝毫的慰藉；这也不可能让呼吁惩罚通用汽车的政界人士让步。然而，如果沃卢克斯所言正确的话（目前还没有人证明他所言错误），他的报告会让底特律以外的汽车界感到不安。

GM is certainly not the only large company cursed by silos. Numerous institutions are marked by internal fragmentation, leading to tribalism and tunnel vision. A look at recent corporate scandals reveals repeated examples.

通用汽车肯定并非唯一受到“竖井”诅咒的大公司。很多企业存在内部分裂的问题，这造成了派系主义以及眼界狭隘。看看最近的公司丑闻，你就会发现很多这样的例子。

Take BP. When investigators dug into the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, they discovered that technical experts involved in day-to-day operations had known about the problems besetting deep-sea drilling for years. Yet no one acted. The specialist rig engineers had little direct contact with the “safety specialists”, who were supposed to control risks; they sat in different organisational silos, in much the same way that GM lawyers (who monitored accidents) were from the engineers (who built the cars).

以英国石油(BP)为例。当调查者调查2010年墨西哥湾漏油事件时，他们发现，参与日常作业的技术专家多年前就知晓那些威胁深水钻探的问题。然而，谁也没有采取行动。专业油井工程师与本应控制风险的“安全专家”极少直接联络；他们分处于组织内不同的“竖井”，有着类似于（监督意外事故的）通用汽车律师与（生产汽车的）工程师之间的那种隔阂。

Or look at finance. When massive losses erupted at companies such as AIG, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and UBS, many blamed greed or deliberate deception. That was sometimes true. However, another crucial problem was that financial groups were so fragmented that it was almost impossible for managers, regulators and employees to connect the dots – and see risks.

或者看看金融业。当美国国际集团(AIG)、美林(Merrill Lynch)、花旗集团(Citigroup)和瑞银(UBS)等公司出现巨额亏损时，很多人将其归咎于贪婪或故意的欺骗。有时这是正确的。然而，另一个关键的问题是金融机构内部严格分立，管理者、监管机构和员工几乎无法统观全局并发现风险。

A 2010 report by UBS into the $19bn it lost during the financial crisis offers fascinating parallels with GM. At the Swiss banking giant, the silos were so entrenched that nobody knew the full scale of its exposure to subprime securities; at GM, the organisation was so fragmented that, Mr Valukas notes, there was a “failure to understand, quite simply, how the car was built”. At both organisations, risks were missed for years because they were misclassified at an early stage.

2010年，瑞银针对其在此次金融危机期间损失的190亿美元发布的一份报告，提到了一些有趣的与通用汽车相似之处。在这家瑞士的银行业巨擘，“竖井”如此之深，以至于没有人知道次贷证券投资的整个规模；沃卢克斯指出，在通用汽车，这家公司的机构非常分立，人们“无法很简单的了解汽车是怎么生产出来的”。在这两家公司，风险被忽视数年的原因是，它们在初期就被错误地归类。

Thankfully there is some good(ish) news. At GM, senior managers have finally recognised the problem. “We need to make sure that we break down those organisation silos,” Mary Barra, chief executive, told staff last week. Elsewhere there are also plenty of ideas about how to break down barriers – some of which are even being implemented.

庆幸的是，还有一些还算不错的消息。在通用汽车，高层管理人员最终意识到了这个问题。该公司首席执行官玛丽•博拉(Mary Barra)最近告诉员工：“我们需要确保打破这些组织‘竖井’。”在其他公司，也提出了很多如何打破障碍的想法，其中一些甚至已进入实施。

Unilever recently launched a social media platform to enable employees to swap ideas and sound alarm bells.

联合利华(Unilever)最近推出了一个社交媒体平台，让员工能够交流想法并发出警报。

Facebook is working to prevent its specialist engineering teams from becoming introverted by forcing staff to interact with colleagues elsewhere.

Facebook正迫使员工与其他部门同事互动，以防范其专业工程师团队变得性格内向。

Syngenta, an agribusiness giant, is trying to encourage more lateral thinking by moving from a system of dividing business units into silos created by its scientists – “seeds”, “pesticides”, fungicides” and so on – into one where teams are also organised around consumer labels, such as “wheat” or “corn”.

农业巨头先正达(Syngenta)正试图鼓励更为横向的思考。在该公司以前的体系中，业务部门都是一个一个由科学家创建的“竖井”（“种子”、“杀虫剂”、“杀菌剂”等等），现在这一体系正进行转型，也会围绕消费者标识（例如“小麦”或“玉米”）来构建团队。

Yet, the truth remains that really breaking down silos is very hard; particularly at companies as large and rich in deeply entrenched traditions as GM. Ms Barra faces a very tough challenge – one that is much harder than “just” finding a few villains.

但事实仍是：真正打破这些“竖井”非常困难；尤其是在像通用汽车这么庞大且有着丰富的根深蒂固的传统的公司。博拉面临着非常严峻的挑战：这要比“仅仅”发现几个恶人困难得多。