Unit 5 Business Ethics课文翻译大学体验英语四

Unit 5 Business Ethics Passage A The Moral Advantage: How to Succeed in Business by Doing the Right Thing As for the moral advantage in business, of all places, everyone knows a modicum of ethics is called for in any business - you can't cheat your customers forever and get away with it. But wouldn't it be more advantageous if you actually could get away with it? Profits would soar out of sight! Then you would really have an advantage, or so the thinking might go. The notion of seeking the moral advantage is a new way of thinking about ethics and virtue in business, an approach that does not accept the need for trade-offs between ambition and conscience. Far from obstructing the drive for success, a sense of moral purpose can help individuals and companies achieve at the highest - and most profitable - levels. Cynicism dominates our attitudes about what it takes to succeed in business. A common way of thinking about morality in business goes something like this: Ethical conduct is an unpleasant medicine that society forces down business people's throats to protect the public interest from business avarice. Morality gets in the way of the cold, hard actions truly ambitious Skepticism people must take to reach their goals. Moneymaking is inevitably tainted by greed, deceit, and exploitation. The quest for profits stands in opposition to everything that is moral, fair, decent, and charitable. Skepticism about moneymaking goes back a long way. The Bible warns that it's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. "Behind every great fortune," wrote French novelist Honoré de Balzac in the 1800s, "lies a great crime." British author G. K. Chesterton sounded the same theme in the early 20th century, noting that a businessman "is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation." The contemporary media often characterize business as nothing more than a self-serving exercise in greed, carried out in as corrupt and ruthless a manner as possible. In television and movies, moneymaking in business is tainted by avarice, exploitation, or downright villainy. The unflattering portrayals have become even more pointed over time. In 1969, the businessman in Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus advises the story's protagonist, "To get by in business, you've got to be a bit of a thief." He seems like a benignly wise, figure compared with Wall Street's 1980s icon, Gordon Gekko, whose immortal words were "Greed is good." Yet some important observers of business see things differently. Widely read gurus such as Stephen Covey and Tom Peters point to the practical utility of moral virtues such as compassion, responsibility, fairness, and honesty. They suggest that virtue is an essential ingredient in the recipe for success, and that moral standards are not merely commendable choices but necessary components of a thriving business career. This is a frequent theme in commencement addresses and other personal testimonials: Virtuous behavior advances a career in the long run by building trust and reputation, whereas ethical shortcomings eventually derail careers. The humorist Dorothy Parker captured this idea in one of her signature quips: "Time wounds all heels. So who's right --- those who believe that morality and business are mutually exclusive, or those who believe they reinforce one another? Do nice guys finish last, or are those who advocate doing well by doing good the real winners? Is the business world a den of thievery or a haven for upstanding citizens? With colleagues Howard Gardner at Harvard University and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi at Claremont Graduate University, I've examined this question by interviewing 40 top business leaders, such as McDonald's CEO Jack Greenberg and the late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, between 1998 and 2000 as part of our joint "Project on Good Work." We found that a strong sense of moral purpose not only promotes a business career but also provides a telling advantage in the quest to build a thriving enterprise. In fact, a sense of moral purpose stands at the center of all successful business innovations. Far from being a constraining force that merely keeps people honest and out of trouble, morality creates a fertile source of business motivation, inspiration, and innovation. This is different from the view of morality you'll encounter in a typical business-ethics course. It's so different that I now speak about moralities, in the plural, when discussing the role of virtue and ethics in business. Morality in business has three distinct faces, each playing its own special role in ensuring business success. A道德利益:怎样在商业中遵纪守法获得成功 道德利益,它存在于商业中,以及所有其他领域里。大家都知道各行都需要有一点伦理道德—你不能永远欺骗顾客并侥幸逃脱。但是如果你果真能侥幸逃脱,那就算你的幸运——利润回会滚滚而来!这可能就是你所指望的好处,为此你不愿放弃自己的指望。 寻求道德利益的概念是商界思考伦理道德的新途径,这种新途径不是仅仅用于调节奢望与良知之间的冲突。如果人们具有道德目标意识不仅不会削弱他们获得成功的动力,反而能 帮助他们个人和公司获得最大成功,即最高利润。 人们对商业成功总是持有愤世嫉俗的态度。大家对商业道德的理解大致如下: 道德行为是社会为了保护公众利益不受商业欺诈而强迫商界咽下的一服苦药。 道德会妨碍利欲熏心的人们为达到目的而采取的冷酷无情的行为。 赚钱就不可避免地要被贪婪、欺诈和盘剥的行为所玷污。 追求利润与任何道德、公平、体面和仁慈的事情是背道而驰的。 对赚钱持怀疑的态度由来已久。圣经警告说,一个有钱人要进入天堂比让一头骆驼钻进针眼还要难。十九世纪法国小说家巴尔扎克(Honoréde Balzac)写道:“在每一笔巨大财富背后都隐藏着巨大的罪恶。”英国作家切斯特顿在20世纪初也论述过同样的主题,指出商人是“唯一要对其职业永远说抱歉的人。” 现代媒体常常把商业定义为一种既自私又贪婪的运作,过程是极其腐败和冷酷的。在电视和电影中,商业挣钱充满了贪婪、盘剥和尔虞我诈。这些逼真的描绘日后甚至变得更加尖刻。1969年,在非利普?萝斯的《再见》一剧中的商人哥伦布忠告剧中主人公时说,“要想在商界站住脚,你就得多少有点做贼的本领”。华尔街20世纪80年代的偶像哥登?节科有一句经典名句:“贪婪为好”,与他相比,哥伦布看起来就象一个慈祥而明智的父亲形象。 然而一些重要的商界观察家对此又有不同的看法。如象颇受读者喜爱的斯帝夫科?威和汤姆?皮特斯等著名权威,他们都指出了怜悯、责任、公平和诚实等道德操守的实际作用,如他们认为道德是成功秘诀中的首要组成成分,道德标准不仅是值得称赞的选择,也是商业兴旺的必要动力。这些言词是毕业典礼致词和其他个人德行证明书中一个常有的主题:从长远来看,道德高尚的行为有助于建立信任和信誉,从而推动事业的发展,相反,伦理道德的瑕疵最终会导致事业的败落。幽默家多萝斯帕克在她所题写的警句中抓住了这一观点:“时间会弄伤所有的脚后跟。” 那么谁的观点是正确的呢?是主张道德和商业水火不容呢,还是主张道德和商业相辅相成呢?是否好人最终完蛋,那些主张做好事求成功的人是最终的赢家?商界到底是一个贼窝,还是诚实人的天堂? 我与哈福大学的霍华德?加德纳和克来蒙研究生院的米哈利?斯克珍特米哈利两位同行在一起,于1998年到2000年期间,通过采访40位高层商界领导,如麦当劳的总裁杰克?格林伯格和已仙逝的华盛顿邮报发行人凯斯琳?格雷厄姆等,我研究了这个问题,这是我们共同合作的“良好工作项目”的一个部分。我们发现一种强烈的道德追求意识不仅会促进商业的发展,而且会为建立繁荣的产业提供强大的优势。事实上,道德追求意识是商业成功的核心。道德不仅是只能让人保持诚实、摆脱困境的约束力量,更为商业欲望、激情和创新创造了肥沃的土壤。 这与你在典型的商业伦理课上会遇到的道德观大相径庭。这些差异是如此之大,因此在讨论伦理道德在商业中的作用时,我现在要说道德涉及的不是一个方面。商业道德有三个清晰的侧面,每一个侧面在确保商业成功中都在起着特有的作用。 Passage B Shaking Hands On the Web Jack Welch said something the other day that brought me up short: "Human relationships are declining in the selling game." It jarred me because I'd been wondering whether maybe the exact opposite was true: In the Internet Age, as products become commoditized and buyers compare prices and features continually, maybe human relationships would become one of the few differentiators that could command significant margins. It isn't happening, says General Electric's CEO. But whatever is happening, it goes to the heart of how we'll all do business in our revolutionized economy. Let's admit first that "relationship" is one of the most abused words in business. Dot-com CEOs like to say, "We have relationships with two million customers," but that's usually a lie. It means two million customers have placed at least one order. How many never come back and never will? It's fashionable now for virtually anyone who sells anything to say he has a relationship with the buyer. But that isn't for the seller to say; only the buyer's opinion counts when it comes to judging this connection. Welch knows personal sales relationships aren't disappearing. In selling expensive, mission-critical products like power turbines and aircraft engines, those bonds always matter. But what's amazing is how deeply the Net - in less than 2,000 days of existence as a business tool - has pushed into the realm of big-ticket sales that previously would have demanded heavy personal flogging. Example: Radiologists who own GE's CT scanners and MRI machines can go to the Net and try out new GE software that improves the machines' efficiency on spinal exams; if the doctors like it, they can buy it for $65,000, as 65% of them do. Three years ago only a few visionaries imagined that someone would buy a $65,000 product without seeing or even speaking to a salesperson. You can understand why Welch says, "The old belly-to-belly selling is less and less effective." It is for sure, yet some companies are emphasizing it more than ever. For example, most of the big, incumbent retail brokerages face a common problem: Online brokers are stealing the industry's old source of profits, trading commissions, by cutting them almost to zero. So incumbent brokers figure the only way to make money now is to cultivate relationships, leading customers to like and trust them enough to buy high-margin products and services like front-end-load mutual funds and financial planning advice. That's one reason brokers are all calling themselves something else, like financial advisors, and trying harder than ever to get belly to belly with you. They're assuming, as are many business people, that the Net is destined to be a death pit of merciless price competition. Yet it needn't be, as the Amazon paradox shows. I travel a lot and talk with all kinds of people, and I'm struck by how many of them speak passionately about their retail experience with Amazon.com. It's about the only retail experience they seem to love - and of course it involves no human beings. If we accept that human relationships are invariably the most rewarding parts of our lives, how can people get so cranked up about an experience in which they don't see, touch, or hear another soul? The answer is that Amazon creates a more human relationship than most people realize. Customers love Amazon not because it offers the lowest prices - it doesn't - but because the experience has been crafted so carefully that most of us actually enjoy it. That is not primarily a technological achievement. It results from many people at headquarters obsessing over what customers want in a fundamentally new kind of relationship, the online experience. No matter what becomes of Amazon, it has taught us something new. I've asked the most prominent chiefs in the shrinking club of Net firms still standing - Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Jerry Yang of Yahoo - my favorite question for business people everywhere: What is the source of your competitive advantage? None of these three said anything about technology. They all said essentially the same thing: creating a customer experience is superior to anything my competitors can create. We're seeing the outlines of how the Net revolution is transforming selling. Some million-dollar products will still be sold person to person. Other products, like many bought from Wal-Mart and other big retailers, will get reordered automatically without any human interaction. And millions of others between these extremes will shift toward the Net, where human buyers will make choices based on a new kind of interaction. It will be fascinating to watch. In this way as in many others, the Net puts everything out in the open. We'll soon see who has relationships with their customers and who doesn't. B网上握手 杰克·威尔奇那天说的话让我哑然。他说:“人际关系在买卖把戏中日益衰落”。我对此很吃惊,因为我一直不知道相对立的看法是否也可能成立:即在网络时代,由于产品的商品化,买家不断地比较价格和特性,也许人际关系就会成为数不多的能够决定巨大利润的因素之一。通用电器公司的总裁说,这种事现在并没有发生。但一旦发生,就会涉及这个中心议题:我们将如何在经济的变革中进行商业运作。 首先,我们承认“联系”是商业中用得最滥的一个词语。网站的总裁喜欢说:“我们与二百万顾客都有联系。”但通常这却是一个谎言。其实这句话的意思是说有二百万顾客至少订货一次。有多少顾客从未再来光顾我们的生意,并且也永远不会再来光顾呢?事实上,销售商品的人会说他已与买家建立了关系,这已成为现在的一大时尚。然而,是否真正建立了这 种联系,不应该是卖家来 评价 LEC评价法下载LEC评价法下载评价量规免费下载学院评价表文档下载学院评价表文档下载 ,而应由买家来评说。 威尔奇认为销售中的人际关系并没有消失。在销售涡轮发动机和飞机发动机等价格昂贵且功能要求甚高的产品时,私人间的销售关系总是至关重要的。但是让人吃惊的是,作为一种商业手段诞生不到2000天的网络,却能如此深入地挤身于大额票据的销售王国,而这在以前是需要大量的个人推销才能做到的。例如,那些拥有通用电器公司的CT扫描仪和MRI 机器的放射专家可以登录上网并试用通用电器公司为提高脊髓探测仪功效而开发的新软件。如果医生喜欢,就可以花65000美元将其买下,事实上65%的人都是这样做的。但三年前,只有少数有远见卓识的人才会想到有人会买下65000美元的产品而不是先去面见商家并与之交谈。难怪威尔奇说:“旧的面对面交易的效率已越来越低。” 对此人们已确信无疑,但目前一些公司却比以往任何时候都强调面对面交易。例如,大多数大型零售商都面临一个共同的问题:网上经纪人在剽窃企业旧有的利润来源——贸易佣金,将其减少到几乎为零。因此开业的经纪人认为现在挣钱的唯一途径就是培植关系,设法让顾客喜爱和信任他们,从而来购买他们的高利润产品和服务,就像前期付息互助基金和金融计划咨询等服务。为此目的,所有的经纪人在努力寻找机会与你进行面对面的交易时,都要给自己找一个别的头衔,如金融顾问等 和许多商人一样,这些经济人也认为网络注定是无情价格竞争的坟墓。然而,结果未必是这样,亚马逊公司的尴尬境况说明了这一点:我常常旅游并与各种不同的人交谈,令我震惊的是,他们当中有多少人热衷地谈到他们与亚马逊公司的零售交易往来。他们热爱的似乎只是零售交易往来。---当然没有涉及到人。如果我们承认人际关系是我们生活中始终如一的最有回报的部分,那么人们怎么会热衷于一种他们看不见,摸不着,也听不到另一个人的心声的新的经历呢。 答案就是亚马逊创造了一个比大多数人意识到的更人性化的关系。顾客喜欢亚马逊不是因为其低廉的价格---决不是---而是因为其精心 设计 领导形象设计圆作业设计ao工艺污水处理厂设计附属工程施工组织设计清扫机器人结构设计 的购物体验使我们对它产生了由衷的喜爱。这种成功主要不是技术上的成功,而是总部工作的许多人,他们挖空心思想知道顾客在一种什么样的完全崭新的人际关系,他们发现顾客需要的就是网上体验。不管亚玛逊将如何发展,它已教会了我们一些新的东西 我问过现有的网络公司俱乐部(现在其规模在缩小)中的一些最著名的首脑,如亚玛逊公司的杰夫·博若思,雅虎的杨志远,我最喜欢问各个地方的商人这样一个问题:你们的竞争优势来源于什么?没有人回答是有关技术的任何东西。他们的回答基本一致:建立顾客的购物体验,要比我的竞争者能够创造的任何东西都重要。 我们看到网络革命是如何改变我们的销售方式。一些价值上百万的产品将仍然是面对面销售的,而另一些产品,如在沃尔玛和其他大的零售商那里能够买到的商品,将会自动订购而不需人们亲自介入。在这两种极端之间有数以百万的产品将会转移到网络,在那里顾客会基于一种新的关系进行选择。这将会令人眼花缭乱。与其他销售方式一样,网络将把所有商品都摆在顾客面前。这样谁与顾客由关系,谁被顾客模式,就会一目了然。