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? CHARLES KOCH may well（很可能，有充分理由可以） be the most demonised（使成为魔鬼的） businessman in America, with his younger brother, David, a close second. Journalists argue that he is the mastermind of the country’s vast right-wing conspiracy（阴谋集团）. Lunatics（疯子） have made death threats. The ultra-rich, particularly those who made their original fortunes in oil and gas, are supposed to make amends（赎罪） by giving their money to liberal causes. The Kochs have instead spent hundreds of millions backing conservative political causes (though Charles Koch has no love for Donald Trump), lobbying for lower taxes and attacking the idea of man-made global warming. 在美国，查尔斯·科赫( Charles Koch)很可能是被妖魔化最厉害的商人，他的弟弟大卫紧随其后。新闻记者们认为他是美国右翼庞大阴谋集团的幕后主脑。极端分子已向他发出死亡威胁.在人们看来，超级富豪们，尤其是那些靠油气发家的富商，本应资助自由事业以作补偿。科赫兄弟却把数亿美元用于支持保守派的政治活动（但查尔斯·科赫对特朗普并无好感），为减税游说，并攻击“人类活动导致全球变暖”的说法。 Mr Koch doesn’t come across as（给人的印象是……） Dr Evil. True, the headquarters of Koch Industries is a collection of black boxes outside Wichita, Kansas; the security screening is rigorous. But its CEO has more of the air（样子， 风度） of a university professor. Despite his $40bn fortune, he lives in a nondescript（平凡的，没有任何特色的） neighbourhood in one of America’s most boring cities, puts in nine or more hours a day in the office and lunches in the company canteen. He doesn’t seem that interested in his surroundings: complimented on the firm’s art collection, he says his wife takes care of that sort of thing. What he is really interested in is books and ideas. 科赫看上去并不像“邪恶博士”。诚然，科氏工业集团(Koch Industries)位于堪萨斯州威奇托(Wichita)郊外的总部仿佛一排排黑盒子，且出入安检严格。但这位集团CEO的气质却更像一名大学教授。尽管坐拥400亿美元身家，他却选择在美国一座沉闷至极的城市中个平淡无奇的街区里安家，每天在办公室工作至少九小时，午饭都在公司食堂解决。他对周围环境似乎不太在意：别人夸奖公司的艺术藏品时，他表示那都是妻子张罗的。他真正感兴趣的是书籍和思想。 It was as an engineering student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s that he first fell in love with ideas. There he hit on（无意找到，偶然发现） the subject that has preoccupied（使……全神贯注） him since: why some human organisations flourish while others stagnate. He gorged on（贪婪地吃） the Austrian school of economics—F.A. Hayek, Joseph Schumpeter and, his personal favourite, Ludwig von Mises, Hayek’s mentor. He devoured（狼吞虎咽地吃，上文有个近义词组gorge on sth.） American polemicists（辩论家） such as F.A. “Baldy” Harper, whose treatise（论述，专著） of 1957, “Why Wages Rise” (because of productivity improvements by workers, not union action), he describes as “life-changing”. 上世纪50年代，科赫在麻省理工学院研读工程学，自此爱上思想研究。在那里，他找到了令他终生求索不懈的主题：人类组织中，为何有些蓬勃发展，有些停滞不前？他饱读奥地利经济学派人物昀著作一一哈耶克(E A．Hayek)、熊彼特及他最喜爱的路德维希·冯·米塞斯 （Ludwig von Mises，哈耶克的导师）。他谙熟美国思想家的理论，比如哈珀(E A．“Baldy”Harper)，其i957年所著的《工资为何上涨》（因为工人生产力提升，而非工会行动）被科赫誉为“醍醐灌顶”之作。 Since then his reading has taken him far and wide. The bookshelves in his office are stuffed with works of history, biographies and the latest titles with big ideas. He is surprisingly keen on Howard Gardner, a quintessential Harvard-Yard liberal, and his theory of multiple intelligences (linguistic, musical and interpersonal among them). But Mr Koch found the answer to his question about how organisations prosper by reading the classical liberals: he regards the “spontaneous order” of the free market—the notion（概念，见解） that systems are best left to correct naturally, free of human intervention, with the price mechanism allocating resources to the most efficient use—with the same awe（敬畏） with which he regards the natural order of the universe. 从那时起，他博览群书，眼界大开。他办公室的书架上摆满了历史著作和人物传记，还有介 绍各种重大创见的新书。出人意料的是，他对哈佛自由派代表人物霍华德．加德纳(Howard Gardner)及其多元智能理论（包括语言、音乐及人际智能等）甚为热衷。然而，关于组织机构如何蓬勃发展这一问题，科赫是通过阅读自由派的经典著作找到答案的：他视自由市场的“自发秩序”如同宇宙的自然秩序，敬畏不已，认为最好让市场体系自行纠正，不加人为干预，通过价格机制最有效地分配资源。 Mr Koch has used his reading to forge a theory of management which the Charles Koch Institute, his think-tank-cum（通常用于构造复合词，兼）-philanthropic outfit（机构）, has trademarked as market-based management or MBM. The main idea is that market signals should operate just as vigorously within organisations as between them. Workers should be paid according to the value they add rather than their position in the hierarchy. Koch Industries keeps base pay（底薪） low (it is regarded as just a down-payment on the year’s value-added reward) and workers are often paid more than their bosses. Companies should grant “decision rights” to those employees who have records of making choices that boost profits. 科赫运用阅读心得打造出一套管理理论，并由其智库兼慈善机构查尔-斯科赫研究所(Charles Koch Institute)申请注册商标，称为“基于市场的管理模式”(Market-BasedManagement，MBM)。其主要理念是，市场信号在组织内部也应像在组织之间那样积极发挥效用。员工薪酬应基于其增值贡献，而非职位等级。在科氏工业集团内，员工的基本工资并不高（仅被视为他们一年增值奖励的部分预付款），而且员工收入往往比上司还高。公司应给予有提升利润往绩的员工“决策权”。 As Mr Koch’s philosophy took shape, so his company boomed. When he took over as chief executive from his father in the late 1960s Koch Industries was a small company centred on oil and gas with $200m in yearly sales and 650 employees. Today it is the second-largest private firm in America, with $100bn in annual revenues and more than 100,000 employees. It is one of the world’s largest commodities traders, operates three ranches（大农场，大牧场） covering more than 460,000 acres, processes some 600,000 barrels of crude oil a day and produces a wide range of materials such as paper towels, nylon and spandex. Koch Industries estimates that its value has increased over 4,500 times since 1960, outperforming the S&P 500 index by a factor of nearly 30. 随着料赫的理念成形，他的公司也高速发展起来。上世纪60年代末他从父亲手上接棒时，科氏工业集团只是一家年销售额为两亿美元、专注油气业务的小公司，且仅有650名员工。今天，集团已成为美国第二大私人企业，年收入达1000亿美元，员工人数超过十万。科氏工业也是全球最大的大宗商品交易商之一，经营三个总面积超过46万英亩的牧场，每天处理约60万桶原油，生产纸巾、尼龙、氯纶等各类材料。科氏工业估计，自1960年以来，集团已增值4500多倍，是标普500指数同期增幅的近30倍。 Yet MBM has attracted remarkably few imitators. Mr Koch says that Morning Star, a California-based tomato producer, has also experimented, independently, with an internal-market system, but that hardly suggests a fashion. One reason may be that Koch Industries is based in the Midwest, away from the great business-theory factories such as Harvard or Stanford. Another is that it is easy to imagine MBM degenerating into（简化成） a time-consuming bureaucracy. In any case（无论如何）, the firm’s success probably owes as much to Mr Koch’s managerial drive as to MBM (insiders joke that Koch stands for “keep old Charlie happy)”, and to two big insights: that its core competence in processing, transporting and trading can be applied to a wide range of commodities; and that the Midwest is full of first-class engineers and technicians educated in places like Murray State University and the University of Tulsa. 然而，MBM模式却追随者寥寥。科赫表示，加州的西红柿生产商“晨星”(Morning Star)也独立试验过这种内部市场体系，但这几乎并不能表示该模式已成气候。一个原因可能是科氏工业总部在美国中西部，远离哈佛或斯坦福这些“伟大商业理论的工厂”。另一原因是，不 难想像，MBM可能沦为空耗时间的官僚做法。不管怎么说，科氏工业的成功，除了归功MBM模式之外，科赫的管理能力也许同样重要，内部人士开玩笑说，“Koch”是“keep old Charlie happy”（让老查理满意）的缩写。此外，还有两大认知功不可没：公司在加工、运 输及贸易方面的核心能力可以应用在众多大宗商品之上；美国中西部不乏从莫瑞州立大学 (Murray State University)和塔尔萨大学(University of Tulsa)毕业的一流工程师和技术人员。 The wizard of Kansas 堪萨斯的魔法师 Even if MBM is not quite the magic formula that Mr Koch claims, however, it serves two clear purposes. It provides a diverse and rapidly growing company with a glue. Koch employees speak of MBM with the same enthusiasm that General Electric’s employees once talked about Six Sigma. Unsurprisingly, many have read Mr Koch’s books on MBM, “The Science of Success” (2007) and “Good Profit” (2015). For the less scholarly（博学的，学者风度的，这里是the adj.表示某一类人）, MBM is funnelled into（归纳成，集中于） ten “guiding principles” (such as “principled entrepreneurship”) printed on coffee cups and posters throughout the group. 即使MBM并不完全是科赫所称的神奇配方，但仍有两个明显的作用。该模式为快速成长的多元化企业提供了一种凝聚力。科赫的员工谈及MBM时眉飞色舞的镜头，跟当年通用电气的员工谈论六西格玛的热情有得一拼。其中许多人读过科赫有关MBM的著作——《成功的科学》 （The Science of Success, 2007年）及《优秀盈利》（Good Profit, 2015年），这不足为奇。而对于不那么爱钻研书本的员工来说，MBM已浓缩为十大“指导原则”（例如“有原则的企业家精神”），印在咖啡杯和海报上，在集团内随处可见。 His philosophy also keeps the firm focused on Schumpeter’s idea of creative destruction. Mr Koch is good at spotting opportunities (buying Georgia Pacific, a pulp and paper firm, in 2005 for（花……钱买了什么，这个介词多用for而不是with） $21bn, produced a spell of（一段时间） fast growth). Less obviously, he is always pruning（修剪） businesses that start to fade. Koch Industries could easily have been a low-growth energy company stuck in the middle of the Great Plains. That it has instead succeeded in doubling its earnings every six years or so since the 1960s is thanks in large part to Mr Koch’s unconventional and scholarly mind. 科赫的理念也使公司专注于熊彼特所谓的“创造性破坏”上。科赫善于发掘机遇，比如在2005年以210亿美元收购纸浆及纸制品企业乔治亚太平洋公司(Georgia Pacific)，缔造了一段快速增长期。相对低调地，他也不断割舍日渐衰微的业务分支。科氏工业原本很可能成为困居北美大平原腹地的低增长能源公司。但相反，自上世纪60年代以来，集团收入每六年左右就翻一番，这很大程度上要归功于科赫突破常规且博学的头脑。 |
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