福喜爲何會在中國出事 放權不適合中國人?

It’s been a wretched five weeks forAmerican fast food in China.

過去五週，在華經營的美國快餐企業如坐鍼氈。

The humiliation reached a new pitch Friday when prosecutors in Shanghai arrested six employees of the Chinese subsidiary of McDonalds’s largest meat supplier, OSI Group, for selling expired meat to McDonald’s, KFC, and other chains in the country.

上週五，醜聞風波掀起了一個新高潮：上海檢察機關批捕麥當勞（McDonalds’）最大的肉類食品供應商福喜集團（OSI Group）中國子公司的6位僱員，罪由是他們向麥當勞、肯德基（KFC）和其他在華連鎖快餐企業銷售過期肉。

The OSI subsidiary, Shanghai Husi Food, was caught by a Shanghai TV channel in late July re-labelling expired meat packages and using expired beef to make patties. McDonald’s was short on beef and chicken for three weeks in China following the ordeal. Sales in the region that includes China plummeted 7% in July. For a while, you couldn’t order a Big Mac in Beijing.

7月底，上海一家電視臺曝光上海福喜食品有限公司（Shanghai Husi Food）給過期肉篡改包裝生產日期，並使用過期牛肉生產肉餅。之後麥當勞在華餐廳連續3周面臨牛肉和雞肉產品短缺的窘境，中國所在地區的銷售額在7月份下跌7%。一時之間，人們在北京都買不到巨無霸了。

Two and a half weeks after the news broke, in early August, I happened to meet employees from OSI who were in Beijing for emergency visits to the company’s plants around the country. One had come from the Chicago-area headquarters; the other worked at a plant in central China.

8月初，也就是過期肉事件曝光兩週半後，我碰巧遇到了兩位來北京出差的福喜集團員工，他們正在對集團旗下中國各地工廠展開緊急檢查工作。其中一位員工來自福喜芝加哥地區總部；另一位曾在華中的一家工廠工作過。

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

這裏面有一位是我大學時期的同窗好友，我不會在此透露他們的姓名。但我們詳細地探討了此次危機。對於爲什麼會出此紕漏，他們的解釋是，作爲一家美國公司，福喜集團不知道中國本地經理人在做些什麼，有時候也沒法搞清楚。中國本地工廠的文件和條例不會從中文翻譯成英文，即便翻譯了，福喜的美國經理人也不會經常瀏覽。

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.

這家公司正在努力解決這些問題，但最近它的中國業務陷入停滯，每天虧損達數百萬美元。

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

在這起最新的中國食品安全醜聞中，媒體報道分爲兩派。一派認爲，從福喜獲得原料供應的麥當勞、肯德基、星巴克（Starbucks）和其他美國餐飲公司是中國掀起打擊外資公司風潮下的犧牲品，而此類行動從1年半前中國媒體批評星巴克咖啡定價就開始了。這是爲美國品牌辯護的西方人喜歡的論調。

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

另一派以中國媒體爲主，它們認爲，洋快餐在中國大失水準，福喜存在與衆多中國本土食品公司一樣的食品質量和安全問題。

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

與福喜的兩位高管談了一晚之後，有一點很清楚了——中國媒體是對的。福喜有時對於其在中國的經營狀況確實一無所知，可能確實存在被指控的問題，但他們對需要做出的改變持開放態度。

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

福喜對醜聞毫無頭緒，因爲這傢俬有公司給了經理人很大自主權。有時候這種做法很管用，比如在華爾街，投資公司允許個人獨立決定股票投資，無需集體決策。但在福喜這樣的大規模食品加工業務中，全球標準需要每個人嚴格遵守，並確保落實。

The private OSI’s decentralized business model allowed Chinese managers leeway to make their own 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 plants followed standards coming from OSI’s Illinois headquarters and didn’t monitor its plants located 6,600 miles from headquarters in Aurora, Illinois.

私有企業福喜的這種權力分散型業務模式給中國經理人留出了自行決策的空間。這一策略曾幫助福喜於上世紀90年代初在中國實現了快速擴張。但如今看來，顯然其中是有問題的。福喜沒有進行足夠的檢查，無法確保公司伊利諾伊州總部制定的標準得以貫徹，也沒有對距其6600英里之遙的中國工廠進行監控。

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

語言障礙也成爲一個問題：中國經理人用中文起草文件，不作翻譯，因此，只會英文的員工往往不瞭解相關的具體經營情況或數據。

The OSI crisis teams flooding into China are engaged in pretty simple stuff. Namely, ensuring every plant is following global standards, and writing documents in both English and Chinese. They’re adding cameras in plants and spending $1.6 million on food safety seminars. “Before, it was an entrepreneurial company and you could sort of follow your own rules,” said one OSI employee. “Now, people are coming in and saying, `This is how we’re doing it now.’”

被派駐至中國的福喜危機管理團隊所做的事情相當簡單。那就是，確保每家工廠都遵循全球標準，同時用中文和英文起草文件。他們在工廠增架了攝像頭，並投入160萬美元開展食品安全研討會。“過去這是一家創業型公司，在某種程度上可以按自己的規定辦事，”福喜的一位員工表示，“如今，有人進來說，‘我們現在要這麼做。’”

It’s the type of standard procedural stuff that you expected McDonald’s largest protein supplier to follow everywhere. But it didn’t.

這種標準流程是麥當勞最大肉類供應商在任何地方都應遵循的。但福喜過去顯然沒有做到。

OSI’s press statement last week, confirming the arrests of six employees in Shanghai, expressed some culpability. “OSI Group will continue to cooperate fully and in good faith with the authorities,” the company said. “We support the government’s consistent application of the country’s food quality and safety laws.”

上週福喜發表聲明，證實有6位員工在上海被批捕，並承認過失。該公司表示：“福喜集團將繼續全力配合政府有關部門的工作，同時支持政府一貫執行相關食品質量安全法律。”

Earlier, OSI’s owner Sheldon Lavin, an 82-year with a place in the Meat Industry Hall of Fame said, “It was terribly wrong, and I am appalled that it ever happened in the company that I own.”

早些時候，82歲的福喜集團所有人、肉類食品行業大佬謝爾頓o拉文表示：“如此可怕的錯誤竟然發生在了我擁有的公司，令我震驚無比。”

It’s not yet clear how badly OSI hurt itself. A McDonald’s spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal last week the company couldn’t rule out the possibility of replacing OSI as a supplier over the long term. If McDonald’s cuts ties, it would be historic: OSI supplied beef patties to the first ever McDonald’s in Des Plaines, Illinois back in 1955.

尚不清楚這對福喜自身產生了多大的傷害。麥當勞的一位發言人上週告訴《華爾街日報》（The Wall Street Journal），該公司不排除引進其他長期供應商取代福喜的可能性。如果麥當勞割斷雙方的聯繫，這將是歷史性的，因爲從1955年麥當勞在伊利諾伊州德斯普蘭斯開設首家麥當勞餐廳起，福喜就一直在爲其供應牛肉餅。

The two employees from OSI I met with were proud that McDonald’s had stuck with them through the crisis. KFC had not. “Give us a second chance,” one said. “We deserve a second chance.”

我遇到的這兩位福喜員工都爲麥當勞在危機中一直與他們共進退感到自豪。而肯德基沒有這麼做。“給我們第二次機會，”其中一位說，“我們應該得到第二次機會。”

They might. No one died eating a Quarter Pounder, and expired frozen meat is really a food quality issue more than a food safety problem. But when you don’t have a clue what’s really happening at your Chinese business, you don’t deserve many chances.

或許吧。漢堡吃不死人，過期的凍肉實際上更多是食品質量問題，而不是食品安全問題。但如果對於自己中國業務的情況毫不瞭解，那就不配有多次機會了。

The problems at OSI, a key supplier to McDonald's, are a salutary lesson to companies doing business in China on the need for proper supervision.

麥當勞主要供應商福喜暴露出來的管理問題，對其他在華經商的外資企業是個有益的警示。