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A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. When the United States entered just such a glowing period after the end of the Second World War, it had a market eight times larger than any competitor, giving its industries unparalleled economies of scale. Its scientists were the world's best, its workers the most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies the war had destroyed。

It was inevitable that this primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just as inevitably, the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the mid-1980s Americans had found themselves at a loss over their fading industrial competitiveness. Some huge American industries, such as consumer electronics, had shrunk or vanished in the face of foreign competition. By 1987 there was only one American television maker left, Zenith. (Now there is none: Zenith was bought by South Korea's LG Electronics in July。) Foreign-made cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market America's machine-tool industry was on the ropes. For a while it looked as though the making of semiconductors, which America had which sat at the heart of the new computer age, was going to be the next casualty。

All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing, and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. The mid-1980s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of America's industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition from overseas。

How things have changed! In 1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been struggling. Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as a devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. Self-doubt has yielded to blind pride. “ American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet, has learnt to be more quick-witted,” according to Richard Cavanagh, executive dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government,“It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our businesses are improving their productivity,” says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business School believes that people will look back on this period as “a golden age of business management in the United States。”

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長時(shí)間不費(fèi)力而成功的歷史可能成為一種可怕的障礙，但若處理得當(dāng)，它也有可能轉(zhuǎn)化為一種積極動(dòng)力。二戰(zhàn)后，美國就進(jìn)入了這樣的一個(gè)輝煌的歷史時(shí)期。它擁有比任何競爭者大八倍的市場，這使其工業(yè)經(jīng)濟(jì)規(guī)模前所未有。它的科學(xué)家是世上最優(yōu)秀的，它的工人是技術(shù)最好的。美國及其民眾的富庶是那些經(jīng)濟(jì)遭到戰(zhàn)爭破壞的歐洲人和亞洲人連做夢也不敢想的。

當(dāng)其他國家逐漸富有，美國從這一領(lǐng)先地位逐漸下降是不可避免的。同樣不可避免的是其從領(lǐng)先地位上退出的痛苦。到了20世紀(jì)80年代中期，日益衰退的工業(yè)競爭力讓美國人感到茫然不知所措。一些大型的美國工業(yè)，如消費(fèi)電子產(chǎn)業(yè)，在國外競爭面前，已經(jīng)萎縮或消失。到1987年，美國只剩下Zenith這一家電視生產(chǎn)商。(現(xiàn)在這一家也沒有了：Zenith于當(dāng)年7月被韓國LG電器公司收購。)外國制造的汽車和紡織品正橫掃國內(nèi)市場。美國的機(jī)床工業(yè)也岌岌可危。有一段時(shí)間，好像下一個(gè)在海外品牌面前全軍覆沒的似乎該輪到美國的半導(dǎo)體制造業(yè)了，而在新計(jì)算機(jī)時(shí)代有著核心作用的半導(dǎo)體正是美國人發(fā)明的。

所有這一切導(dǎo)致了信心危機(jī)。美國人不再視繁榮為理所當(dāng)然之事。他們開始懷疑自己的商業(yè)經(jīng)營方式出了問題，也懷疑不久他們的收入就會(huì)下降。20世紀(jì)80年代中期對美國工業(yè)衰退的原因作了一次又一次的調(diào)查。那些有時(shí)聳人聽聞的結(jié)果中充滿著對來自國外的加劇的經(jīng)濟(jì)競爭的警告。

情況的變化可真快��！1995年，美國可以對過去5年的穩(wěn)步發(fā)展作一回顧，而日本還在奮力掙扎。很少有美國人將這一巨變單純歸因于美元貶值或商業(yè)周期循環(huán)這些顯而易見的原因。如今，對自身的懷疑已被盲目樂觀所取代。“美國的工業(yè)已經(jīng)改變了結(jié)構(gòu)，消除了滯脹，學(xué)會(huì)了急智”，哈佛大學(xué)肯尼迪管理學(xué)院行政院長理查德•卡佛納如是說。華盛頓特區(qū)的智囊團(tuán)——卡托研究院的史蒂芬•莫爾說：“作為一個(gè)美國人我感到自豪，因?yàn)榭吹轿覀兊钠髽I(yè)正在提高自身的生產(chǎn)率。” 哈佛商學(xué)院的威廉•薩爾曼相信人們將會(huì)把這一時(shí)期視為“美國企業(yè)管理的黃金時(shí)代”。