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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　　长时间不费力而成功的历史可能成为一种可怕的障碍，但若处理得当，它也有可能转化为一种积极动力。二战后，美国就进入了这样的一个辉煌的历史时期。它拥有比任何竞争者大八倍的市场，这使其工业经济规模前所未有。它的科学家是世上最优秀的，它的工人是技术最好的。美国及其民众的富庶是那些经济遭到战争破坏的欧洲人和亚洲人连做梦也不敢想的。

　　当其他国家逐渐富有，美国从这一领先地位逐渐下降是不可避免的。同样不可避免的是其从领先地位上退出的痛苦。到了20世纪80年代中期，日益衰退的工业竞争力让美国人感到茫然不知所措。一些大型的美国工业，如消费电子产业，在国外竞争面前，已经萎缩或消失。到1987年，美国只剩下Zenith这一家电视生产商。(现在这一家也没有了：Zenith于当年7月被韩国LG电器公司收购。)外国制造的汽车和纺织品正横扫国内市场。美国的机床工业也岌岌可危。有一段时间，好像下一个在海外品牌面前全军覆没的似乎该轮到美国的半导体制造业了，而在新计算机时代有着核心作用的半导体正是美国人发明的。

　　所有这一切导致了信心危机。美国人不再视繁荣为理所当然之事。他们开始怀疑自己的商业经营方式出了问题，也怀疑不久他们的收入就会下降。20世纪80年代中期对美国工业衰退的原因作了一次又一次的调查。那些有时耸人听闻的结果中充满着对来自国外的加剧的经济竞争的警告。

　　情况的变化可真快啊！1995年，美国可以对过去5年的稳步发展作一回顾，而日本还在奋力挣扎。很少有美国人将这一巨变单纯归因于美元贬值或商业周期循环这些显而易见的原因。如今，对自身的怀疑已被盲目乐观所取代。“美国的工业已经改变了结构，消除了滞胀，学会了急智”，哈佛大学肯尼迪管理学院行政院长理查德•卡佛纳如是说。华盛顿特区的智囊团——卡托研究院的史蒂芬•莫尔说：“作为一个美国人我感到自豪，因为看到我们的企业正在提高自身的生产率。” 哈佛商学院的威廉•萨尔曼相信人们将会把这一时期视为“美国企业管理的黄金时代”。

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