点火开关谜团：一个流氓员工搞乱通用汽车公司的故事

    直到2013年4月，一桩诉讼中原告的律师检查了Cobalt点火开关的照片，发现2005至2008年间开关已经被换过了，德吉尔吉奥的骗局才被发现。德吉尔吉奥在法庭上表现得像是刚刚知道这件事一样。在随后的国会听证会上，他表示忘记自己换过开关了。

    很难搞清他隐瞒这件事的动机。德吉尔吉奥显然不是为了钱，因为在更换开关的过程中金钱没有转手。他也不应该考虑晋升问题，毕竟作为中层工程师的他已经61岁了，不可能再得到提拔。

    我猜测最有可能的是，德吉尔吉奥是被一种熟悉的官僚思想驱动：遮丑。他的职业生涯很不寻常——根据《汽车新闻》（Automotive News）的报道，他在大学的专业是美术，直到38岁才获得工程学学位。在一家需要承担巨大压力做出成果的公司中，他很可能缺乏安全感。可能打死他，他也不会想到，简简单单地在点火开关的扭矩标准上动点手脚就可能会制造一系列问题，牵涉到目前为止的13个人的死亡。

    正如瓦卢卡斯的报告中阐明的，从推卸责任的高潜力工程师到官僚习气的公司律师，通用汽车有许多地方需要批评。从“通用汽车的点头礼”（表示自己同意通过某事）和“通用汽车的叉手礼”（表示自己对此事不负任何责任）中，观察家们得到了许多乐趣。不过，22万员工中的1个流氓员工抹黑了整家公司，还能逍遥法外十几年的故事，才是最让我觉得恐惧的地方。（财富中文网）

    译者：严匡正

    DeGiorgio’s alleged deception wasn’t uncovered until April 2013 when a plaintiff’s lawyer in a lawsuit examined photographs of the Cobalt ignition switch and discovered it had been changed from 2005 to 2008. In a deposition, DeGiorgio acted like it was news to him. And in a subsequent congressional hearing, DeGiorgio said he had forgotten about the change.

    His motivation for a cover-up is difficult to discern. DeGiorgio certainly wasn’t in it for the money, because no money seems to have changed hands. He wasn’t going to advance his career either, because at age 61, he was a midlevel engineer who wasn’t going any higher. Nor did the project he was working on have a high priority.

    My best guess is that DeGiorgio was driven by a familiar bureaucratic reflex: Cover your ass. He had had an unusual career–a fine arts major in college, he didn’t get an engineering degree until age 38, according to Automotive News–and may have felt insecure in a company that was under tremendous pressure to produce results. That something as simple as fiddling with the torque standards on an ignition switch could create a series of circumstances that have so far been linked to 13 deaths was probably the furthest thing from his mind.

    As the Valukas report makes clear, there is plenty of blame at GM to go around, from the high-potential engineers who passed the buck to company lawyers caught up in bureaucratic red tape. Observers are having lots of fun with the “GM nod” and the “GM salute.” But the narrative that is now emerging of how one rogue employee out of 220,000 can hamstring an entire corporation and escape detection for more than a decade is the one that I find the most chilling.