由創始人控制的上市公司挑戰公司倫理現象嚴重

????我不知道你們怎么樣，反正我已然暈頭轉向了。谷歌（Google）、沃爾瑪（Wal-Mart）、新聞集團（News Corp），還有切薩皮克能源（Chesapeake Energy）。我們都知道絕對權力滋生腐敗，但這些由創始人控制的上市公司對倫理道德的公然挑戰依然令人震驚。

????更糟糕的是，這些公司不僅損害了自身和正在那里工作的人們，也降低了企業界整體的信譽。

????上月底《紐約時報》（New York Times）的調查性報道出爐后，在《財富》（Fortune）雜志2012年全球最受贊賞公司榜單中排名第24位的沃爾瑪公司就深陷賄賂丑聞，現任和前任CEO都涉嫌隱瞞真相，董事會和審計委員會的監督職責也備受質疑。據沃爾瑪最新的投票委托書顯示，沃爾頓家族的創始人控制著約17億股沃爾瑪股票和近50%的投票權。盡管如此，多年來一直關注沃爾瑪董事會獨立性和監督力度的紐約市養老基金（New York City Pension Fund）仍提議對董事會的5名董事投反對票。沃爾瑪沒有回復采訪要求。

????谷歌初步投票委托書顯示，公司創始人在谷歌通過雙重股權結構控制著約三分之二的投票權，而且，他們已經制定了計劃繼續確保這樣的控制。

????上周末，《洛杉磯時報》（Los Angeles Times）報道稱，谷歌獲取私人信息并非像之前聲稱的那樣只是個意外。這家摘得《財富》雜志最受贊賞公司榜眼頭銜的公司在2010年的一篇博客中寫道：“我們不慎在我們的軟件中加入了搜集有效載荷數據樣本的代碼”

????但據上周五晚些時候谷歌發給美國聯邦通信委員會（FCC）的報告顯示，這項工作是經過深思熟慮的。報告披露，軟件設計工程師將代碼和設計文件草案都提交給了項目負責人，后者將文件分享給了谷歌街景團隊的所有成員。谷歌安排了一名工程師“復查和調試”代碼，多達5位工程師進行了測試，更有一位谷歌高層經理曾經要求從獲取的數據中獲得信息。

????一位谷歌發言人給我寫了一封電子郵件稱，這份報告表明谷歌并沒有違法。但報告確實列明，谷歌故意妨礙了美國聯邦通信委員會的調查，而且“包括加拿大、法國和荷蘭在內的幾個國家都已確定，谷歌搜集有效載荷數據的做法違反了它們的……法律法規?！?/p>

????“我們希望，現在我們可以把這個問題甩在身后，”上文提到的谷歌發言人在電子郵件中這樣寫道。他們或許真的可以如愿以償。因為美國的監管機構看起來不夠堅決，沃爾瑪、新聞集團和切薩皮克的股東們追查的問題已讓他們騰不出手腳，沒空關注谷歌的新聞。我們只有這么多人手，他們這樣告訴過我。

????I don't know about you, but my head is spinning. Google, Wal-Mart, News Corp, Chesapeake Energy. We all know absolute power corrupts, but the apparent level of ethical challenge at these public, founder-controlled companies is mind-boggling.

????Worse, these companies not only do damage to themselves and those that work there, they lower the level of trust in corporations overall.

????Wal-Mart, No. 24 on Fortune's list of World's Most Admired Companies, is knee-deep in a scandal over alleged bribery and a cover-up that implicates both the current and former CEO, and calls into question board and audit committee oversight, following investigative reporting by the New York Times last week. The Walton family founders control approximately 1.7 billion Wal-Mart (WMT) shares and nearly 50% of the voting rights according to the company's latest proxy. Nevertheless, the New York City Pension Fund, which has been concerned with Wal-Mart's board independence and oversight for years, is recommending a no vote on five of the board's members. Wal-Mart did not return a call seeking comments.

????At Google (GOOG), its founders control approximately two-thirds of the voting rights in a dual class share arrangement, according to the company's preliminary proxy, and they have plans to ensure that hold.

????Over the weekend the Los Angeles Times reported that Google's drive-by capture of personal nformation was not as inadvertent as Fortune's second-most admired company, originally made out. "We had mistakenly included code in our software that collected samples of payload data," a 2010 Google blog entry stated.

????But according to the FCC report that Google released late Friday, the work was a result of a "deliberate software design decision." The report shows that the engineer who devised the software submitted draft code and a draft design document to his project leaders, who shared his document with all members of the company's Street View team. Google assigned an engineer to "review and 'debug'" his code, five engineers tested it, and a Google senior manager asked for information from the captured data.

????A Google spokesperson wrote in an email to me that the report shows Google did not break the law. But the report states that Google deliberately impeded the FCC's investigation and that "several countries, including Canada, France and the Netherlands have determined that Google's collection of payload data violated their … laws and regulations."

????"We hope that we can now put this matter behind us," the Google spokesperson wrote me. And perhaps they'll be able to. U.S. regulators appear to be weak-willed, and shareholders chasing issues at Wal-Mart, News Corp., and Chesapeake Energy, among others, have their hands full and haven't focused on Google's news. We have only so much bandwidth, they've told me.