美国国家公共电台 NPR Can Arianna Huffington Save Uber?

 

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Uber is in a crisis. This week, the ride-sharing company's president resigned after just six months on the job. Morale¹ has been shaken following a damning account of sexual harassment². The board is so concerned about the CEO's ability to lead, they're looking for a number two to help steer³ the company. And now, in a curious plot twist, media mogul Arianna Huffington is emerging as chief of Uber's campaign for a, quote, "culture change." Here's NPR's Aarti Shahani.

AARTI SHAHANI, BYLINE⁴: Uber decided⁵ to hold a conference call on Tuesday, a press briefing.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Thank you everyone for joining us this afternoon. I'm Arianna Huffington. And I joined Uber's board of directors a year ago.

SHAHANI: Huffington is Uber's only female board member. And she is leader of this call.

HUFFINGTON: The purpose of this call is not to create yet more headlines.

SHAHANI: During this last year, Uber employees tell NPR, Huffington has not been a high-profile presence at the company - until, that is, four weeks ago. Right after a female engineer, who was a former employee, wrote a detailed⁶ open letter alleging⁷ she was sexually harassed⁸ and management failed to step in, Huffington stepped up. She suddenly appeared at the weekly all-hands staff meeting - Tuesday morning, 10 a.m. - addressing everyone. She's counseling CEO Travis Kalanick.

HUFFINGTON: And going forward, let there be no room at Uber for brilliant jerks.

SHAHANI: No room to brilliant jerks. Interestingly, not a single man from Uber was on the call. Kalanick and other men were busy interviewing candidates for the position of chief operating officer. So the work of explaining the company commitment to clean up became women's work, though Huffington says it's exciting to have so many amazing women on the call. They are real leaders at the company, not actresses put on for a show.

HUFFINGTON: It's not like we got them from central casting.

ROSABETH KANTER: We have to wait and see what Uber does next.

SHAHANI: Rosabeth Kanter is a culture change expert at Harvard Business School.

KANTER: Having three or four women appear to speak for Uber, which has never had a female presence visible before, could be just tokenism. And it doesn't really signal change. We have to see what the men do.

SHAHANI: And there is a lot to do. If sexual harassment were the only problem at Uber, Kanter argues, they could fix it. And she wouldn't worry so much about it. But Uber's got a lot of relationships to repair with more than 600,000 people in the U.S. alone who drive for the company, many of whom feel mistreated, with local elected leaders, some of whom say Uber is illegal.

KANTER: Uber has to be conscious of all of its stakeholders in a different way - all of them, all constituencies. And they haven't particularly been conscious of those.

SHAHANI: Uber is not the first Silicon⁹ Valley company that was started by young men, so-called brogrammers (ph) that needed to grow up. But Uber is different from, say, Google and Facebook, which have had their share of meltdown because Uber is far more reliant on outside partnerships¹⁰. So, she says, they've got to be that much more emotionally intelligent. The bar is higher.

KANTER: There's so much more to do than just having a female presence and some ways to make sure that the young guys know how to treat women appropriately.

SHAHANI: On the call with women leaders, one of them did talk about drivers specifically and say Uber needs to bring more humanity to the way they interact with drivers. While Huffington is committed to holding the CEO and management's feet to the fire, as a board member she's indicated she is not interested in the open position for COO or another staff role. A spokesperson for her tells NPR she has her own company to run a company, a company whose mission it is to end stress and burnout. Aarti Shahani, NPR News, San Francisco.

1 morale   

n.道德准则，士气，斗志

参考例句：

• The morale of the enemy troops is sinking lower every day.敌军的士气日益低落。
• He tried to bolster up their morale.他尽力鼓舞他们的士气。

2 harassment   

n.骚扰，扰乱，烦恼，烦乱

参考例句：

• She often got telephone harassment at night these days.这些天她经常在夜晚受到电话骚扰。
• The company prohibits any form of harassment.公司禁止任何形式的骚扰行为。

3 steer   

vt.驾驶，为…操舵；引导；vi.驾驶

参考例句：

• If you push the car, I'll steer it.如果你来推车，我就来驾车。
• It's no use trying to steer the boy into a course of action that suits you.想说服这孩子按你的方式行事是徒劳的。

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

6 detailed   

adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的

参考例句：

• He had made a detailed study of the terrain.他对地形作了缜密的研究。
• A detailed list of our publications is available on request.我们的出版物有一份详细的目录备索。

7 alleging   

断言，宣称，辩解( allege的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• His reputation was blemished by a newspaper article alleging he'd evaded his taxes. 由于报上一篇文章声称他曾逃税，他的名誉受到损害。
• This our Peeress declined as unnecessary, alleging that her cousin Thornhill's recommendation would be sufficient. 那位贵人不肯，还说不必，只要有她老表唐希尔保荐就够了。

8 harassed   

adj. 疲倦的，厌烦的 动词harass的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• He has complained of being harassed by the police. 他投诉受到警方侵扰。
• harassed mothers with their children 带着孩子的疲惫不堪的母亲们

9 silicon   

n.硅(旧名矽)

参考例句：

• This company pioneered the use of silicon chip.这家公司开创了使用硅片的方法。
• A chip is a piece of silicon about the size of a postage stamp.芯片就是一枚邮票大小的硅片。

10 partnerships   

n.伙伴关系( partnership的名词复数 )；合伙人身份；合作关系

参考例句：

• Partnerships suffer another major disadvantage: decision-making is shared. 合伙企业的另一主要缺点是决定要由大家来作。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件
• It involved selling off limited partnerships. 它涉及到售出有限的合伙权。 来自辞典例句