试题库在线考试题库-历年真题模拟试题及答案-考博英语在线试题测试中心-希赛网

东北财经大学

Passage 4For all their tremendous worldwide impact Fredric Taylor and Scientific Management have had a bad press, especially in academic. One reason, perhaps the main one, is the unrelenting campaign America’s labor unions waged against both in the early years of the last century. The unions actually succeeded in banning any kind of work study in army arsenals and naval shipyard, where in those years practically all defense production was done in America.The unions of 1911 did not oppose Tayler because they thought him pro-management or anti-labor (he was neither). His unforgiveable sin was his assertion that there is no such thing as skill in making and moving things. All could be analyzed step by step as a series of unskilled operations that then could be put together into any kind of job. Anyone willing to learn these operations would be a “first-class man,” deserving “first class pay.” He could do the most highly skilled work and do it to perfection.But the unions of Taylor’s time—and especially the highly respected and extremely powerful unions in arsenals and shipyards—were craft monopolies. Their power base was their control of anApprenticeship (学徒) of five or seven years to which, as a rule, only relatives of members were admitted. They considered their craft a “mystery,” the secrets of which no member was allowed to divulge. The skilled workers in the arsenals and navy yards in particular were paid extremely well—more than most physicians of those times and triples what Taylor’s “first-class man” could expect to get. No wonder that Taylor’s denial of the mystery of craft and skill infuriated (激怒) these “aristocrats of labor” as subversion and pestilential heresy.Most contemporaries, eighty years ago, agreed with the unions. Even thirty years later the belief in the mystery of craft and skill persisted, and also in the long years of apprenticeship needed to acquire either. Hitler, for instance, was convinced that it would take the U. S. at least five years to train optical craftsmen, and modern war requires precision optics. It would therefore take many years, Hitler was sure, before America could field an effective army and air force in Europe—the conviction that made him declare war on America when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.We now know that Taylor, was right. The U. S. did indeed have almost no optical craftsmen in 1941. And modern war does indeed require precision optics, and in large quantities. But by applying Taylor’s Scientific Management the U. S. trained in few months semiskilled workers to turn out more highly advanced optics than the Germans with their craftsmen ever did, and on the assembly line to boot. Any by that time Taylor’s first-class men with their increased productivity also made a great deal more money than any craftsmen of 1911 could even have dreamed of.Eventually knowledge work and service work may turn out to be like work making and moving things—that is, “just work,” to use an Old Scientific Management slogan. At least this is the position of the more radical proponents of Artificial Intelligence, Taylor’s true children or grandchildren. But for the time being, knowledge and service jobs must not be treated as just work. They cannot be assumed to be homogeneous. They must be treated as falling into a number of distinct categories—probably three. Each requires different analysis and different organization. In making and moving things the focus in increasing productivity is on work. In knowledge and service work it has to on performance.1.According to the passage, Fredric Taylor’s Scientific Management ____.2.According to the passage, which of the following statements is not true?3.According to the passage, Taylor’s Scientific Management made it possible that ____.4.From the passage we can infer that Hitler declared war on America because ____.5.The purpose the author wants to achieve in this passage is to illustrate that ____.

Passage 3In general, our society is becoming one of giant enterprises directed by a bureaucratic management, in which man becomes a small, well-oiled cog in the machinery. The oiling is done with higher wages, well-ventilated factories and piped music, and by psychologists and “human-relations” experts; yet all this oiling does not alter the fact that man has become powerless, that he does not wholeheartedly participate in his work and that he is bored with it. In fact, the blue and the white-collar workers have become economic puppets who dance to the tune of automated machines and bureaucratic management.The worker and employee are anxious, not only because they might find themselves out of a job; they are anxious also because they are unable to acquire any real satisfaction or interest in life. They live and die without ever having confronted the fundamental realities of human existence as emotionally and intellectually independent and productive human beings.Those higher up on the social ladder are no less anxious. Their lives are no less empty than those of their subordinates. They are even more insecure in some respects. They are in a highly competitive race. To be promoted or to fall behind is not a matter of salary but even more a matter of self-respect. When they apply for their first job, they are tested for intelligence as well as for the right mixture of submissiveness and independence. From the moment on, they are tested again and again by the psychologists, for whom testing is a big business, and by their superiors, who judge their behavior, sociability, capacity to get along, etc. This constant need to prove that one is as good as or better than one’s fellow-competitor creates constant anxiety and stress, the very causes of unhappiness and illness.Am I suggesting that we should return to the preindustrial mode of production or to nineteenth-century “free enterprise” capitalism? Certainly not. Problems are never solved by returning to a stage which one has already outgrown. I suggest transforming our social system from a bureaucratically managed industrialism in which maximal production and consumption are ends in themselves into a humanist industrialism in which man and full development of his potentialities—those of all love and of reason—are the aims of social arrangements. Production and consumption should serve only as means to this end, and should be prevented from ruling man.1.By “a well-oiled cog in the machinery” the author intends to render the idea that man is ____.2.The real cause of the anxiety of the workers and employees is that ____.3.From the passage we can infer that real happiness of life belongs to those who____.4.To solve the present social problem the author suggests that we should ____.5.The author’s attitude towards industrialism might best be summarized as one of ____.

Passage 2Most pre-1990 literature on businesses’ use of information technology (IT)—defined as any form of computer-based information system focused on spectacular IT successes and reflected a general optimism concerning IT’s potential as a resource for creating competitive advantage. But toward the end of the 1980’s, some economists spoke of a “productivity paradox”: despite huge IT investments, most notably in the service sectors, productivity stagnated. In the retail industry, for example, in which IT had been widely adopted during the 1980’s, productivity (average output per hour) rose at an average rate, of 1.1 percent between 1973 and 1989, compared with 2.4 percent in the preceding 25-year period. Proponents of IT argued that it takes both time and a critical mass of investment for IT to yield benefits, and some suggested that growth figures for the 1990’s proved that these benefits were finally being realized. They also argued that measures of productivity ignore what would have happened without investments in IT—productivity gains might have been even lower. There were even claims that IT had improved the performance of the service sector significantly, although macroeconomic measures of productivity did not reflect the improvement.But some observers questioned why, if IT had conferred economic value, it did not produce direct competitive advantages for individual firms. Resources-based theory offers an answer, asserting that, in general, firms gain competitive advantages by accumulating resources that are economically valuable, relatively scarce, and not easily replicated. According to a recent study of retail firms, which confirmed that IT has become pervasive and relatively easily to acquire, IT by itself appeared to have conferred little advantage. In fact, though little evidence of any direct effect was found, the frequent negative correlations between IT and performance suggested that IT had probably weakened some firms’ competitive position. However, human resources, in and of themselves, did not explain improved performance, and some firms gained IT-related advantages by merging IT with complementary resources, particularly human resources. The findings support the notion, founded in resource-based theory, that competitive advances do not arise from easily replicated resources, no matter how impressive or economically valuable they may be, but from complex, intangible resources.1.The passage is primarily concerned with ____.2.The passage suggests that proponents of resource-based theory would be likely to explain IT’s inability to produce direct competitive advantages for individual firms by pointing out that ____.3.The author of the passage discusses productivity in the retail industry in the first paragraph primarily in order to ____.4.According to the passage, most pre-1990 literature on businesses’ use of IT included which of the following?5.According to the findings of a recent survey of retail firms, firms gain competitive advantages from ____.

Passage 1The rise of multinational corporations, global marketing, new communications technologies, and shrinking cultural differences have led to an unparalleled increase in global public relations or PR.Surprisingly, since modern PR was largely an American invention, the U.S. leadership in public relations is being threatened by PR efforts in other nations. Ten years ago, for example, the world’s top five public relations agencies were American-owned. In 1991, only one was. The British in particular are becoming more sophisticated and creative. A recent survey found that more than half of all British companies include PR as part of their corporate planning activities, compared to about one-third of U. S. companies. It may not be long before London replaces New York as the capital of PR.Why is America lagging behind in the global PR race? First, Americans as a whole tend to be fairly provincial and take more of an interest in local affairs. Knowledge of world geography, for example, has never been strong in this country. Secondly, Americans lag behind their European and Asian counterparts in knowing a second language. Less than 5 percent of Burson-Marshall’s U.S. employees know two languages. Ogilvy and Mather has about the same percentage. Conversely, some European firms have half or more of their employees fluent in a second language. Finally, people involved in PR abroad tend to keep a close on international affairs. In the financial PR area, for instance, most Americans read Wall Street Journal. Overseas, their counterparts read the Journal as well as the Financial Times of London and the Economist, publications not often read in this country.Perhaps the PR industry might take a lesson from Ted Turner of CNN (Cable News Network). Turner recently announced that the word “foreign” would no longer be used on CNN news broadcasts. According to Turner, global communications have made the nations of the world so interdependent that there is no longer any such thing as foreign.1.According to the passage, U.S. leadership in public relations is being threatened because of ____.2.London soon could replace New York as the center of PR because ____.3.According to the passage, which is the characteristic of most Americans?4.We learn from the third paragraph that employees in the American PR industry ____.5.What lesson might the PR industry take from Ted Turner of CNN?

Several financial officers of the company spoke on condition ____ in the press reports.

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