第 7 单元 企业管理
Unit 7 Corporate Management
BEC Reading Texts
PART ONE
Questions 1—8
· Look at the statements below and the five extracts about
management from an article.
· Which extract (A, B, C, D or E) does each statement (1—8)
refer to?
· For each statement (1—8), make one letter (A, B, C, D or E)
on your Answer Sheet.
· You will need to use some of these letters more than once.
1. There is a tendency of computerized coaching and electronic
monitoring.
2. It is the birth of the dynamic work force.
3. Technology convergence is transforming education, medicine,
materials, core competencies, whole enterprises and even the
definition of industries.
4. It can be predicted that electronic systems will decease
employees' dependence on managers for coaching, training, and
performance feedback and help make self-directed learning a reality.
5. There are new linkages everywhere as traditional boundaries
erode and markets are redefined.
6. Outsourcing payroll has become immensely popular.
7. Handling resumes electronically speeds up the process.
8. One impact of the new trend is that managerial performance
will be based less on the ability to direct and coordinate work
functions and more on improving key work processes.
A. Over the next 10 years, there will be a dramatic increase in
the use of electronic systems to accelerate employee learning,
augment decision making, and monitor performance. Proponents of these
systems argue that they enable employees to learn their jobs faster,
provide workers and managers with immediate performance feedback.
B. Today, college grads and professionals are just as likely to
send in an electronic resume as a traditional paper-based document.
And HR departments often squirrel the information in a database,
which allows them to later search for applicants based on specific
criteria—education or skills set, for example. The entire processwithout paper, mail and filing-is faster and far more efficient.
C. Work methods and functions are no longer permanent and
immutable structures; they are fluid processes that require workers
to adapt continuously. Organizations will be forced to question many
of the "stable state" assumptions under which they've traditionally
operated, such as who their competitors are and who their potential
customers may be.
D. Multimedia combining voice, image, text, and data redefines
industries and competitors and creates new markets. Suppliers can act
alone or in combination to market and sell goods in new ways directly
to customers while bridging cultures, improving service, and
collapsing cycle time.
E. Now payroll and tax processing is entering the world of
electronic commerce. Thanks to the Internet, companies now can zap
financial data off to a bureau. Once there, the service can handle
payroll calculations, spit out transaction reports, issue paychecks
or manage direct deposits, complete year-end tax filing and more.
PART TWO
Questions 9—14
· Read the text about managing priorities.
· Choose the best sentence to fill each of the gaps.
· For each gap (9—14), mark one letter (A-H) on your Answer
Sheet.
· Do not use any letter more than once.
Managing Priorities
Most of us are kept so busy managing our own lives that we can't
imagine how top executives manage the work of thousands of people and
millions of dollars and still have time to eat, sleep, and live. (9)
But in talking about how they run their lives and companies, they do
tend to focus on common themes.
Unfortunately, popular time management courses are not the answer.
Even the founder of the time management movement, Alec Mackenzie,
agrees that few people who take his courses stick with the techniques
and really benefit from them.
(10) Like many other company executives, Alcoa's CEO, Paul
O'Neill, lists "quality" among his highest priorities~ But at the
very top of his list is a surprise, "safety. " Alcoa leads its
industry in safety and has been cutting its injury records by 50%
every five years. O'Neill feels that to make an operation truly safe,
you must understand it perfectly and make sure that the operation
isn't inefficient in any way that would encourage dangerous shortcuts.
(11)
One principle that works for many busy managers is the 80/20 rule,
(12) —20% of its customers. A business that can identify the 20% and
what they order can focus attention on those products. Illinois Tool
Works, for example, used the 80/20 rule to identify which of its
thousands of products it should concentrate on as it realigned its
manufacturing processes. In an other instance, Office Club, a
discount office-supplies supermarket, decided to carry 2,200 items
instead of its competitors' 5,000 because it found that 85 % of its
sales came from only 650 core items.
Every CEO has techniques for making time in a hectic schedule,
(13) Some count on expert secretaries to arrange their time; others
learn to walk out of a meeting if participants are late. According to
management expert, Peter Drucker, (14)
A. You will find different things at the top of CEOs' priority
lists
B. Establishment of priorities is a key factor in managerial and
organizational effectiveness
C. There is no one secret that successful executives share
D. the most important skill for setting priorities and managing
time is simply learning to say No
E. In other words, quality and safety go hand in hand
F. doing important thinking while jogging or showering or flying
to meetings
G. Defined as a ranking of goals, objectives, or activities in
order of importance, priorities play a special role in planning
H. which states that 80% of a company's business generally comes
from a small group
PART THREE
Questions 15—20
· Read the following article on what a management trainee is.
· For each question (15—20) mark one letter (A, B, C or D) on
your Answer Sheet for the answer you choose.
In every industry there is a need for managerial staff. From
first-line supervisors to top executives, managers plan and direct
the work of the organization, set policy, establish channels of
communication, and evaluate the work that is done. These functions
require knowledge, skills, and judgment that are most effectively
developed on the job.
To prepare individuals for management responsibilities, many
companies use Management Trainee positions. These positions are most
often found in finance, trade, manufacturing, and in government
agencies. Depending on the business, the position may also be
referred to as marketing trainee, purchasing trainee, accounting
trainee, or management intern. Whatever the title, the purpose of the
position is the same: to qualify individuals for management functions
within the organization. Specific duties of a Management Trainee vary
widely according to the nature of the industry and the individual
firm employing the trainee. Very often, a trainee's assignments are
rotated among the various departments in order to develop familiarity
with the whole organization and its functions. Trainees may also get
classroom instruction in subjects related to their rotational
experience. Instruction may include lectures, guest speakers,
projects, and oral presentations. Some organizations evaluate with
tests or exams to move to another level.
A Management Trainee hired by a department store may spend
several months working as a clerk in one or more of the sales
departments, followed by additional time working in customer services,
purchasing, merchandising, and personnel departments, for example.
Many firms have formal written training programs which lay out
the instruction and types programs which lay out the instruction and
types of assignments the trainee will receive. They also specify
times for periodic evaluation of the trainee's performance.
Management traineeships may range in length from six months to two or
more years. Some programs are set up, where based on the trainee's
knowledge and skill set, the trainee will progress to more
challenging projects or finish the program early with incentives.
The idea of a management trainee job is to evaluate the trainee's
leadership, decision-making, problem-solving, communication and
organization skills, then find their niche in the company. Basically,
trainees will progress and succeed based on how hard they work and
the area where they excel. A permanent placement is not always
guaranteed but is highly possible. A management trainee role is a
great way to obtain an overview of an organization and of various
kinds of jobs within the o organization.
15. Which of the following is not managers' function?
A. Managers need to communicate with the employees about
technical knowledge, instructions, and information.
B. Managers have to consider many things such as the chain of
command, division of labor, assignment of responsibility.
C. Managers are responsible for training the trainees.
D. Managers can make decisions who to be hired on the spot.
16. What is the purpose of Management Trainee Position?
A. To train qualified managerial individuals.
B. To familiarize with the organization of the company.
C. To make progress on trainee's knowledge and skills.
D. To employ qualified men for vacant positions
17. Which is not right about management trainees?
A. Management trainees need to learn knowledge from different
departments.
B. It takes management trainees a week to work in each department.
C. Management trainees will receive lectures in classroom and be
tested by examinations.
D. Management trainees have already worked in the company for a
period of time.
18. Which statement is not true about the paragraph 4?
A. Management trainees have many training programs, including
oral programs and written programs.
B. Training period often lasts at least half a year.
C. Many training programs are set up according to the
organization's policy and strategy.
D. The trainee will be awarded for finishing the work in advance.
19. What can be guaranteed after management training?
A. A permanent position.
B. Valuable experience.
C. A certification.
D. Modest salary
20. What is a management trainee?
A. An individual who receives managerial training for management
work in the future.
B. A leader in the company.
C. An employee of the company
D. An applicant for interview
PART FOUR
Questions 21—30
· Read the article below about the employee selection techniques
· Choose the correct word to fill each gap from A, B, C or D.
· For each question (21—30), mark one letter (A, B, C or D) on
your Answer Sheet.
Employee Selection Techniques That Are Too Good to Be True
Selecting future employees is one of the most important and
difficult processes for (21) human resource managers are responsible.
The time-honored approach of interviewing, investigating an
applicant's experience and education, and talking with references,
although time-consuming, may still be the best method. (22)
interviewing today is a minefield of legal do's and don'ts. You may
ask an applicant about (23) convictions but not about arrests. You
may ask about medical background but not about race and (24) And, (25)
if you hire a person who then hurts a customer, you can be sued for
not having known about his or her prior arrest record. Faced with
such difficulties, many companies buy quick-and-easy solutions to the
selection (26) Many of these solutions are, in fact, too good to be
true.
Take the 1980s, for example, Polygraph—lie detector-tests seemed
at that time to be the wave of the future. Companies began relying on
machines and polygraph experts to screen applicants. Disturbed by
this trend and by the (27) of many of the best results, Congress
severely restricted polygraph use.
In the 1990s, equally questionable selection techniques are being
offered as the human re source manager's best friend. Some companies
borrow a technique from country fairs and try to (28) applicants on
the basis of their (29) Others turn to "honesty tests" which claim to
be able to uncover applicants who would be problem employees. Some
pencil-and-paper tests do provide (30) managers with useful
information, but many tests now being marked simply do not live up to
their claims.
21. A. which B. what C. who D. that
22. A. except B. apart from C. besides D. despite
23. A. prior B. previous C. before D. former
24. A. politics B. religion C. interest D. education
25. A. practically B. ironically C. unfortunately D. actually
26. A. fix B. issue C. matter D. dilemma
27. A. inaccuracy B. mistakes C. accuracy D. error
28. A. select B. evaluate C. judge D. interview
29. A. appearance B. knowledge C. character D. handwriting
30. A. personal B. personnel C. person D. human
PART FIVE
Questions 31—40
· Read the article below about management ethics.
· For each question 31—-40, write one word in CAPITAL LETTERS
on your Answer Sheet.
A Fair Day's Pay?
How much is a good CEO worth? The high pay of (31) executives can
create employee distrust and sometimes outright hostility, especially
during times of financial hardship. More and more companies are
facing the question of (32) to set ethical pay standards for their
top brass.
How can anyone judge whether Walt Disney's Michael Eisner is (33)
the $ 40 million in total compensation he received in 1988? One way
to make (34) of such figures is to com pare them with wages earned by
the company's lowest paid workers~ Does Disney do work equivalent to
that of more than 2,000 people who run rides and pick up trash at
Disney World? The question (35) confined to Walt Disney. A study
showed that the (36) CEO was making 93 times the salary of an average
factory worker, 72 times that of a teacher, and 44 times that of an
engineer. Moreover, executives can now take advantage of many more
tax breaks than they could 30 years ago.
Some corporations—including a number of well respected and very
successful ones-under stand how much resentment such figures can
create in employees. They have put a ceiling on the amount their top
executives can make. The pretax income of office furniture maker
Herman Miller's CEO is limited to 20 times that of the company's
manufacturing (37) Ben & Jerry's limits its executives' pay to 5
times that of its (38) —paid employees.
Most American corporations still scoff at such ideas and continue
to widen the gap between their best-and (39) —paid employees. But
before too long, such well-paid executives may start getting some of
the blame for the problems American companies have competing in the
(40) economy.
PART SIX
Questions 41—52
· Read the text below from a report about management's global
agenda.
· In most lines (41—52), there is one extra word. It either is
grammatically incorrect or does not fit in with the sense of the text.
Some lines, however, are correct.
· If a line is correct, write CORRECT on your Answer Sheet.
· If there is an extra word in the line, write the extra word in
CAPITAL LETTERS on your Answer Sheet.
Management's Global Agenda for the 1990s, According to GE's Jack
Welch
41. The pace of change in the nineties will make the eighties
look more like a picnic-a
42. park. Competition will be relentless. The bar of excellence
in everything we do it will be raised every day. The pace of change
will be felt in several areas. Globalization is now no longer an
43. objective but an imperative, as markets open and geographic
barriers become increasingly
44. blurred and even irrelevant. Corporate alliances, whether
joint ventures or acquisitions, will increasingly be driven out by
competitive pressures and strategies rather than finical structuring.
45. Technological innovation and the translation of that
innovation into marketplace advantage will be accelerating ever
faster. And in the coming decade year, we're going to see increasing
demands
46. for sensitivity to the environment. Only a total number
commitment of everyone in the company can provide the level of
responsibility that will be acceptable to governments, employees, and
customers.
47. Simply doing more of what had worked in the eighties—the
restructuring, the delayering, the mechanical, top-down measures that
we took—will be too incremental. More than that, it will be too
48. slow. The winners of in the nineties will be those who can
develop a culture that allows them to
49. move faster, communicate with more clearly, and involve
everyone in a focusing effort to serve
50. ever more demanding customers. To move toward that winning
culture we've got to create
51. what we call a "boundary less" company. Then we no longer
have the time to climb over barriers between
52. functions like engineering and marketing, or between peoplehourly, salaried, management, and something the like.
第 7 单元 企业管理
PART ONE
(1)A (2)C (3)D (4)A (5)D (6)E (7)B (8)C
PART TWO
(9)C (10)A (11)E (12)H (13)F (14)D
PART THREE
(15)D (16)A (17)B (18)C (19)B (20)A
PART FOUR
(21)A (22)C (23)A (24)B (25)B (26)D (27)A (28)C (29)D (30)B
PART FIVE
(31)TOP (32)HOW (33)WORTH (34)SENSE (35)ISN'T (36)AVERAGE
(37)EMPLOYEES (38)LOWEST (39)WORST (40)GLOBAL
PART SIX
(41)MORE (42)IT (43)CORRECT (44)OUT (45)YEAR (46)NUMBER (47)HAD
(48)IN (49)WITH (50)CORRECT (51)THEN (52)SOMETHING