首页
登录
职称英语
Big is Back A) Corporate giants were on the defensive for decades. Now t
Big is Back A) Corporate giants were on the defensive for decades. Now t
游客
2023-06-28
24
管理
问题
Big is Back
A) Corporate giants were on the defensive for decades. Now they have the advantage again. In 1996, in one of his most celebrated phrases, Bill Clinton declared that "the era of big government is over". He might have added that the era of big companies was over, too. The organisation that defined capitalism for much of the 20th century was then in retreat, attacked by corporate raiders, annoyed by shareholders and outwitted by entrepreneurs (企业家). Great names such as Pan Am had disappeared. Others had survived only by huge bloodletting: IBM sacked 122,000 people, a quarter of its workforce, between 1990 and 1995. Everyone agreed that the future lay with entrepreneurial start-ups such as Yahoo! —which in late 1998 had the same market capitalisation with 637 employees as Boeing with 230,000. The share of GDP produced by big industrial companies fell by half between 1974 and 1998, from 36% to 17%.
B) Today the balance of advantage may be shifting again. To a degree, the financial crisis is responsible. It has destroyed the venture-capital market, the lifeblood of many young firms. Governments have been rescuing companies they consider too big to fail, such as Citigroup and General Motors. Recession is squeezing out smaller and less well-connected firms. But there are other reasons too, which are giving big companies a self-confidence they have not displayed for decades.
C) Of course, big companies never went away. There were still plenty of first-rate ones: Unilever and Toyota continued to innovate through thick and thin. And not all start-ups were models of success: Netscape and Enron promised to revolutionise their industries only to crash and burn. Nevertheless, the balance had shifted in favour of small organisations. The entrepreneurial boom was supercharged by two developments. Deregulation (撤销管制规定) opened protected markets. Some national champions, such as AT&T, were broken up. Others saw their markets eaten up by swift-footed newcomers. The arrival of the personal computer in the 1970s and the internet in the 1990s created an army of successful start-ups. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer in 1976 in the Jobs family’s garage. Microsoft and Dell Computer were both founded by teenagers (in 1975 and 1984 respectively). Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google in Stanford dorm rooms.
D) But deregulation had already begun to go out of fashion before the financial crisis. The Sarbanes-Oxley act, introduced after Enron collapsed in disgrace, increased the regulatory burden on companies of all sizes, but what could be borne by the big could cripple the small. Many of today’s most dynamic industries are much more friendly to big companies than the IT industry. Research in biotechnology is costly and often does not bear fruit for years. Natural-resource companies, whose importance grows as competition for resources intensifies, need to be big—hence the mining industry’s consolidation.
E) Two further developments are shifting the balance of advantage in favour of size. One is a heightened awareness of the risks of subcontracting (转包合同). Toy companies and pet-food firms alike have found that their brands can be hurt if their suppliers turn out goods of poor quality. Big industrial companies have learned that their production cycles can be broken up if contractors are not up to the mark. Boeing, once a champion of subcontracting, has been forced to take over slow suppliers. A second is the emergence of companies that have discovered how to be entrepreneurial as well as big. These giants are getting better at minimising the costs of size (such as longer, more complex chains of managerial command) while exploiting its advantages (such as presence in several markets and access to a large talent pool). Cisco Systems is pioneering the use of its own video technology to improve communications between its employees. IBM has carried out several company-wide brainstorming exercises, recently involving more than 150,000 people, that have encouraged it to put more emphasis, for example, on green computing. Disney has successfully taken Pixar’s creative magic.
F) You might suppose that the return of the mighty, now better equipped to crush the competition, is something to worry about. Not necessarily. Big is not always ugly just as small is not always beautiful. Most entrepreneurs dream of turning their start-ups into giants (or at least of selling them to giants for a fortune). There is a symbiosis (互利合作关系) between large and small. "Cloud computing" would not provide young firms with access to huge amounts of computer power if big companies had not created giant servers. Biotech start-ups would go bust were they not given work by giants with deep pockets.
G) The most successful economic ecosystems contain a variety of big and small companies: Silicon Valley boasts long-established names as well as an ever-changing array of start-ups. America’s economy has been more dynamic than Europe’s in recent decades not just because it is better at giving birth to companies but also because it is better at letting them grow. Only 5% of European Union companies born since 1980 have made it into the list of the 1,000 biggest in the EU by market capitalisation. In America, the figure is 22%.
H) The return of the giants could well be a blessing for the world economy—but only if business people and policymakers avoid certain mistakes. Businesses should not admire size blindly, particularly if this means diversifying into a lot of unrelated areas. The model of joint business may be tempting when cash is hard to find. But the moment will not last. By and large, the most successful big firms focus on their core businesses.
I) Policymakers should both resist an instinctive suspicion of big companies and avoid the old error of embracing national champions. It is bad enough that governments have diverted resources into supporting failing companies such as General Motors. It would be even more regrettable if they were to return to picking winners. The best use of their energies is to remove the burdens and barriers which prevent entrepreneurs from starting businesses and turning small companies into big ones. [br] It is not necessary to worry about the revival of the big company in that big company is not always ugly.
选项
答案
F
解析
根根big company is not always ugly可定位至F段前三句。该部分提到作者指出没有必要(Not necessarily)去担忧大企业的回归,大企业并不都是好的,正如小企业并不总是美好的一样。本题概括了前三句的内容,故F段是本题出处。
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/2788874.html
相关试题推荐
BigisBackA)Corporategiantswereonthedefensivefordecades.Nowth
BigisBackA)Corporategiantswereonthedefensivefordecades.Nowth
BigisBackA)Corporategiantswereonthedefensivefordecades.Nowth
BigisBackA)Corporategiantswereonthedefensivefordecades.Nowth
BigisBackA)Corporategiantswereonthedefensivefordecades.Nowth
BigisBackA)Corporategiantswereonthedefensivefordecades.Nowth
BigisBackA)Corporategiantswereonthedefensivefordecades.Nowt
BigisBackA)Corporategiantswereonthedefensivefordecades.Nowt
BigisBackA)Corporategiantswereonthedefensivefordecades.Nowt
BigisBackA)Corporategiantswereonthedefensivefordecades.Nowt
随机试题
就餐时,围桌共食是中国人的一种传统。与西方人把鲜花放餐桌中央不同的是,中国人把菜肴放餐桌中央供大家一起享用。这种风俗体现了食物在中华文明史上的重要地位。
Thefemalesofourclosestprimaterelatives,thechimpanzees,arenotexactl
下列关于灭火剂输送管道安装要求的说法,不正确的是()。A.灭火剂输送管道的
美国IBM公司招聘员工时,对竞聘者设立的先决条件是是否具有()A.敬业精神
以下不属于项目的可行性研究同贷款项目评估的区别的是()。 A.发起主体不同B
下列项目中,属于职工薪酬的有( )。A.工会经费和职工教育经费 B.住房公积金
监理工程师在施工阶段进行投资控制的经济措施有( )。A.分解投资控制目标 B
平面汇交力系(F1,F2,F3,F4,F5)的力多边形如图4-4所示,则该
当不同直径钢筋焊接,钢筋直径相差大于7mm时,不得采用的焊接方式是()。A
(2015年真题)工程总承包项目通常比较复杂,其投标有效期一般为()天。A.60
最新回复
(
0
)