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An Asian engineer is assigned to a US laboratory and almost suffers a nervou

游客2023-09-16  23
问题     An Asian engineer is assigned to a US laboratory and almost suffers a nervous breakdown. A US executive tells his staff he’s going to treat them fairly and creates dissension(纷争). A Japanese manager is promoted by his British president, but within six months asks for a trans- for. Each of these real-life cases involved people who were regarded as superior employees, but were ill-equipped to cope with the complexities and dangers of intercultural management. "Multinational companies have studied everything else, now they’re finally looking at culture," says Clifford Clarke, founder and president of the California-based IRI International Inc, one of a small but growing number of consulting firms that specialize in teaching business people from differing cultures how to communicate and work with each other.
    "Never show the sole to an Arab, never arrive on time for a party in Brazil, and in Japan, don’t think ’yes’ means ’yes’," advise US consultants Lennie Copland and Lewis Brown Griggs, who have produced a series of films and a book to help managers improve their international business skills. But simply learning the social "dos" and "don’ts" is not the answer, according to the new culture specialists. The penalties for ignoring different thinking patterns, they point out, can be disastrous. For example, the American manager who promised to be fair thought he was telling his Japanese staff that their hard work would be rewarded, but when some workers received higher salary increases than others, there were complaints. "You told us you’d be fair, and you lied to us," accused one salesman. "Ii took me a year and a half", sighed the American, "to realize that ’fair’ to my staff, meant being treated equally."
    The Asian engineer who suffered in America was the victim of another mistaken expectation. "He was accustomed to the warm group environment so typical in Japan," said his US. manager. "But in our company, we’re all expected to be self-starters, who thrive on working alone. For him, it was emotional starvation. He’s made the adjustment now, but he’d be humiliated if I told you his name, that’s another cultural difference."
    The Japanese manager who failed to respond to his promotion couldn’t bring himself to use the more direct language needed to communicate with his London-based superiors. "I used to think all this talk about cultural communication was a lot of baloney," says Eugene J. Flath, president of Intel Japan Ltd., a subsidiary of the American semiconductor maker. "Now, I can see it’s a real problem. Miscommunication has slowed our ability to coordinate action with our office."
    That’s why Intel, with the help of consultant Clarke, began an intercultural training program this spring which Flath expects will dramatically reduce decision-making time now lost in making sure the Americans and the Japanese understand each other.
选项 A、Building Bridges over the Cultural Rivers
B、Multinational Training for Businessmen
C、Learning Different Thinking Patterns
D、Communication Problems and Complaints
答案 A
解析 解答此题需要对文章主题进行整体把握。文章通过具体事例指出跨国企业中的许多问题是由员工文化上的差异造成的，因此要重视跨文化交流技巧。A中的bridge即指文化交流技巧，cultural rivers即目前存在的由文化差异造成的交流障碍，所以A是对文章形象而全面的概括。B和C都是解决问题的具体方法，不能概括全篇内容；D只提到了交流问题，没有谈及跨文化交流，故也不能概括文章中心。
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