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  3. Well, no gain without pain, they say. But what about pain without gain? Ever

Well, no gain without pain, they say. But what about pain without gain? Ever

游客2025-04-02  2
问题     Well, no gain without pain, they say. But what about pain without gain? Everywhere you go in America, you hear tales of corporate revival. What is harder to establish is whether the productivity revolution that businessmen assume they are presiding over is for real.
    The official statistics are mildly discouraging. They show that, if you lump manufacturing and services together, productivity has grown on average by 1.2% since 1987. That is somewhat faster than the average during the previous decade. And since 1991, productivity has increased by about 2% a year, which is more than twice the 1978-1987 average. The trouble is that part of the recent acceleration is due to the usual rebound that occurs at this point in a business cycle, and so is not conclusive evidence of a revival in the underlying trend. There is, as Robert Rubin, the treasury secretary, says, a "disjunction" between the mass of business anecdote that points to a leap in productivity and the picture reflected by the statistics.
    Some of this can be easily explained. New ways of organizing the workplace all that reengineering and downsizing—are only one contribution to the overall productivity of an economy, which is driven by many other factors such as joint investment in equipment and machinery, new technology, and investment in education and training. Moreover, most of the changes that companies make are intended to keep them profitable, and this need not always mean increasing productivity: switching to new markets or improving quality can matter just as much.
    Two other explanations are more speculative. First, some of the business restructuring of recent years may have been ineptly done. Second, even if it was well done, it may have spread much less widely than people suppose.
    Leonard Schlesinger, a Harvard academic and former chief executive of Au Bong Pain, a rapidly growing chain of bakery cafes, says that much "reengineering" has been crude. In many cases, he believes, the loss of revenue has been greater than the reductions in cost. His colleague, Michael Beer, says that far too many companies have applied reengineering in a mechanistic fashion, chopping out costs without giving sufficient thought to long term profitability. BBDO’s Al Rosenshine is blunter. He dismisses a lot of the work of reengineering consultants as mere rubbish—"the worst sort of ambulance cashing". [br] The official statistics on productivity growth ______.
选项 A、exclude the usual rebound in a business cycle
B、fall short of businessmen’s anticipation
C、meet the expectation of business people
D、fail to reflect the true state of economy
答案 B
解析 本题可参照文章的第2段。从中可知，官方的统计数字有些令人失望；数据显示，如果把制造业和服务业合在一起计算的话，那么，从1987年以来，生产力平均每年增长1.2％；这比在上一个十年期内的平均增幅大；从1991年起，生产力每年约增长2％，这一比率是1978～1987年平均增长指数的两倍；问题是，近期的增长一定程度上是由于商业周期运行至这个时段所出现的常见反弹所引起的，因此不能以此作为确凿的证据来证实在这一潜在的趋势中会出现经济复苏；正如财政部长所说的那样，大量的商业奇闻显示生产力剧增，这同官方的统计数字所反映出的情况“有分歧”。据此可知，有关生产力增长的官方统计数据与商业界人士的传说不符，说明生产力并没有如官方人士所说的那样增长了。B项与文章的意思相符，因此B项为正确答案。
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