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  3. If sustainable competitive advantage depends on work-force skills, American firms have a problem. Human resource management is n

If sustainable competitive advantage depends on work-force skills, American firms have a problem. Human resource management is n

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问题     If sustainable competitive advantage depends on work-force skills, American firms have a problem. Human resource management is not traditionally seen as central to the competitive survival of the firm in the United States. Skill acquisition is considered as an individual responsibility. Labor is simply another factor of production to be hired or rented at the lowest possible cost much as one buys raw materials or equipment.
    The lack of importance attached to human resource management can be seen in the corporation hierarchy. In an American firm the chief financial officer is almost always second in command. The post of head of human resource managements is usually a specialized job, often at the edge of the corporate hierarchy. The executive who holds it is never consulted on major strategic decisions and has no chance to move up to Chief Executive Officer (CEO). By way of contrast, in Japan the head of human resource management is central—usually the second most important executive, after the CEO, in the firm’s hierarchy.
    While American firms often talk about the vast amounts spent on training their work-forces, in fact they invest less in the skill of their employees than do the Japanese or German firms. The money they do invest is also more highly concentrated on professional and managerial employees. And the limited investments that are made in training workers are also much more narrowly focused on the specific skills necessary to do the next job rather than on the basic background skills that make it possible to absorb new technologies.
    As a result, problems emerge when new breakthrough technologies arrive. If American workers, for example, take much longer to learn how to operate new flexible manufacturing stations than workers in Germany (as they do), the effective cost of those stations is lower in Germany than it is in the United Stated. More time is required before equipment is up and running at capacity, and the need for extensive retraining generates costs and creates bottlenecks that limit the speed with which new equipment can be employed. The result is a slower pace of technological change. And in the end the skills of the bottom half of the population affect the wages of the top half. If the bottom half can’t effectively staff the processes that have to be operated, the management and professional jobs that go with these processes will disappear.
What is the main idea of the passage?
选项 A、American firms are different from Japanese and German firms in human resource management.
B、Extensive retraining is indispensable to effective human resource management.
C、The head of human resource management must be in the central position in a firm’s hierarchy.
D、The human resource management strategies of American firms affect their competitive capacity.
答案D
解析 综观全文，只有D项能概括文章的中心思想，A、B、C三个选项只能概括文章部分段落的内容。因此正确答案为D。
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