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Research now suggests companies that try to make employees happy could benefit from improved levels of productivity. Where Sloug

admin2012-08-05  72
问题     Research now suggests companies that try to make employees happy could benefit from improved levels of productivity. Where Slough’s most famous office manager leads, eminent (杰出的) economists follow. David Brent’s declaration that he wanted to be remembered as "the man who put a smile on the face of all who he met" may once have been dismissed as management mumbo-jumbo (怪诞的东西).
    But it appears the Brentmeister General may have been on to something. A team of economists has now produced research that suggests there are clear links between workers’ happiness and their productivity. The team, led by Andrew Oswald, a professor of economics at Warwick Business School and a leading authority on the relationship between economics and mental health, said its research has important implications for the worlds of politics and business.
    "We find that human happiness has large and positive causal effects on productivity," the team said. "Positive emotions appear to invigorate (鼓舞) human beings, while negative emotions have the opposite effect." The team conducted a range of exercises in their research. In one, students were shown a 10-minute film based on comedy routines performed by a well-known British comedian. The film succeeded in raising the reported happiness levels of those who saw it, compared to those who did not see it. Among the subjects who reported higher happiness levels after seeing the comedy film, productivity was significantly higher than for the other subjects, for both men and women. Significantly, subjects who watched the comedy film but did not report higher levels of happiness were unable to demonstrate higher levels of productivity.
    The findings led the economists to claim: "The increase in productivity seems to be linked to the increase in happiness, not merely to the watching of the comedy movie per se." The team also found that those who had experienced a death or illness in their families within the past two years performed 10 percent worse than others.
    Questioning the students about their family backgrounds also led to interesting results. The researchers, for example, found that subjects whose parents had recently divorced did not appear less happy or less productive. They noted: "One exception to our findings concerns the subject of parental divorce. Students whose parents have recently divorced did not report being less happy than others in the study, and they did not demonstrate reduced productivity."
    Economists have long debated how productivity can be raised through improved skills and the education of workers, or the introduction of new technology. But the Warwick team suggested that their work has opened up a new line of inquiry: "Our recent research investigates an important but often overlooked ingredient—that of human emotion."
    They concluded: "If happiness in the workplace brings increased returns to productivity, then human resource departments, business managers and the architects of promotion policies will want to consider the implications."
What does David Brent mean by saying "he wanted to be remembered as ’the man who put a smile on the face of all who he met’" (Lines 4~5, Para. 1)?
选项 A、He would smile to greet all the people he met.
B、He was always a happy man in his daily life.
C、He once played the role of a clown to amuse others.
D、He would try his best to make employees happy.
答案D
解析 语义理解题。文章开篇提到一项研究结果，员工感到幸福能够提高生产力，公司也能从中受益。全文也是围绕员工幸福与提高生产力之间的关系展开论述。DavidBrent的这句话的字面意思是“他希望成为‘能够让所有遇见的人脸上挂着笑容的人”’，结合上下文可知，他希望能够让所有遇到的人感到幸福，从而给公司带来更高的生产力。故答案为D)。
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