首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Team Spirit [A] Teams have become the basic building blocks of organisations. Recruitment advertisements routinely call for "tea
Team Spirit [A] Teams have become the basic building blocks of organisations. Recruitment advertisements routinely call for "tea
admin
2019-03-15
40
问题
Team Spirit
[A] Teams have become the basic building blocks of organisations. Recruitment advertisements routinely call for "team players". Business schools grade their students in part on their performance in group projects. Office managers knock down walls to encourage team building. Teams are as old as civilisation, of course; even Jesus had 12 co-workers. But a new report by Deloitte, "Global Human Capital Trends", based on a survey of more than 7,000 executives in over 130 countries, suggests that the fashion for teamwork has reached a new high. Almost half of those surveyed said their companies were either in the middle of restructuring or about to embark on (开始) it; and for the most part, restructuring meant putting more emphasis on teams.
[B] Companies are abandoning conventional functional departments and organising employees into cross-disciplinary teams that focus on particular products, problems or customers. These teams are gaining more power to run their own affairs. They are also spending more time working with each other rather than reporting upwards. Deloitte argues that a new organisational form is on the rise: a network of teams is replacing the conventional hierarchy (等级体制).
[C] The fashion for teams is driven by a sense that the old way of organising people is too rigid for both the modern marketplace and the expectations of employees. Technological innovation places greater value on agility (灵活性). John Chambers, chairman of Cisco Systems Inc., a worldwide leader in electronics products, says that "we compete against market transitions (过渡), not competitors. Product transitions used to take five or seven years; now they take one or two." Digital technology also makes it easier for people to co-ordinate their activities without resorting to hierarchy. The "millennials" (千禧一代) who will soon make up half the workforce in rich countries were raised from nursery school onwards to work in groups.
[D] The fashion for teams is also spreading from the usual corporate suspects (such as GE and IBM) to some more unusual ones. The Cleveland Clinic, a hospital operator, has reorganised its medical staff into teams to focus on particular treatment areas; consultants, nurses and others collaborate closely instead of being separated by speciality (专业) and rank. The US Army has gone the same way. In his book, Team of Teams, General Stanley McChrystal describes how the army’s hierarchical structure hindered its operations during the early stages of the Iraq war. His solution was to learn something from the rebels it was fighting: decentralising authority to self-organising teams.
[E] A good rule of thumb is that as soon as generals and hospital administrators jump on a management bandwagon (追随一种管理潮流), it is time to ask questions. Leigh Thompson of Kellogg School of Management in Illinois warns that, "Teams are not always the answer—teams may provide insight, creativity and knowledge in a way that a person working independently cannot; but teamwork may also lead to confusion, delay and poor decision-making." The late Richard Hackman of Harvard University once argued, "I have no question that when you have a team, the possibility exists that it will generate magic, producing something extraordinary... But don’t count on it."
[F] Hackman (who died in 2013) noted that teams are hindered by problems of co-ordination and motivation that chip away at the benefits of collaboration. High-flyers (能干的人) who are forced to work in teams may be undervalued and free-riders empowered. Group-think may be unavoidable. In a study of 120 teams of senior executives, he discovered that less than 10% of their supposed members agreed on who exactly was on the team. If it is hard enough to define a team’s membership, agreeing on its purpose is harder still.
[G] Profound changes in the workforce are making teams trickier to manage. Teams work best if their members have a strong common culture. This is hard to achieve when, as is now the case in many big firms, a large proportion of staff are temporary contractors. Teamwork improves with time: America’s National Transportation Safety Board found that 73% of the incidents in its civil-aviation database occurred on a crew’s first day of flying together. However, as Amy Edmondson of Harvard points out, organisations increasingly use "team" as a verb rather than a noun; they form teams for specific purposes and then quickly disband them.
[H] The least that can be concluded from this research is that companies need to think harder about managing teams. They need to rid their minds of sentimentalism (感情用事) : the most successful teams have leaders who are able to set an overall direction and take immediate action. They need to keep teams small and focused: giving in to pressure to be more "inclusive" is a guarantee of dysfunction. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s boss, says that "If I see more than two pizzas for lunch, the team is too big." They need to immunise teams against group-think: Hackman argued that the best ones contain "deviants" (离经叛逆者) who are willing to do something that may be upsetting to others.
[I] A new study of 12,000 workers in 17 countries by Steelcase, a furniture-maker which also does consulting, finds that the best way to ensure employees are "engaged" is to give them more control over where and how they do their work—which may mean liberating them from having to do everything in collaboration with others.
[J] However, organisations need to learn something bigger than how to manage teams better: they need to be in the habit of asking themselves whether teams are the best tools for the job. Team-building skills are in short supply: Deloitte reports that only 12% of the executives they contacted feel they understand the way people work together in networks and only 21% feel confident in their ability to build cross-functional teams. Loosely managed teams can become hotbeds of distraction—employees routinely complain that they can’t get their work done because they are forced to spend too much time in meetings or compelled to work in noisy offices. Even in the age of open-plan offices and social networks some work is best left to the individual.
Some team members find it hard to agree on questions like membership and the team’s purpose.
选项
答案
F
解析
该段最后两句提到“在对120个高级管理人员团队进行的一项研究中,他发现不到10%的准成员在谁能加入这个团队上意见一致;如果很难确定一个团队的成员资格,那么要对团队目的达成统一意见就更难了”。题干是对这两句话的总结概括,题干中的membership和team’s purpose是原文的同义复现,故答案为F。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/TsZ7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
Manisendlesslyinventive.Buthisgreatestinventionisnon-invention,theskilloftransmittingintact(完美无损的)andunchangedfr
Keepinghealthyrequiresaconsciouseffort.Youmakechoicesaboutthefoodsyoueat,just【C1】______youmakechoicesaboutgett
Bilingual(双语的)educationinschoolshaslongbeenapoliticalhotpotato—itwasbannedinCaliforniabya1998ballotmeasure,wh
Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteashortessayentitledIsUniversityEducationUseless?followingtheoutline
A、Designingaterrificweb.B、Designingabasicweb.C、BuildingaterrificBBS.D、Designingaterrificprogram.B
TheGulfBetweenCollegeStudentsandLibrariansA)Studentsrarelyasklibrariansforhelp,evenwhentheyneedit.Thisis
So-called"greenroofs"—urbanrooftopscoveredwithgrasses,plantsandothertypesofgreenery—arebecomingincreasinglypopula
Directions:Inrecentyears,manycompaniesareinclinedtorecruitexperiencedemployeesbecausetheycanreducetrainingcost
A、Healthandsafetyconditionsintheworkplace.B、Rightsandresponsibilitiesofcompanyemployees.C、Commoncomplaintsmadeby
随机试题
在抽样检验过程中,可以不由供需双方协商确定的是()。
从情感范畴来看,廉洁奉公是一种
SZYV-15-x-2型号的电缆中,“2”表示的是()。
证券市场的自律性组织包括()。Ⅰ.证券交易所Ⅱ.证券公司Ⅲ.中国证监会Ⅳ.证券业协会
某工业企业2018年7月1日转让其位于县城的一栋办公楼,取得含税销售收入12000万元,对于该项销售行为企业选择一般计税方法计税。2008年建造该办公楼时,为取得土地使用权支付金额3000万元.发生建造成本4000万元。转让时经政府批准的房地产评估机构评估
Well,Iownasmalldataprocessingcompany,inwhichIemployabout8—10workers.AndthepointIwanttomakehavetodowith
2015年6月,合福铁路正式通车,途经多个知名旅游景点,如黄山、婺源、三清山、武夷山、福州等地,因此被媒体赞誉为“中国颜值最高的高铁”。关于乘坐高铁出行不用系安全带的原因,说法不正确的是:
联机事务处理(OLTP)和联机分析处理(OLAP)所需的数据是有区别的,下列描述错误的是()。
在考生文件夹下,打开文档WORD2.DOCX,按照要求完成下列操作并以该文件名(WORD2.DOCX)保存文档。【文档开始】【文档结束】(1)设置表格居中,表格行高0.6厘米;表格中第1、2行文字水平居中,其余各行文字中,第
Ayearhas______andthereisnosignofthesituationgettinganybetter.
最新回复
(
0
)