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  3. Disruption may be the buzzword in boardrooms, but the most striking feature of business today is not the overturning of the esta

Disruption may be the buzzword in boardrooms, but the most striking feature of business today is not the overturning of the esta

admin2019-09-15  5
问题    Disruption may be the buzzword in boardrooms, but the most striking feature of business today is not the overturning of the established order. It is the entrenchment of a group of superstar companies at the heart of the global economy. Some of these are old firms, like GE, that have reinvented themselves. Some are emerging-market champions, like Samsung, which have seized the opportunities provided by globalisation. The elite of the elite are high-tech wizards—Google, Apple, Facebook and the rest—that have conjured up corporate empires from bits and bytes.
   The superstars are admirable in many ways. 【R1】__________But they have two big faults. They are squashing competition, and they are using the darker arts of management to stay ahead. Neither is easy to solve. But failing to do so risks a backlash which will be bad for everyone.
   The heft of the superstars also reflects their excellence at less productive activities. 【R2】__________The giants also deploy huge armies of lobbyists, bringing the same techniques to Brussels, where 30,000 lobbyists now walk the corridors, that they perfected in Washington, DC. Laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank, to say nothing of America’s tax code, penalise small firms more than large ones.
   None of this helps the image of big business. Paying tax seems to be unavoidable for individuals but optional for firms. Rules are unbending for citizens, and up for negotiation when it comes to companies. Nor do profits translate into jobs as once they did. 【R3】__________
   Concentration is an even harder problem. America in particular has got into the habit of giving the benefit of the doubt to big business. 【R4】__________It is less defensible now that superstar firms are gaining control of entire markets and finding new ways to entrench themselves.
   Prudent policymakers must reinvent antitrust for the digital age. That means being more alert to the long-term consequences of large firms acquiring promising startups. 【R5】__________ And it means making sure that people have a choice of ways of authenticating their identity online.
   So, by all means celebrate the astonishing achievements of today’s superstar companies. But also watch them. The world needs a healthy dose of competition to keep today’s giants on their toes and to give those in their shadow a chance to grow.
   [A] About 30% of global foreign direct investment (FDI) flows through tax havens; big companies routinely use "transfer pricing" to pretend that profits generated in one part of the world are in fact made in another.
   [B] That means a tough-but-considered approach to issues such as tax avoidance. The OECD countries have already made progress in drawing up common rules to prevent companies from parking money in tax havens, for example.
   [C] It means making it easier for consumers to move their data from one company to another, and preventing tech firms from unfairly privileging their own services on platforms they control.
   [D] They churn out products that improve consumers’ lives, from smarter smartphones to sharper televisions. They provide Americans and Europeans with an estimated $280 billion-worth of "free" services—such as search or directions—a year.
   [E] They have more to do, not least to address the convenient fiction that different units of multinationals are really separate companies.
   [F] In 1990 the top three carmakers in Detroit had a market capitalisation of $36 billion and 1.2m employees. In 2014 the top three firms in Silicon Valley, with a market capitalisation of over $1 trillion, had only 137,000 employees.
   [G] This made some sense in the 1980s and 1990s when giant companies such as General Motors and IBM were being threatened by foreign rivals or domestic upstarts.
【R4】
选项
答案G
解析 空格前说大企业的一个更棘手的问题是资源集中化，并指出这个问题在美国尤为明显。空格后说超级明星企业正逐步控制整个市场，不断巩固自身地位，因此某个做法现在就没那么合理了。空格后的It is less defensible表明，空格处应该提到It指代的具体内容；而能用defensible“正当有理的。情有可原的”来描述的对象，应该是某种行为、做法或观点等；且由比较级less可知，空格处应与空格后提及的情况相反或相对。G谈到二十世纪八、九十年代美国的大企业受到外国企业和本土新兴企业的威胁，在这种情况下，美国偏向大企业，把资源集中于大企业身上，也是合乎情理的(made some sense)，This指代空格前提到的美国偏向大企业的做法。而美国大企业在上世纪八、九十年代的危殆情况正好与空格后提到的现在大企业把控市场的情况形成对比，也说明偏向大企业的做法如今已然不那么合理。G填入空格，与空格前后的内容均衔接自然。因此本题选G。
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