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  3. Over the past decade, American companies have tried hard to find ways to discourage senior managers from feathering their own ne

Over the past decade, American companies have tried hard to find ways to discourage senior managers from feathering their own ne

admin2012-06-20  48
问题     Over the past decade, American companies have tried hard to find ways to discourage senior managers from feathering their own nests at the expense of their shareholders. The three most popular reforms have been recruiting more outside directors in order to make boards more independent, linking bosses’ pay to various performance measures, and giving bosses share options so that they have the same long-term interests as their shareholders.
    These reforms have been widely adopted by America’s larger companies, and surveys suggest that many more companies are thinking of following their lead. But have they done any good? Three papers presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management in Boston this week suggest not. As is usually the case with boardroom tinkering, the consequences have differed from those intended.
    Start with those independent boards. On the face of it, dismissing the boss’s friends from the board and replacing them with outsiders looks a perfect way to make senior managers more accountable. But that is not the conclusion of a study by Professor James Westphal. Instead, he found that bosses with a boardroom full of outsiders spend much of their time building alliances, doing personal favors and generally pleasing the outsiders.
    All too often, these seductions succeed. Mr. Westphal found that, to a remarkable degree, "independent" boards pursue strategies that are likely to favor senior managers rather than shareholders. Such companies diversify their business, increase the pay of executives and weaken the link between pay and performances. To assess the impact of performance-related pay, Mr. Westphal asked the bosses of 103 companies with sales of over $1 billion what measurements were used to determine their pay. The measurements varied widely, ranging from sales to earnings per share. But these researchers uncovered a startling finding: executives "attend to measures that affect their own incomes and ignore or play down other factors that determine a company’s overall success".
    In short, bosses are quick to turn every imaginable system of corporate government to their advantage, which is probably why they are the people who are put in charge of things. Here is a paradox for the management theorists: any boss who cannot beat a system designed to keep him under control is probably not worth having.  
Which of the following statements is true according to the passage?
选项 A、Corporate executives in general are worth the high pay they receive.
B、The income of corporate executives is proportional to the growth of corporate profits.
C、Corporate executives tend to take advantage of their position to enrich themselves.
D、The performance of corporate executives affects their own interests more than those of the shareholders.
答案C
解析 本题可用排除法。[A](公司高层应拿高薪)在文章未提及；[B](公司高层的收入与公司增长的利润成比例)也未提及；[D](公司高层的表现更会影响其自身利益而不是那些股东)文章同样未提及；[C](公司高层倾向于利用其地位假公济私)与第四段末句所述意思相符，故答案为[C]。
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大学英语四级

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