women are not the only ones seeking flexibility. Responding to millennials demanding better work-life balance, young parents needing time to share child-care duties and boomers looking to ease gradually toward retirement, Deloitte is scheduled to roll out MCC to all 42,000 U.S. employees by May 2010. Deloitte executives are in talks with more than 80 companies working on similar programs.
Not everyone is on board. A 33-year-old Deloitte senior manager in a southeastern office, who works half-days on Mondays and Fridays for health reasons and requested anonymity because she was not authorized to speak on the record, says one ―old school‖ manager insisted on scheduling meetings when she wouldn‘t be in the office. ―He was like, ?Yeah, I know we have the program,‘ ―she recalls, ―?but I don‘t really care.‘‖
Deloitte CEO Barry Salzberg admits he‘s still struggling to convert ―nonbelievers,‖ but says they are the exceptions. The recession provides an incentive for compan ies to design more lattice-oriented careers. Studies show telecommuting, for instance, can help businesses cut real estate costs 20% and payroll 10%.What‘s more, creating a flexible workforce to meet staffing needs in a changing economy ensures that a company will still have legs when the market recovers. Redeploying some workers from one division to another—or reducing their salaries—is a whole lot less expensive than laying everyone off and starting from scratch.
Young employees who dial down now and later become managers may reinforce the idea that moving sideways on the lattice doesn‘t mean getting sidelined. ―When I saw other people doing it,‖ says Keehn, ―I thought I could try.‖ As the compelling financial incentives for flexibility grow clearer, more firms will be forced to give employees that chance.Turns out all Keehn had to do was ask.
1. The author used the example of Chris Keehn _____.
(A) to show how much he loved his daughter and the family (B) to tell how busy he was working as a tax accountant
(C) to introduce how telecommuting changed the traditional way of working
(D) to explore how the partners of a company could negotiate and cooperate smoothly
2. What is the major purpose of shifting fro m a corporate ladder to the career path of lattice? (A) To take both career targets and larger life goals of employees into consideration. (B) To find better ways to develop one‘s career in response to economic crisis. (C) To establish expectations which could persist after the economy reheats. (D) To create ways to keep both tale nted women and men in the workforce.
3. The expression ―on board‖ in the sentence ―N ot everyone is on board. ‖ (para. 4) means _____. (A) going to insist on old schedules (B) concerned about work-life balance
(C) ready to accept the flexible working system
(D) accustomed to the changing working arrangement
4. Which of the following is NOT the possible benefit of lattice-oriented careers for businesses? (A) reducing the costs on real estate. (B) cutting the salaries of employees.
(C) forming a flexible workforce to meet needs in a changing economy. (D) keeping a workforce at the minimal level.
5. According to the passage, the idea that ―moving sideways on the lattice doesn‘t mean getting sidelined‖______.
(A) would discourage employees from choosing telecommuting
(B) might encourage more employees to apply for flexible work hours (C) would give employees more chances for their professional promotion (D) could provide young employees with more financial incentives
Questions 6—10
Right now, there‘s little that makes a typical American taxpayer more resentful than the huge bonuses being dispersed at Wall Street firms. The feeling that something went terribly wrong in the way the financial sector is run—and paid—is widespread. It‘s worth recalling that the incentive structures now governing executive pay in much of the corporate world were hailed as a miracle of human engineering a generation ago when they focused once-complacent ECOs with laser precision on steering companies toward the brightest possible futures.
So now there‘s a lot of talk about making incentives smarter. That may improve the way companies or banks are run, but only temporarily. The inescapable flaw in incentives , as 35 years of research shows, is that they get you exactly what you pay for, but it never turns out to be what you want. The mechanics of why this happens are pretty simple: Out of necessity, incentives are often based on an index of the thing you care about—like sound corporate leadership—that is easily measured. Share price is such an index of performance. Before long, however, people whose livelihoods are based on an index will figure out how to manipulate it—which soon makes the index a much less reliable barometer. Once share price determines the pay of smart people, they‘ll find a way to move it up without improving—and in some cases by jeopardizing—their company.
Incentives don‘t just fail; they often backfire. Swiss economists Bruno Frey (University of Zurich) and Felix Oberholzer-Gee (Harvard Business School) have shown that when Swiss citizens are offered a substantial cash incentive for agreeing to have a toxic waste dump in their community, their willingness to accept the facility falls by half. Uri Gneezy (U.C. San Di ego‘s Rady School of Management) and Aldo Rustichini (University of Minnesota) observed that when Israeli day-care centers fine parents who pick up their kids late, lateness increases. And James Heyman (University of St. Thomas) and Dan Ariely (Duke‘s Fuqua School of Business) showed that when people offer passers-by a token payment for help lifting a couch from a van, they are less likely to lend a hand than if they are offered nothing.
What these studies show is that incentives tend to remove the moral dimension from decision-making. The day-care parents know they ought to arrive on time, but they come to view the fines as a fee for a service. Once a payoff enters the picture, the Swiss citizens and pass ersby ask, ―What‘s in my best interest?‖ The question they ask themselves when money isn‘t part of the equation is quite different: ―What are my responsibilities to my country and to other people?‖ Despite our abiding faith in incentives as a way to influence behavior. in a positive way, they consistently do the reverse.
Some might say banking has no moral dimension to take away. Bankers have always been
interested in making money, and they probably always will be, but they‘ve traditionally been well aware of their responsibilities, too. Bankers worried about helping farmers get this year‘s seed into the ground. They worried about helping a new business get off to a strong start or a thriving one to expand. They worried about a couple in their 50s having enough to retire on, and about one in their 30s taking on too big a mortgage. These bankers weren‘t saints, but they served the dual masters of profitability and community service.
In case you think this style. of banking belongs to a horse-and-buggy past, consider credit unions and community development banks. Many have subprime mortgage portfolios that remain healthy to this day. In large part, that‘s because they approve loans they intend to keep on their books rather than securitizing and selling them to drive up revenue, which would in turn boost annual bonuses. And help bring the world economy to its knees.
At the Group of 20 gathering in September, France and Germany proposed strict limits on executive pay. The U.S. Now has a pay czar, who just knocked down by half the compensation of 136 executives. But the absolute amounts executives are paid may be inconsequential. Most people want to do right. They want their work to improve the lives of others. As Washington turns its sights on reforms for the financial sector, it just might consider nudging the industry‘s major players away from the time-dishonored tradition of incentives and toward compensation structures that don‘t strip the moral dimension away from the people making big decisions.
6. According to the passage, th e incentive structures gove rning today‘s executive pay in the corporate world _____.
(A) are perfect and shall be continued
(B) have gone wrong somewhere and should be remedied (C) are with inescapable flaws and must be stopped
(D) have fundamentally improved the corporate management
7.Which of the following best paraphrases the sentence ―Incentives don‘t just fail; they often backfire.‖ (para. 3)?
(A) Incentives cannot promote the management of companies and banks; they often lead to corporate bankruptcy.
(B) Incentives are only material stimulation, they can be used to destroy human morality. (C) Incentives do not achieve desired results, moreover, they often produce negative effect.
(D) Incentives do not treat everything in terms of money and they are often used to change human mentality.
8. According to the passage, with the current incentive structures, the rising of share prices _____. (A) is surely the reliable barome ter of a company‘s performances (B) will endanger the company and do harm to the share holders (C) is often driven up by corporate managers to boost their bonuses (D) proves the necessity of reforms for the financial sector
9. The author introduced the ―dual masters of profitability and community service‖ of the traditional bankers _____.
(A) to support the view that ―banking has no moral dimension‖
(B) to prove that bankers have always been interested in making money
(C) to display that the traditional banking is healthier and more successful (D) to argue that bankers could be saints so long as they serve the community
10. Which of the following can be the major conclusion of the author? (A) Strict limits should be imposed by the government on executive pay.
(B) The time-dishonored tradition of incentive structures could jeopardize companies. (C) The financial sector could be reformed on the basis of compensation structures. (D) The moral dimension should be separated from incentive structures.
Questions 11—15
Quick quiz: Who has a more vitriolic relationship with the US? The French or the British. If you guessed the French, consider this: Paris newspaper polls show that 72 percent of the French hold a favorable impression of the United States.
Yet UK polls over the past decade show a lower percentage of the British have a favorable impression of the United States. Britain‘s highbrow newspaper, The Guardian, sets the UK‘s intellectual tone. On any given day you can easily read a handful of stories sniping at the US and things American.
The BBC‘s Radio 4, which is a domestic news and talk radio station, regularly laments Britain‘s social warts and follows them up with something that has become the national mantra, ―Well, at least we‘re not as bad as the Americans.‖ This isn‘t a new trend: British abhorrence of America antedates George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq. On 9/11 as the second plane was slamming into the World Trade Center towers my wife was on the phone with an English friend of many years. In the background she heard her friend‘s teenage son shout in front of the TV,“Yeah! The Americans are finally getting theirs.‖ The animos ity may be unfathomable to those raised to think of Britain as ―the mother country‖ for whom we fought two world wars and with whom we won the cold war. So what‘s it all about?
I often asked that during the years I lived in London. On e of the best answers came fr om an Englishwoman with whom I shared a table for coffee. She said, ―It‘s because we used to be big and important and we aren‘t any more. Now it‘s America that‘s big and important and we can never forgive you for that.‖ A detestation of things American has become as dependable as the tides on the Thames rising and falling four times a day. It feeds a flagging British sense of national self-importance.
A new book documenting the virulence of more than 30 years of corrosive British animosity reveals how deeply rooted it has become in the UK‘s national psyche. ―[T]here is no reasoning with people who have come to believe America is now a ?police state‘ and the USA is a ?disgrace across most of the world,‘‖ writes Carol Gould, an American expatriate novelist and journalist, in her book ―Don‘t Tread on Me.‖
A brief experience shortly after George W. Bush‘s invasion of Iraq illustrates that. An American I know was speaking on the street in London one morning. Upon hearing his accent, a British man yelled, ―Take your tanks and bombers and go back to America.‖ Then the British thug punched him repeatedly. No wonder other American friends of mine took to telling locals they were from Canada. The local police recommended prosecution. But upon learning the victim was an Amer ican, crown prosecutors dropped the case even though the perpetrator had a history of assaulting foreigners.
The examples of this bitterness continue:
I recall my wife and I having coffee with a member of our church. The woman, w ho worked at Buckingham Palace, launched a conversation with, ―Have you heard the latest dumb American joke?‖ which incidentally turned out to be a racial slur against blacks. It‘s comm on to hear Brits routinely dismiss Americans as racists (even with an African-American president), religious nuts, global polluters, warmongers, cultural philistines, and as intellectual Untermenschen.
The United Kingdom‘s counterintelligence and security agency has identified some 5,000 Muslim extremists in the UK but not even they are denounced with the venom directed at Americans. A British office manager at CNN once informed me that any English high school diploma was equal to an American university degree. This predilection for seeing evil in all things American defies intellect and reason. By themselves, these instances might be able to be brushed off, but combined they amount to British bigotry.
Oscar Wilde once wrote, ―The English mind is always in a rage.‖ But the energy required to maintain that British rage might be better channeled into paring back what the Economist (a British news magazine) calls ―an overreaching, and inefficient state with unaffordable aspirations around the world.‖ The biggest problem is that, as with all hatred, it tends to be self-destructive. The danger is that as such, it perverts future generations.
The UK public‘s animosity doesn‘t hurt the United States if Americans don‘t react in kind. This bigotry does hurt the United Kingdom, however, because there is something sad about a society that must denigrate and malign others to feed its own self-esteem. What Britain needs to understand is that this ill will has poisoned the enormous reservoir of good will Britain used to enjo y in America. And unless the British tweak their attitude, they stand to become increasingly irrelevant to the American people.
11. Which of the following is NOT the example given by the author to show the British abhorrence of America?
(A) A boy shouted ―The Americans are finally getting theirs.‖ when watching TV on 9/11. (B) A woman working at Buckingham Palace told an American joke against blacks.
(C) An American speaking on a London street was punched and no prosecution followed. (D) An English author once wrote, ―the English mind is always in a rage.‖
12. The word ―animosity‖ used in the passage can best be replaced by _____. (A) strong hatred (B) total indifference (C) great sympathy (D) sheer irrelevance
13. The author quoted from the American novelist Carol Gould‘s book _____. (A) to reveal how America has become a police state (B) to expand on the British attitude to America
(C) to explain the changing course of British mentality to America
(D) to document the past 30 years of relationship between Britain and America
14. The author argues that the UK public opinion about America will _____. (A) undermine the relations between the UK and the US (B) be self-destructive to Great Britain
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