D.want to show their existence by creating a culture of their own
12. Teenagers do not want their parents to approve of whatever they do because they . A. have already been accepted into the adult world
B. feel that they are superior in a small way to the adults C. are not likely to win over the adults D. have a desire to be independent
TEXT D
If Sustainable competitive advantage depends on work force skills, American firms have a problem. Human management is not traditionally seen as a central to the competitive survival of the firm in the United States. Skill Acquisition is considered as individual responsibility. Labor is simply another force of production to be hired/rented at the lowest possible cost, which is a must as one buys raw material or equipment.
The lack of importance attached to human resource management can be seen in the corporate pecking order. In an American firm the chief financial officer is almost always second in command. The post of head of human resource management is usually a specialized job, off at the edge of the corporate hierarchy. The executive who holds it is never consulted on major strategic decisions and has no chance to move up to Chief Executive Officer. By way of contrast, in Japan the head of human resource management is central-usually the second most important executive, after the CEO, in the firm's hierarchy.
While American firms often talk about the vast amounts spent on training their work force, in fact, they invest less in the skills of their employees than do either Japanese or German firms. The money they do invest is also more highly concentrated on professional or managerial employees. And the limited investments that made in training workers are also much more narrowly focused on the specific skills necessary to do the next job rather than on the basic background skills that make it possible to absorb new technologies.
As a result, problems emerge when new breakthrough technologies arrive. If American workers, for example take much longer to learn how to operate new flexible manufacturing stations than workers in Germany (as they do., the effective cost of those stations is lower in Germany than it is in the United States. More time is required before equipment is up and running at the speed with which new equipment is up and running at capacity, and the need for extensive retraining generates costs and creates bottlenecks that limit the speed with which new equipment can be employed. The result is a slower pace of technological change. And in the end the skills of the bottom half of the population affect the wages of the top half. If the bottom half can't effectively staff the processes that have to be operated, the management and professional jobs that go with these processes will disappear.
13. Which of the following applies to the human resource management of American companies?
A．They hire people with the least possible money regardless of their skills. B．They see skill gaining as their employees' own business. C．They prefer to hire self-trained workers.
D．They only hire skilled workers because of keen employment competition.
14. What is the position of the head of human-resource management in an American firm?
A. He is one of the most important executives in the firm.
B. His post is likely to disappear when new technologies are introduced. C. He has no say in making important decisions in the firm. D. He is directly under the chief financial exective.
15. The money most American firms put in training mainly goes to . A. technological and managerial staff
B. workers who can operate new equipment C. workers who lack basic background skills D. top executives
16. According to the passage, the decisive factor in maintaining a firm\advantage is .
A. the introduction of new technologies B. the improvement of workers\
C. the rational composition of professional and managerial employees D. the attachment of importance to the bottom half of the employees 17. What is the main idea of the passage?
A. American firms are different from Japanese and German firms in human-resource management.
B. Extensive retraining is indispensable to effective human-resource management. C. The human-resource management strategies of American firms affect their competitive capacity.
D. The head of human-resource management must be in the central position in a firm\
TEXT E
Well, no gain without pain, they say. But what about pain without gain?
Everywhere you go in America, you hear tales of corporate revival. What is harder to establish is whether the productivity revolution that businessmen assume they are presiding over is for real.
The official statistics are mildly discouraging. They show that, if you lump manufacturing and services together, productivity has grown on average by 1.2% since 1987. That is somewhat faster than the average during the previous decade. And since 1991, productivity has increased by about 2% a year, which is more than twice the 1978-1987 average. The trouble is that part of the recent acceleration is due to the usual rebound that occurs at this point in a business cycle, and so is not conclusive evidence of a revival in the underlying trend. There is, as Robert Rubin, the treasury secretary, says, a \
leap in productivity and the picture reflected by the stastistics.
Some of this can be easily explained. New ways of organizing the workplace -- all that reengineering and downsizing -- are only one contribution to the overall productivity of an economy, which is driven by many other factors such as joint
investment in equipment and machinery, new technology, and investment in education and training. Moreover, most of the changes that companies make are intended to keep them profitable, and this need not always mean increasing productivity: switching to new markets or improving quality can matter just as much.
Two other explanatory are more speculative. First, some of the business
restructuring of recent years may have been ineptly done. Second, even if it was well done, it may have spread much