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"What’s the difference between God and Larry Ellison" asks an old software industry joke. Answer: God doesn’t think he’s Larry Ellison. The boss of Oracle is hardly alone among corporate chiefs in having a reputation for being rather keen on himself. Indeed, until the bubble burst and the public turned nasty at the start of the decade, the cult of the celebrity chief executive seemed to demand bossly narcissism, as evidence that a firm was being led by an all-conquering hero. Narcissus in Greek myth met a nasty end, of course. And in recent years, boss-worship has come to be seen as bad for business. In his management besteller, Good to Great, Jim Collins argued that the truly successful bosses were not the self-proclaimed stars who adorn the covers of Forbes and Fortune, but instead self-effacing, thoughtful, monkish sorts who lead by inspiring example. A statistical answer may be at hand. For the first time, a new study, "It’s All About Me", to be presented next week at the annual gathering of the American Academy of Management, offers a systematic, empirical analysis of what effect narcissistic bosses have on the firms they run. The authors, Arijit Chatterjee and Donald Hambriek, of Pennsylvania State University, examined narcissism in the upper echelons of 105 firms in the computer, and software industries. To do this, they had to solve a practical problem: studies of narcissism have hitherto relied on surveying individuals personally, something for which few chief executives are likely to have time or inclination. So the authors devised an index of narcissism using six publicly available indicators obtainable without the co-operation of the boss. These are: the prominence of the boss’s photo in the annual report; his prominence in company press releases; the length of his "Who’s Who" entry; the frequency of his use of the first person singular in interviews; and the ratios of his cash and non-cash compensation to those of the firm’s second-highest paid executive. Narcissism naturally drives people to seek positions of power and influence, and because great self-esteem helps your professional advance, say the authors, chief executives will tend on average to be more narcissistic than the general population. How does that affect a firm Messrs Chatterjee and Hambrick found that highly narcissistic bosses tended to make bigger changes in the use of important resources, such as research and development, or in spending and leverage; they carried out more and bigger mergers and acquisitions; and their results were both more extreme (more big wins or big losses) and more volatile than those of firms run by their humbler peers. For shareholders, that could be good or bad. The best title for the text may be ______.
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To Journalists, three of anything makes a trend. So after three school shootings in six days, speculation about an epidemic of violence in American classrooms was inevitable, and wrong. Violence in schools has fallen by half since the mid-1990s; children are more than 100 times more likely to be murdered outside the school walls than within them. On September 27th a 53-year-old petty criminal, Duane Morrison, walked into a school in Bailey, Colorado, with two guns. He took six girls hostage, molested some of them, and killed one before committing suicide as police stormed the room. And on September 29th a boy brought two guns into his school in Cazenovia, Wisconsin. Prosecutors say that 15-year-old Eric Hainstock may have planned to kill several people. But staff acted quickly when they saw him with a shotgun, calling the police and putting the school into "lock-down". The head teacher, who confronted him in a corridor, was the only one killed. October 2nd a 32-year-old milk-truck driver, Charles Roberts, entered a one-room Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. He lined the girls up, tied their feet and, after an hour, shot them, killing at least five. He killed himself as police broke into the classroom. What to make of such horrors Some experts see the Colorado and Pennsylvania cases as an extreme manifestation of a culture of violence against women. Both killers appeared to have a sexual motive, and both let all the boys in the classroom go free. But it is hard to infer from such unusual examples, and one must note that violence against women is less than half what it was in 1995. Other experts see all three cases as symptomatic of a change in the way men commit suicide. Helen Smith, a forensic psychologist, told a radio audience "men are deciding to take their lives, "and they’re not going alone anymore. They’re taking people down with them." True, but not very often. Gun-control enthusiasts think school massacres show the need for tighter restrictions. It is too easy, they say, for criminals such as Mr. Morrison and juveniles such as Mr. Hainstock to obtain guns. Gun enthusiasts draw the opposite conclusion: that if more teachers carried concealed handguns, they could shoot potential child-killers before they kill. George Bush has now called for a conference on school violence. Will it unearth anything new, or valuable After the Columbine massacre in 1999, the FBI produced a report on school shooters. It concluded that it was impossible to draw up a useful profile of a potential shooter because "a great many adolescents who will never commit violent acts will show some of the behaviours on any checklist of warning signs.\ According to the passage, an epidemic of violence in American classrooms was inevitable in that ______.
The enlightenment needs rescuing, or so thinks Jonathan Israel, the pre-eminent historian of 17th-century Holland. In 2001 he published Radical Enlightenment. He now offers a second Volume with a third to come. (46) The three volumes will be the first comprehensive history of the Enlightenment for decades--and Mr. Israel’s groundbreaking interpretation looks set to establish itself as the one to beat.The period was once thought of as a glorious chapter in the history of mankind, a time when the forces of light (science, progress and tolerance) triumphed over the forces of darkness (superstition and prejudice). Today, the Enlightenment tends to be dismissed. (47)Post-modernists attack it for being biased, self-deceived and ultimately responsible for the worst in Western civilization. Post-colonialists accuse it of being Eurocentric, an apology for imperialism. Nationalist historians reject the idea of a coherent universal movement, preferring to talk about the English, French, even Icelandic Enlightenments.Mr. Israel has set himself the task oil repelling these critics and re-establishing the period as the defining episode in the liberation of man. His arguments are convincing. He contends that there were two Enlightenments, one Radical, and the other Moderate. The Radicals, inspired by Spinoza, were materialists, atheists and equalities. (48)The Moderates, who followed Locke and Newton, were conservative and more at home than the Radicals in the hierarchical and deeply religious world of 18th-century Europe. They advocated only a partial Enlightenment.In Mr. Israel’s opinion, the Radicals offered the only true Enlightenment, giving us democracy, equality, individual liberty and secular morality. The Moderates, on the other hand, have left an ambiguous and, in the end, harmful legacy. While promoting tolerance, they remained uncomfortable with the idea of universal equality. While advancing reason, they failed to divorce morality from religion and tried to rationalize faith. (49) Mr. Israel argues that for as long as historians treat the two wings of the Enlightenment as a single movement, they have misunderstood the phenomenon. Worst still, they supply today’s critics with the evidence they need to blacken the movement.This re-evaluation makes for an unfamiliar picture of the Enlightenment and its torchbearers. According to Mr. Israel, "enlightened values" were born not in England but in Holland, and he re-casts men such as Locke, Voltaire and even Hume, once thought of as champions of the party of light, as apologists for colonialism and enemies of equality. In addition, Mr. Israel would like his book to be studied beyond academia. In an ideal world everyone would be reading it. (50) His stupendous research and grasp of the sources are such that few will contest his core argument that the Enlightenment was a coherent, Europe-wide phenomenon, intellectual in origin, which represented a profound shift in the way that men thought about themselves and the world around them. 50
2007年1月1日，甲建筑公司与某企业签订承建一栋厂房的合同，合同规定2009年3月31日完工；合同总金额为3600万元，预计合同总成本为1500万元。2007年12月31日，累计发生成本450万元，预计完成合同还需发生成本1050万元。2008年12月31日，累计发生成本1200万元，预计完成合同还需发生成本300万元。2009年3月31日工程完工，累计发生成本1450万元。假定甲建筑公司采用累计发生成本占预计合同总成本的比例确定完工进度，采用完工百分比法确认合同收入，不考虑其他因素。甲建筑公司2008年度对该合同应确认的合同收入为( )万元。
[A] Energising money[B] The dilemma of smart-card systems[C] The future of money[D] Sending money home[E] Flashing the plastic[F] A cash call[G] How to pay in TokyoSmart cards and mobile phones are quickly emerging as ways to pay with electronic cash.41. ______.Nowadays, some of the hottest nightclubs have a new trick for checking the identity of their VIP guests: they send an entry pass in the form of a super bar code to their mobile phones. Mobile phones are becoming an increasingly popular way to make all sorts of payments. In America fans of the Atlanta Hawks have been testing specially adapted Nokia handsets linked to their Visa cards to enter their local stadium and to buy refreshments. It reckons worldwide payments using mobile phones will climb from just $ 3.2 billion in 2003 to more than $ 37 billion by 2008.42. ______.More banking services are also being offered on mobiles. On February 12th, 19 telephone operators with networks in over 100 countries said that people would be able to use their handsets to send money abroad. MasterCard will operate the system in which remittances will be sent as text messages. Sir John Bond, formerly chairman of the HSBC banking group and now chairman of Vodafone, has 10rig been convinced that payments and mobiles would somehow converge. "Mobile phones have the ability to make a dramatic change to village life in Africa," he says.43. ______.The various "contactless" payment systems rely on a technology called "near-field communication" (NFC). But mobile phones can be much smarter. They can be de-activated remotely; they have a screen which can show information, like a credit balance and product information; they have a keyboard to enter information and they can communicate. This means they can also be used to auth0rise larger payments by entering PIN codes directly on the handset or topped up with stored credit from an online bank account without having to go to an ATM.44. ______.To see the potential of mobile-phone money, start in Japan. Most Japanese have at least one credit card, but they tend to stay in their owners’ pockets. Housewives routinely peel off crisp YI0 000 ($ 82) notes to pay for their shopping. Utility bills and other invoices are dutifully taken to the bank and paid in cash, or more likely these days at the local convenience store. Yet despite the popularity of cash, the mobile phone is starting to change even Japan’s traditional habits."However, many smart-card systems do not work with each other, but that will change on March 18th when 26 railways and 75 bus companies in the greater Tokyo area will begin sharing a new stored-value system, called Pasmo. This too will be available both as a plastic smart-card or built into mobile phones.45. ______.Unlike the Japanese, Americans prefer to use plastic for their purchases. Cards account for more than half of all transactions, up from 29% a decade ago, according to Nilson Report, a trade publication. More than 1.5 billion credit cards are stuffed into Americans’ wallets. The average household has more than ten. Banks and credit-card firms hope to convert more cash and cheque payments to plastic with new smart cards. Some versions are already very successful. Many Americans use EasyPass, in which drivers pay for highway tolls wirelessly.A decade ago some observers predicted that internet banking would render retail banking from high-street branches obsolete. But JPMorgan, Bank of America and others are adamant that people are nowadays using bank branches more than ever. Even if the phone and the smart card replace cash, who gets to collect the fees remains open to contention. 45
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