题目内容
Yamato, the ancient name of Japan, essentially means "big harmony". To achieve such balance, Japanese society has refined a plethora of cultural traits: humility, loyalty, respect and consensus. In the field of business, however, this often results in a lack of leaders who are willing to stand out from the crowd, promote themselves and act decisively. "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down" is a common Japanese refrain; "the hawk with talent hides his talons" is another. Whereas American and European bosses like to appear on the covers of global business magazines, their Japanese counterparts are comfortable in their obscurity. Business in Japan is generally run as a group endeavour. Such democratic virtues served the country well in the post-war period. But today they hold too many Japanese firms back. Japan boasts some of the best companies in the world: Toyota, Canon and Nintendo are the envy of their industries. But they operate on a global scale and have tentatively embraced some unconsensual American methods. In much of the Japanese economy — especially its huge domestic services sector — managers are in something of a funk. Firms do not give promising youngsters responsibility early on, but allocate jobs by age. Unnecessarily long working hours are the norm, sapping productivity. And there are few women and foreigners in senior roles, which narrows the talent pool. So how pleasing it is to be able to report the success of a business leader who breaks the mould. Young, dynamic and clever, he is not afraid to push aside old, conservative know-nothings. He disdains corporate politics and promotes people based on merit rather than seniority. He can make mistakes (he got involved in a questionable takeover-defence scheme), but he is wildly popular with salarymen: his every move is chronicled weekly. In June he was given the top job at one of Japan’s biggest firms. Kosaku Shima of Hatsushiba Goyo Holdings has only one serious shortcoming: he is not a real person, but a manga, or cartoon, character. For many critics of Japan, that says it all: Mr Shima could exist only in fiction. In fact there is room for the country’s managers and even its politicians to learn from him. Most of the lessons are for Japan’s managers. At present, bosses rarely say what they think because it might disrupt the harmony, or be seen as immodest. Their subordinates are reluctant to challenge ideas because that would cause the boss to lose face. So daft strategies fester rather than getting culled quickly. There is little risk-taking or initiative. The crux of the problem is Japanese companies’ culture of consensus-based decision-making. Called nemawashi (literally, "going around the roots") or ringi (bottom-up decisions), it helped to establish an egalitarian workplace. In the 1980s Western management consultants cooed that it was the source of Japan’s competitive strength. Sometimes it can be, as in periods of crisis when an entire firm needs to accept new marching orders quickly. But most of the time it strangles a company. Relying on consensus means that decisions are made slowly, if at all. With so many people to please, the result is often a mediocre morass of compromises. And with so many hands involved, there is no accountability; no reason for individuals to excel; no sanction against bad decisions so that there are fewer of them in future. Of course, sometimes the consensus of the Japanese workplace is just a veneer and decisions are still made from on high. But then why persist with the pretence, particularly if it drains a company’s efficiency If the onus is on Japanese managers to change, then it is fair to say that the government does not make it very easy for them to do so. The biggest problems lie in the labour market. Change jobs in mid-career and you risk losing your pension. The rigid seniority system also discriminates against women: if they get off the ladder to have children, they cannot get back on. And although there is no law against closing down loss-making businesses, most bosses and politicians act as if there were. If Japan’s leaders decide their country needs more people like Mr Shima — and it surely does — then they might reflect on all the ways that they prevent him from becoming a reality. According to the third paragraph, the author would agree that
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Yamato, the ancient name of Japan, essentially means "big harmony". To achieve such balance, Japanese society has refined a plethora of cultural traits: humility, loyalty, respect and consensus. In the field of business, however, this often results in a lack of leaders who are willing to stand out from the crowd, promote themselves and act decisively. "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down" is a common Japanese refrain; "the hawk with talent hides his talons" is another. Whereas American and European bosses like to appear on the covers of global business magazines, their Japanese counterparts are comfortable in their obscurity. Business in Japan is generally run as a group endeavour. Such democratic virtues served the country well in the post-war period. But today they hold too many Japanese firms back. Japan boasts some of the best companies in the world: Toyota, Canon and Nintendo are the envy of their industries. But they operate on a global scale and have tentatively embraced some unconsensual American methods. In much of the Japanese economy — especially its huge domestic services sector — managers are in something of a funk. Firms do not give promising youngsters responsibility early on, but allocate jobs by age. Unnecessarily long working hours are the norm, sapping productivity. And there are few women and foreigners in senior roles, which narrows the talent pool. So how pleasing it is to be able to report the success of a business leader who breaks the mould. Young, dynamic and clever, he is not afraid to push aside old, conservative know-nothings. He disdains corporate politics and promotes people based on merit rather than seniority. He can make mistakes (he got involved in a questionable takeover-defence scheme), but he is wildly popular with salarymen: his every move is chronicled weekly. In June he was given the top job at one of Japan’s biggest firms. Kosaku Shima of Hatsushiba Goyo Holdings has only one serious shortcoming: he is not a real person, but a manga, or cartoon, character. For many critics of Japan, that says it all: Mr Shima could exist only in fiction. In fact there is room for the country’s managers and even its politicians to learn from him. Most of the lessons are for Japan’s managers. At present, bosses rarely say what they think because it might disrupt the harmony, or be seen as immodest. Their subordinates are reluctant to challenge ideas because that would cause the boss to lose face. So daft strategies fester rather than getting culled quickly. There is little risk-taking or initiative. The crux of the problem is Japanese companies’ culture of consensus-based decision-making. Called nemawashi (literally, "going around the roots") or ringi (bottom-up decisions), it helped to establish an egalitarian workplace. In the 1980s Western management consultants cooed that it was the source of Japan’s competitive strength. Sometimes it can be, as in periods of crisis when an entire firm needs to accept new marching orders quickly. But most of the time it strangles a company. Relying on consensus means that decisions are made slowly, if at all. With so many people to please, the result is often a mediocre morass of compromises. And with so many hands involved, there is no accountability; no reason for individuals to excel; no sanction against bad decisions so that there are fewer of them in future. Of course, sometimes the consensus of the Japanese workplace is just a veneer and decisions are still made from on high. But then why persist with the pretence, particularly if it drains a company’s efficiency If the onus is on Japanese managers to change, then it is fair to say that the government does not make it very easy for them to do so. The biggest problems lie in the labour market. Change jobs in mid-career and you risk losing your pension. The rigid seniority system also discriminates against women: if they get off the ladder to have children, they cannot get back on. And although there is no law against closing down loss-making businesses, most bosses and politicians act as if there were. If Japan’s leaders decide their country needs more people like Mr Shima — and it surely does — then they might reflect on all the ways that they prevent him from becoming a reality. What is true of the Japanese enterprises according to the passage
Yamato, the ancient name of Japan, essentially means "big harmony". To achieve such balance, Japanese society has refined a plethora of cultural traits: humility, loyalty, respect and consensus. In the field of business, however, this often results in a lack of leaders who are willing to stand out from the crowd, promote themselves and act decisively. "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down" is a common Japanese refrain; "the hawk with talent hides his talons" is another. Whereas American and European bosses like to appear on the covers of global business magazines, their Japanese counterparts are comfortable in their obscurity. Business in Japan is generally run as a group endeavour. Such democratic virtues served the country well in the post-war period. But today they hold too many Japanese firms back. Japan boasts some of the best companies in the world: Toyota, Canon and Nintendo are the envy of their industries. But they operate on a global scale and have tentatively embraced some unconsensual American methods. In much of the Japanese economy — especially its huge domestic services sector — managers are in something of a funk. Firms do not give promising youngsters responsibility early on, but allocate jobs by age. Unnecessarily long working hours are the norm, sapping productivity. And there are few women and foreigners in senior roles, which narrows the talent pool. So how pleasing it is to be able to report the success of a business leader who breaks the mould. Young, dynamic and clever, he is not afraid to push aside old, conservative know-nothings. He disdains corporate politics and promotes people based on merit rather than seniority. He can make mistakes (he got involved in a questionable takeover-defence scheme), but he is wildly popular with salarymen: his every move is chronicled weekly. In June he was given the top job at one of Japan’s biggest firms. Kosaku Shima of Hatsushiba Goyo Holdings has only one serious shortcoming: he is not a real person, but a manga, or cartoon, character. For many critics of Japan, that says it all: Mr Shima could exist only in fiction. In fact there is room for the country’s managers and even its politicians to learn from him. Most of the lessons are for Japan’s managers. At present, bosses rarely say what they think because it might disrupt the harmony, or be seen as immodest. Their subordinates are reluctant to challenge ideas because that would cause the boss to lose face. So daft strategies fester rather than getting culled quickly. There is little risk-taking or initiative. The crux of the problem is Japanese companies’ culture of consensus-based decision-making. Called nemawashi (literally, "going around the roots") or ringi (bottom-up decisions), it helped to establish an egalitarian workplace. In the 1980s Western management consultants cooed that it was the source of Japan’s competitive strength. Sometimes it can be, as in periods of crisis when an entire firm needs to accept new marching orders quickly. But most of the time it strangles a company. Relying on consensus means that decisions are made slowly, if at all. With so many people to please, the result is often a mediocre morass of compromises. And with so many hands involved, there is no accountability; no reason for individuals to excel; no sanction against bad decisions so that there are fewer of them in future. Of course, sometimes the consensus of the Japanese workplace is just a veneer and decisions are still made from on high. But then why persist with the pretence, particularly if it drains a company’s efficiency If the onus is on Japanese managers to change, then it is fair to say that the government does not make it very easy for them to do so. The biggest problems lie in the labour market. Change jobs in mid-career and you risk losing your pension. The rigid seniority system also discriminates against women: if they get off the ladder to have children, they cannot get back on. And although there is no law against closing down loss-making businesses, most bosses and politicians act as if there were. If Japan’s leaders decide their country needs more people like Mr Shima — and it surely does — then they might reflect on all the ways that they prevent him from becoming a reality. Consensus in companies’ decision-making will lead to
One of the unresolved — and rather bitter — disputes in evolutionary biology is between the creeps and the jerks. The creeps (so dubbed by the jerks) think that evolutionary change is gradual. The jerks (so dubbed by the creeps) think it happens in sudden jumps that are separated by long periods of stasis. Probably, both are lame. Work done a couple of years ago by Mark Pagel of Reading University, in England, suggests that about a fifth of evolutionary change happens jerkily at around the time new species form. The rest creeps in gradually over the millennia. Species, however, are not the only things that evolve. Languages do too. And in the current edition of Science, Dr.Pagel and his colleagues publish evidence that they do so in a way which looks intriguingly similar to what happens in species. There was already some historical evidence for this. The English of Geoffrey Chaucer (born in the 14th century), for example, is incomprehensible to modem laymen, whereas that of William Shakespeare (born in the 16th) is not only comprehensible but held by some to be a model. Dr.Pagel, however, wanted to examine the question systematically and to include languages with no literary history in his analysis. To do so he looked at three well-studied parts of the linguistic family tree: the Banut languages of Africa, the Indo-European group from Eurasia and the Austronesians of the Pacific. In all three cases it is pretty clear how the branches connect up, even if it is not always obvious when particular splits occurred. Dr.Pagel did not, however, need to know that. He only needed to know the shape of the tree. That was because his hypothesis was that if linguistic evolution is jerky, the jerks will happen at the points where languages split — the equivalent of species splits in biological evolution. The way to test that is to track back along the branches leading from each existing language, and count the number of splits on each path before you get to the common ancestor of all. His hypothesis turned out to be correct. Languages are formed not, it seems, by a gradual drifting apart of two groups who no longer talk to each other, but by violent rupture. Around a third of the vocabulary differences between modem Bantu speakers arose this way, around a fifth of the differences between speakers of Indo-European languages, and around a tenth of the Austronesians. That compares with around a fifth for biological species. All this suggests that the formation of both languages and species is an active process. For species, adaptations to novel environments and the need to avoid crossbreeding with those on the other side of the split are both plausible hypotheses. For languages, the explanation may be a cultural rather than biological need to distinguish populations. As Noah Webster, the compiler of the first American dictionary put it: "as an independent nation, our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government." In other words, if you don’t speak proper, you aren’t one of us. What do we learn about Dr.Pagel and his study, according to the passage
Bottled water doesn’t get much greener than Belu’s. The British company’s drink was the world’s first to become carbon-neutral, in 2006. Its bottles, made from corn, can be composted into soil. Belu’s profits, meanwhile, are poured into projects that deliver clean water to parts of the world that lack access to it. And amid the thirst for all things sustainable, this has meant Belu — pronounced Blue — has gone down rather well. Sales of just $13,000 in 2004, its launch year, rose to close to $4 million in 2008. Defying the downturn, the company even managed a modest profit. But getting consumers to buy is only half the battle. All the granola credentials in the world won’t fund a promising business. To potential investors, it’s pesky things like risk and reward that still matter most. And as an ambitious nonprofit firm surviving in a ferociously competitive sector — rivals include Coca-Cola and Nestlé — Belu has been stymied more than most. "We’ve struggled to get funding, as Belu is aimed at helping the environment, not lining investors’ pockets," says Reed Paget, the Seattle native who is the company’s chief executive and founder. "That’s put a lot of strain on the company." Bereft of any experience running a business, Paget actually has a pretty remarkable record at Belu: half a million bottles of its water, each emblazoned with environmentally friendly messages, are sold monthly, and it’s now distributed in about 1,000 outlets in Britain. But Belu’s potential would be much bigger — global — if it could get funding. With Belu’s shares held by its own nonprofit, venture-capital and private-equity investors can’t expect the usual juicy reward in exchange for financial backing. Offered a savings-account- like return or the chance to buy shares whose dividends accrue to organizations working in the clean-water field, VCs have balked. "I probably would have had more success robbing banks than getting funding from those sources," Paget says. Environmental charities have been no more forthcoming. Investing in firms like Belu is "not what we’re here to do," says a Greenpeace spokesman. "Our role is campaigning." That’s left the firm reliant on a limited bunch of angel investors — from Body Shop cofounder Gordon Roddick to Big Issue Invest, experts in backing social enterprises — willing to stomach little or no return in exchange for long-term benefits to the environment. With $2.5 million raised through 32 painstaking rounds of funding, "the business is massively undercapitalized," says Ben Goldsmith, a London-based philanthropist and VC who’s among Belu’s creditors. "And that’s a challenge." Why not go the capitalist route and use the profits that a conventionally funded expansion would bring to increase his good works Pointing to the small profit he’s made on modest means, Paget is confident Belu can grow without more serious money. But for the chance to scale up his business, "if we can get it, we would definitely love it," he says. Paget is adamant, though, that it should be on Belu’s terms, not those of a traditional investor. He says it was important "to remove the ’We must maximize profit’ from our management system." Sure, Belu needs to be able to sell for more than the cost of production, but, he says, if it came down to more profit vs. more environmental benefit, VCs may suddenly decide they don’t want to be that deep a shade of green after all. But with Belu being unwilling to accept that risk, the cost to the company may be the sustainable growth of a clearly good business. Which of the following is true of the potential investors
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