In this section there are several reading passages
followed by a total of twenty multiple-choice questions. Rend the passages
carefully and then mark your answers on your coloured answer
sheet. TEXT A
Historical developments of the past
half century and the invention of modem telecommunication and transportation
technologies have created a world economy. Effectively the American economy has
died and been replaced by a world economy. In the future there
is no such thing as being an American manager. Even someone who spends an entire
management career in Kansas City is in international management. He or she will
compete with foreign firms, buy from foreign firms, sell to foreign films, or
acquire financing from foreign banks. The globalization of the
world’s capital markets that has occurred in the past 10 years will be
replicated right across the economy in the next decade. An international
perspective has become central to management. Without it managers are operating
in ignorance and cannot understand what is happening to them and their
firms. Partly because of globalization and partly because of
demography, the work forces of the next century are going to be very different
from those of the last century. Most firms will be employing more foreign
nationals. More likely than not, you and your boss will not be of the same
nationality. Demography and changing social mores mean that white males will
become a smaller fraction of the work force as women and minorities grow in
importance. All of these factors will require changes in the traditional methods
of managing the work force. In addition, the need to produce
goods and services at quality levels previously thought impossible to obtain in
mass production and the spreading use of participatory management techniques
will require a work force with much higher levels of education and skills.
Production workers must be able to do statistical quality control; production
workers must be able to do just in-time inventories. Managers are increasingly
shifting from a "don’t think, do what you are told" to a "think, I am not going
to tell you what to do" style of management. This shift is
occurring not because today’s managers are more enlightened than yesterday’s
managers but because the evidence is rapidly mounting that the second style of
management is more productive than the first style of management. But this means
that problems of training and motivating the work force both become more central
and require different modes of behavior. In the world of
tomorrow managers cannot be technologically illiterate regardless of their
functional tasks within the firm. They don’t have to be scientists or engineers
inventing new technologies, but they have to be managers who understand when to
bet and when not to bet on new technologies. If they don’t understand what is
going on and technology effectively becomes a black box, they will fail to make
the changes that those who do understand what is going on inside the black box
make. They will be losers, not winners. Today’s CEOs are those
who solved the central problems facing their companies 20 years ago. Tomorrow’s
CEOs will be those who solve central problems facing their companies today.
Sloan hopes to produce a generation of managers who will be solving today’s and
tomorrow’s problems and because they are successful in doing so they will become
tomorrow’s captains of business.
The author suggests that a manager should hold a(n) ______ view on management.
