Учебно-методический комплекс по дисциплине иностранный язык делового общения
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Section 5. Translation. Translate the text into Russian. Rigidly Structured Hierarchical Organization Almost every organization is structured in some hierarchical way. However, organizations differ in terms of the rigidity of that structure. The more flexible organization is characterized by increased delegation of authority to lower levels of the organization, flexible communication paths, and decentralized decision-making. The more rigid organization demands that its staff work through channels, refer most decisions to higher levels in the hierarchy, restrict autonomy and restrict communication. As a result of this rigidness, decision-making (and action) take a great deal of time. A rigid hierarchical structure restricts individuals, but also teams. Teams below the "decision-making level" may work very effectively internally, but when they are faced with obtaining approvals through "channels", their usefulness is curtailed. First, the process is too slow to sustain team commitment. Second, when teams realize that they have no authority to complete their tasks, they back-off, knowing that their work is not very meaningful. Thirdly, rigid organizations, by restricting communication, can limit a team's effectiveness by reducing access to information that the team needs to succeed. We won't go so far as to say that teams cannot succeed in rigidly structured organizations, but we need to remember that teams are affected by the larger context in which they must operate. If you are considering a more team-based approach, and team-building activities, you need to consider whether the larger management system will render your team-building investment useless. Test 2. Section 1. Listening. Task 1. Listen to an interview with a famous economist. Use the information from the interview to complete the gaps in the sentences below. Use NOT MORE THAN THREE words. Tape script. Interviewer: What advice would you give to a chief strategy officer today? Economist: I would start with, “What were you doing in strategic planning before the financial crisis hit?” and “How well do you think it worked?” As I said, what’s changed is largely our perception of uncertainty. Most CSOs would reply, “Well, we had a pretty standard strategic-planning process. We did some industry analysis and market research and tried to do some long-term discounted cash flow on our opportunities. It was very financially driven and we felt it worked pretty well.” In the end, though, you would probably find that they were treating a lot of level three and four issues like level one and two issues and relying on the wrong tool kit. Interviewer: Are you going to teach them scenario planning? Yes, I would start with scenario-planning techniques—even though scenario planning has been around for decades, it’s still a niche tool in strategic-development and -planning efforts. The CSO and I would also talk about using analogies better. The basis of the analogy doesn’t have to be the exact thing you’ve done in the past, but it should be a similar space, geography, or basic business model that you can learn from. Many people today are asking what might be analogous situations, such as the Great Depression or the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and I really understand why they are focused on them: it’s a classic example of using level four reasoning when it’s hard to use any other. Finally, this is a good time to rethink your planning process. Have you been doing strategic planning on an annual basis as a paper-pushing exercise? That will have to change. In the months to come, you’re going to have to make decisions very quickly on fundamental opportunities that may drive your earnings performance for the next decade or more, and you’ve got to be prepared to make these decisions in real time. That requires a continuous focus on market and competitive intelligence and far more frequent conversations—daily, if necessary—among the top team about the current situation. Senior executives already may be in closer contact because of the emergency they face, but that doesn’t necessarily imply that they have the raw material and the structure to work through strategic decisions systematically. These daily conversations have to move beyond getting through that day’s crisis to more fundamental strategic issues as well, because the decisions made today may open up or close off opportunities for months and years to come. 1. A standard strategic-planning process includes … analysis and … research. 2. The speaker emphasizes the importance of … planning in the process of strategy development. 3. The situations often used for comparison in the process of scenario planning are the Great Depression of 1929 -1932 and the … of 1997. 4. The speaker suggests that senior executives should have frequent … about the current situation and company strategy. Section 2. Reading Task 1. Read the text. Mark the statements below the text as TRUE or FALSE. What is a Team? Mark Sanborn, an expert on teams, outlines a few characteristics of a team. First, Sanborn defines a team as being composed of a highly communicative group of people. Poor communication means no team. Second, Sanborn suggests that a team must have members with different backgrounds, skills and abilities, so that the team can pool these things to be effective. In other words a team with no diversity in it will be unlikely to work in an innovative fashion. Third, and perhaps most importantly, a team must have a shared sense of mission. Whether we are talking about a temporary work improvement team, or a branch, all members must share the sense of mission. Fourth, a team must have clearly identified goals. A team must be able to gauge its success, and know what it is trying to accomplish. How Does a Team Differ from a Work Group? Sanborn suggests the following differences: On Competition: Work groups tend to compete inwardly, with members competing against each other for favour, recognition, etc. High performing teams compete, but with those outside the organization. On Focus: Work groups tend to be task-oriented and characterized by members who follow their own personal agendas. High-performing teams are goal-oriented. Members work towards the achievement of the team goals and agenda, rather than pulling in different directions. On Style: Work groups tend to be autocratic and hierarchical in nature. Teams, on the other hand, tend to be participative and self-steering within the goals of the team. On Tolerance: Work groups tend to tolerate each other, while teams tend to enjoy each other. Differences in teams are welcome and encouraged, while in work groups, differences and disagreements are suppressed. On Risk: Work groups tend to avoid risk and maintain the status quo. High performing teams tend to accept risk. 1. Good communication in a team is very important. 2. Team members compete with each other. 3. Work group members accept less risk than team members. Task 2. Read the text. Find the information in the text which is necessary to answer the questions below. Autocratic Leadership/Management Some of the most bizarre things I have seen in organizations occur when autocratic managers or executives decide to force people to work in participatory teams. As often as not this occurs when the executive latches on to an idea or fad without a full understanding of its implications at all levels of the organization. In this situation, teamwork becomes something that is done TO people BY a manager or executive. While it is possible to legislate the structures of teams, and command their existence, it is not possible to order a team to work efficiently or harmoniously. In fact the use of power to create teams sows the seeds of destruction of those very teams. Not only does this not work but it can have disastrous consequences. What happens when an autocratic approach is used with respect to teamwork? Team members sense the contradiction between participatory teams and autocratic management. They don't believe the rhetoric of the leader regarding his or her commitment to teamwork. There is a tendency for autocratic leaders to lack the skills needed to lead a team, so that teams end up directionless and confused. Some autocratic managers try so hard to "not be autocratic", that they refuse to give any hints as to what the team is expected to accomplish. Other autocratic managers supply such rigid constraints for teams, that there is no point having a team at all. Autocratic leaders tend to use elastic authority. While they make a game attempt to "let go" of at least some power, they will quickly pull the elastic band to remove any autonomy that a team has. This elastic banding confuses teams since they can never tell what the bounds of their authority are, or, they realize it's all a sham, and they have no autonomy or power anyway, just the appearance of it. When we have an autocratic executive in an organization, this makes effective teamwork at lower levels difficult, even though that work unit may have a more participatory leader. The work unit team may work as a team until they notice that someone "upstairs" is ignoring them, or rendering their ideas and work irrelevant or useless. What results would be the loss of credibility for management, increased frustration on the part of team members and difficulty in sustaining any team efforts difficulty in achieving even simple team goals. So, it might be better to forgo team development efforts where an autocratic manager is involved. 1. Why do team members do not believe that autocratic managers are committed to teamwork? 2. What mistakes do autocratic mangers make if they do not have leadership skills? 3. Why is elastic authority dangerous for a team? 4. How do work unit teams react to autocratic leadership? Task 3. Analytical reading/ rendering. Read the text. Render it in Russian. Analyze the issues discussed in the text and the arguments proposed by the author. Make a conclusion. Left out of the loop By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent League tables have spread across higher education like fast-growing ivy. But there is something missing from these global rankings of institutions. An entire continent. You can look through the lists of the top 100 universities and not find a single African institution. There are US and European universities, plus a growing number from countries such as China and South Korea. But Africa is conspicuous by its absence. Globalization in universities is often wrapped in a feel-good language of international partnerships and money-spinning global networks. It is seductively easy to get lost in the achievements of these illustrious, prize-laden institutions. But what if global competition concentrates all the power and prestige in an increasingly narrow group of mega universities? What happens if it leaves a whole continent out of the loop? Rising numbers There are 4.5 million students in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Unesco Institute for Statistics. In terms of higher education league tables, these students are more or less invisible. But this number represents a huge increase. In 1970 there were only 200,000 students in this vast geographical region. The proportion of young people going to university has climbed from 1% to 6%. Within this average there are wide differences. In Malawi, only about 0.5% of young people will enter higher education, in Cameroon the level is 9%. There are also different trends for studying overseas. In sub-Saharan Africa, the two most likely destinations are South Africa and France. North African students also go to France in large numbers. Also running against all the international trends is that in Africa women are less likely to go to university than men, by a considerable margin. In Chad, a country bigger than the UK, France and Germany put together, only 0.6% of women enrol in higher education. Even the rise in student numbers is double edged. A report from the World Bank says the growth in enrolments is outstripping the financial capacity of universities to provide staff and facilities. It adds to the pressure on an underfunded system. Funding switch Thandika Mkandawire, professor of African Development at the London School of Economics, says African universities are still trying to recover from a loss of funding that began in the 1980s, when resources were switched to primary education. In the post-colonial eras of the 1960s and 1970s universities grew across Africa, he says. But that came to an abrupt halt. And while other parts of the world invested in higher education, African universities missed out on an entire cycle of growth."Once you destroy a university, it's very difficult to rebuild," he says. It might be difficult to play catch-up after so many "lost years", but Professor Mkandawire says that a new middle class in Africa is putting the demand for better universities back on the political agenda. There is also a growing recognition that universities are part of building a modern economy."Universities are places of upward social mobility," says Jo Beall, deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town in South Africa, the only African university to appear in the global top 200.They are places where individuals and communities try to improve their life chances. "There is a huge appetite for learning," she says. But there is a "heartbreaking" uphill struggle for students wanting to go to university in some poorer parts of Africa. Lack of resources She describes visiting a central African university where the approach roads were lined by people operating photocopying machines, run on car batteries, copying 1950s text books for students. Students might have to travel three or four hours each day to get to university. Lecture halls are so overfilled that there are security guards and gates to control the rush. Professor Beall, who is joining the British Council this summer, says she remains optimistic about the future of African higher education. There are universities working to become high-performing research institutions. But there will need to be changes - including greater recognition of the importance of academics and partnerships with international universities. The weakness of Africa's universities is not only about a lack of money, says Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College in the US. He says there have been "multiple dysfunctions", not least of which have been political instability and corruption. African universities have missed out on many of the trends in recent decades which have boosted universities in other parts of the world. Missing out The lucrative market in overseas students has not brought students to Africa. Instead there has been a "brain drain" with Africa's scholars moving abroad. US and UK universities have invested in branch campuses in Asia and the Middle East rather than Africa. And Africa, with extremes of wealth and poverty, has lacked the type of expanding middle class that has helped to drive the growth in higher education in countries such as China and India. As well as financial investment, he says there need to be cultural changes, such as protecting academic freedom, to create the conditions in which universities can develop. But there is no escaping the scale of the financial gap. Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has set up a faith foundation which works with a network of universities around the world, including in the US and Africa. He points out that Yale is not just much wealthier than a university such as Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone - Yale's endowment is several times greater than the GDP of the entire country. Ruth Turner, chief executive of the foundation, says the scale of the gap is not just about economics - it needs to be considered in moral terms. "We all live in a globalised world. But we lack a vocabulary for an ethical way of looking at it. How do we ask is it a right thing to do?" |
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