剑桥雅思14Test2雅思阅读passage3真题及翻译

剑桥雅思14Test2雅思阅读passage3真题及翻译

READING PASSAGE 3

Why companies should welcome disorder

公司为何应接受无组织性

A Organisation is big business. Whether it is of our lives - all those inboxes and calendars -or how companies are structured, a multi-billion dollar industry helps to meet this need.

We have more strategies for time management, project management and self-organisation than at any other time in human history. We are told that we ought to

organise our company, our home life, our week, our day and even our sleep, all as a means to becoming more productive. Every week, countless seminars and workshops take place around the world to tell a paying public that they ought to structure their lives in order to achieve this.

This rhetoric has also crept into the thinking of business leaders and entrepreneurs, much to the delight of self-proclaimed perfectionists with the need to get everything right. The number of business schools and graduates has massively increased over the past 50 years, essentially teaching people how to organise well.

A 保持织性是笔大生意。无论是保持生活有条理—一整理所有收件箱和日程表—一还是保持公司结构的组织性,都需要一笔很大的开支。

现在、我们拥有有史以来最多的时间管理、项目管理和自我管理的策略。我们被告知应该组织好自己的公司、家庭生活,组织好每一周、每一天,甚至还要组织好睡眠学只有这样才能变得更高效。每周都有无数个研讨会和讲习班在世界各地展开,告诉付费参加的公众要安排好自己的生活,以取得成效。

令那些自称完美主义者、力求做妤每件事的人高兴的是,这些说辞也传到了商业中和企业家的耳朵里。在过去的50年间,商学院及共毕业生的数量大幅增长,而从本质上来说,它们主要教人们如何高效地组织安排。

B Ironically, however, the number of businesses that fail has also steadily increased. Work-related stress has increased. A large proportion of workers from all demographics claim to be dissatisfied with the way their work is structured and the way they are managed.

This begs the question: what has gone wrong? Why is it that on paper the drive for organisation seems a sure shot for increasing productivity, but in reality falls well short of what is expected?

B 然而,讽刺的是,破产企业的数量也在稳步增长。工作压力越来越大。在各类人群中有很大一部分员工声称不满工作的组织方式和人员管理方式。

这就引发了问题:哪里出错了?为什么从理论上看组织性肯定可以提高生产效率,但实际上却与预期相差甚远？

C This has been a problem for a while now. Frederick Taylor was one of the forefathers of scientific management. Writing in the first half of the 20th century, he designed a number of principles to improve the efficiency of the work process, which have since become widespread in modern companies. So the approach has been around for a while.

C 这个问题已经出现一段时间了。 Frederick Taylor是提出科学管理的先驱之一。20世纪上丰叶,他制定了一些可以提高工作效率的行为准则,从那时起,这些准则便在现代公司中广泛使用。因此,这种(科学管理)方法已经存在一段时间了。

D New research suggests that this obsession with efficiency is misguided. The problem is not necessarily the management theories or strategies we use to organise our work; it's the basic assumptions we hold in approaching how we work. Here it's the assumption that order is a necessary condition for productivity. This assumption has also fostered the idea that disorder must be detrimental to organisational productivity. The result is that businesses and people spend time and money organising themselves for the sake of organising, rather than actually looking at the end goal and usefulness of such an effort.

D 新的研究表明,痴迷于高效会适得其反。问题不一定在于我们用来组织工作的管理理论或策略;而在于我们对如何处理工作问题时所持的基本设想。我们的设想是:有组织性是提高生产效率的必要条件。这一假设又衍生出一种观念,即无組织性一定不科于提高组织机构的生产效率。结果就是,企业和个人都耗费了时间和金钱为了管理而管理,而不是切实关注这一努力的最终目标及其是否有用。

E What's more, recent studies show that order actually has diminishing returns. Order does increase productivity to a certain extent, but eventually the usefulness of the process of organisation, and the benefit it yields, reduce until the point where any further increase in order reduces productivity. Some argue that in a business, if the cost of formally structuring something outweighs the benefit of doing it, then that thing ought not to be formally structured. Instead, the resources involved can be better used elsewhere.

E 此外,最近的研究表明,有组织性带来的回报实际上是递减的。它在一定程度上确实可以提高生产效率,但组织过程的有效性及共产生的效益最终都会减少,直到最后,组织性与生产效率背道而驰。有人说,在一家企业里,如果按照一定形式组织某件事的成本高于这么做所带来的好处,那么这件事就不应该这么组织。相反,其中所用的资源可以另作它用。

F In fact, research shows that, when innovating, the best approach is to create an environment devoid of structure and hierarchy and enable everyone involved to engage as one organic group. These environments can lead to new solutions that, under conventionally structured environments (filled with bottlenecks in terms of information flow, power structures, rules, and routines) would never be reached.

F 实际上,研究表明,在进行创新时,的方法是创造一个没有结构和等级之分的环境,让毎个人都能参与其中,形成一个有机的群体。这样的环境可以带来解决问题的新方法,而在有传统结构的环境中(在信息交流、权力结构、规章条例、例行程序上充满了障碍),是永远达不成的。

G In recent times companies have slowly started to embrace this disorganisation. Many of them embrace it in terms of perception ( embracing the idea of disorder, as opposed to fearing it) and in terms of process (putting mechanisms in place to reduce structure).

For example, Oticon, a large Danish manufacturer of hearing aids, used what it called a 'spaghetti' structure in order to reduce the organisation's rigid hierarchies. This involved scrapping formal job titles and giving staff huge amounts of ownership over their own time and projects. This approach proved to be highly successful initially, with clear improvements in worker productivity in all facets of the business.

In similar fashion, the former chairman of General Electric embraced disorganisation, putting forward the idea of the 'boundary less' organisation. Again, it involves breaking down the barriers between different parts of a company and encouraging virtual collaboration and flexible working. Google and a number of other tech companies have embraced (at least in part) these kinds of flexible structures, facilitated by technology and strong company values which glue people together.

G 最近,有些公司已经慢慢开始接受无组织性。其中很多公司不仅从认知上接受了官(接受无组织性这个概念,而不是害怕它,还将其应用到实际流程中(制定一些机制来减少结构)。

例如,丹麦的大型助听器制造商奥迪康使用其所谓的“意大利面条式”结构来减少死板的企业等级制度。其中包括取消形式化的职称,并给予员工更多掌控自己时间和项目的权利。事实证明,这种方法起初取得了很大成功,公司各部门员工的生产效率都有明显提高。

同样,通用电气公司的前任董事长也接受了无组织性,提出了“无边界组织”这一概念。它也包括打破公司不同部门之间的障碍,鼓励虛拟协作和弹性工作。谷歌以及一些其他科技公司也已经(至少部分地)接受了这些弹性的企业结构,再辅以科技和强大的公司价值观将员工凝聚在一起。

H A word of warning to others thinking of jumping on this bandwagon: the evidence so far suggests disorder, much like order, also seems to have diminishing utility, and can also have detrimental effects on performance if overused. Like order, disorder should be embraced only so far as it is useful. But we should not fear it - nor venerate one over the other.This research also shows that we should continually question whether or not our existing assumptions work.

H 给想要跟随这种潮流的人们一条警告:目前的证据表明,和有组织性一样,无组织性的实用性也是递减的,而且如果使用过度,也会产生不利影响。同样和有组织性一样我们应该以有用性为标准去接受无组织性。但我们不应该畏惧它—一也不应该厚此遵彼。研究还表明,我们应该不断质疑现有的设想是否正确

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