以下是小編整理的劍橋雅思14教材中,閱讀Test2Passage3原文譯文。希望能夠作為參考資料,幫助大家練習雅思閱讀喲!
公司為什麼應該歡迎混亂無序狀態
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 規劃歸序是樁大生意。無論是在我們的生活中——所有那些信箱與日曆——還是公司如何進行組織構建,都有一項數以十億美元計的產業可以幫忙來滿足這一需求。我們有著比人類歷史上以往任何時候都更多的策略來進行時間管理、項目管理和自我組織管理。我們被告知自己應當安排好我們的公司、我們的家庭生活、我們的每周、我們的每天,甚至於我們的睡眠,所有這些做法都是用以變得更加高產的手段。每個星期,全球的各個角落裡都有數不清的研討會和工作坊在告訴付費而來的公眾:他們應該對自己的生活進行組織規劃以達成這個目標。這種雄辯高論也滲透進了商業領袖和企業家們的思維之中,這令那些需要讓每件事都井井有條的自封的完美主義者們相當愉悅。與此有關的商業學校和畢業生在過去50年間數量激增,本質上都是在教人們如何很好地安排組織各項事務。
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,諷刺的是,失敗企業的數量也一直在穩定上升。與工作相關的壓力一路看漲。在所有人口統計數據中都有很大一部分員工稱自己對工作的組織安排方式和被領導管理的方式感到不滿。這就提出了一個問題:到底哪裡出錯了?為什麼在紙面上看來,推動條理有序似乎是鐵定能夠提升生產力的,然而在現實之中,卻遠遠達不到所預期的效果呢?
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 這個問題已經存在一段時間了。Frederick Taylor 是科學組織管理方法的創始人之一。 他在 20 世紀的上半葉裡就開始著書立說,設計出了一系列原則來提到工作流程的效率,後來在現代公司中流傳甚廣。所以這個方法已經存在了不少時日。
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 新的研究顯示:這種對效率的痴迷是有誤導性的。問題倒不一定出在我們用以組織安排自己工作的管理理論或策略上;真正的問題在於我們在著手進行工作時所持有的一個基本假設。這個假設就是:秩序是獲得高生產力的一個必要條件。這種假設也進而加強了這樣一個理念:混亂無序對於組織的生產力一定是有害的。於是結果就變成了:無論公司還是個人都在花費時間和金錢為了有序而努力去有序,而不是去關注進行這種努力嘗試的最終目標和有用性。
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 更有甚者,近期有研究表明:有序性的效用實際上是邊際遞減的。秩序確實能在一定程度上提升生產力,但是最終這種讓一切井井有條的過程的有用性,以及這樣做所帶來的好處,會逐步減弱到某個臨界點,過了這個點以後再去增加秩序性就只會降低生產力。有些人認為在一家公司裡,如果正式去組織整理某事的成本比這樣做能得到的好處還要高,則那件事本身就不應當被正式地組織整理。反之,這其中所牽扯的資源可以更好地用在其他地方。
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 實際上,研究顯示,在進行創新時,最好的方法就是創造出一個沒有任何組織結構和上下級別的環境,讓置身其中的每個人都充分參與進來,形成一個有機的群體。這樣的環境可以催生出一些全新的解決辦法,而在傳統的一切井然有序的環境下(在信息交流、權力結構、各項規則和常規操作這些方面充滿著各種瓶頸),永不可能出現這些思路。
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 『boundaryless』 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 近些年來,各家公司已慢慢開始接納這樣的「無組織無紀律性」。很多公司從理念上(接納無序性這種觀念,而不是懼怕它)和從流程上(引人並設立一些機制來削弱結構固化)都接受了它。舉例來說,Oticon 是丹麥一家生產助聽設備的大型公司,運用了一種被它稱為
「義大利麵」的結構來減少組織內部嚴格的上下級別關係。做法就是去掉所有的正式工作頭銜、給員工大量的自主權來規劃安排自己的時間和項目。這個辦法在推行之初大獲成功,在公司業務的所有領域內都明顯提升了員工生產力。
通用電氣(General Electric)的前任主席也以類似的方式接納了混亂無序性,推行了「無邊界」組織管理的理念。這種做法也涉及打破公司中不同部門間的壁壘,鼓勵實質意義上的合作和靈活的工作方式。谷歌和一系列其他的技術公司也都(至少是部分上)採用了這類靈活的組織結構,由技術和能把人們團結在一起的強大的企業價值觀來推動。
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 送給那些正在考慮馬上隨大流這麼幹的公司和個人一句警告:到目前為止的證據顯示,無序跟有序非常類似,其有用性貌似也是會邊際遞減的,如果過度使用也會對各方面表現產生有害影響。與有序性一樣,無序性只有在能發揮作用的時候才值得採納。但是我們不必懼怕它——也不必非把二者分個優劣高下出來。這份研究還表明,我們應當持續去檢驗自己已有的各種理念是否真的管用。