Perevod_I
.pdf43.to bankrupt [transitive] to make a person, business or country bankrupt or very poor: Legal fees almost bankrupted us. || разорить, довести до банкротства, обанкротить
Text 5:
The money in the message
Economists make sense of the world by assuming that people know what they want. Advertisers assume that they do not. Who is right?
Besides gaining fame as the first Olympians, the ancient Greeks also excelled at commerce and the arts. If you watch the Winter Olympics in Nagano, you will see that same impressive blend of sports, creativity and the profit motive at work. For, while the world's best skiers and skaters compete heroically for medals, its bestknown colas and copiers will compete ferociously for market share.
Advertising is a crucial part of that battle. Bosses at Coca-Cola, Kodak and McDonald's—three of the Olympics' biggest sponsors—believe that the huge su ms they spend on advertising are an investment in their valuable brands. They are not the only ones, however, who pay close attention to advertising. To economists— the official sponsors of rational decision-making—t he motives and methods of advertisers raise doubts about a fundamental claim: that people are good at making decisions for themselves.
In the economist's view of the world there is little need for firms to spend so much money cajoling consumers into buying their wares. Of course, people need good information to make good choices, and it is often too costly or time-consuming to collect it themselves. So advertising a product's features, its price, or even its existence can provide genuine value. But many ads seem to convey no such "hard" information. Moreover, most advertising firms place a huge emphasis on creativity and human psychology when designing campaigns.
Economists need to explain, therefore, why a rational consumer would be persuaded by an ad which offers nothing but an enticing image or a good laugh. If consumers are rational, they should ignore such obvious gimmicks. If producers are rational, they should not waste money on ads that consumers will ignore. The existence of such advertising thus stands out like a giant billboard, proclaiming to economists that something is amiss.
Most economists would reply that advertising is a way to deal with "asymmetric information": the fact that sellers often know more about their product than buyers. Some products are better than others in ways that are hard to detect without buying them. A product's features and ingredients do not really tell you how well it works, or tastes. And although some products' quality can be verified through trial and error, this is not always practical. A bad roll of film can ruin irreplaceable holiday photos; a bad burger can ruin a holiday.
Companies such as Kodak and McDonald's are thus willing to spend huge sums convincing people their products are the best around. This explanation was first developed by Phillip Nelson, in a classic paper written in 1974. He argued that a great deal of seemingly wasteful advertising is in fact intended to send a "signal" to consumers—that even though a product's quality is h ard to verify in advance, it really is one of the best on the market. From this perspective, it does not matter what an advertisement says—so long as consumers can see the firms spending big sums on advertising. Those clever ads work because consumers understand that they are a sophisticated way for a company to signal: "We believe in our product, or we would not spend so much on advertising."
On the whole, economists find Mr Nelson's account convincing. But they believe that he had only half the story: companies need pricing as well as advertising to convey quality to consumers. However, they find it hard to agree on exactly what pricing and advertising strategies would most readily accomplish this. They have not even been able to agree how prices and advertising should be related. This state of confusion is astonishing, considering that economists have transformed the study of firms' other pricing decisions almost into an exact science.
Part of the problem is that it is extremely difficult to measure the amount firms spend advertising "hard" information about a product's price, say, or how it works, as opposed to their spending on "signal" advertising of the touchy-feely sort. Moreover, the theory suggests that some kinds of products—those whose qualit y can be verified only through experience—should have mor e "signal" advertising. But what is quality? And can an
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economist tell how easily it can be verified? That depends on a product's lifespan, consumers' tastes,and the ease with which friends and consumer reports can convey what a product or service is really like.
No signal
In fact, two economists recently conducted a different kind of study which suggests that the "signalling" theory may be wrong. Sridhar Moorthy, of the University of Rochester's business school, and Scott Hawkins, of the University of Toronto's, ran an experiment in which people read foreign-language magazines with ads for unfamiliar brands in several product categories: cookware, overcoats, nasal spray and yoghurt. The ads were real, but the magazines were altered to change the frequency with which they appeared.
Although they did not understand the ads' content, the subjects associated a high frequency of advertising with high quality. However, a control group saw each ad only once, with a message attached telling them how often it appeared in other magazines. Even though the control group could remember the frequency of the ads, they did not assume—as their peers had done—that mo re ads meant higher quality. This suggests that people do indeed associate more ads with higher quality, but not because they have a sophisticated understanding of the signal companies are trying to send. They simply see lots of ads for a product and want to buy it.
The distinction is crucial. If seeing is truly believing, then even low-quality firms may be able to create the impression of high quality by advertising, confounding the signal. Or perhaps not. People may behave differently in economists' experiments from the waythey do in the marketplace, when their own money is at stake. For now, let the games continue.
(The Economist)
Vocabulary practice
1.Read the text.
2.Match the words and phrases in List A with those in List B. Learn these lexical units.
List A |
List B |
1. market share |
a. дорогой / дорогостоящий |
2. to create an impression |
d. свойства товара |
3. a product’s features |
e. трудоемкий | отнимающий много времени |
4. to design a campaign |
f. привлекательный имидж |
5. an enticing image |
g. создавать впечатление |
6. costly / expensive / dear |
i. уговорить кого-л. сделать что-л. |
7. to cajole sb. into doing sth. |
k. зависеть от чего-л. |
8. time-consuming |
l. планировать / готовить кампанию |
9. to put / place / lay emphasis on sth. |
m. проводить эксперимент |
10. to depend on sth. |
n. проверять что-л. методом проб и ошибок |
11. to carry out / conduct / perform / run an |
o. производить впечатление на кого-л. |
experiment (on sth.) |
|
12. to verify sth. through trial and error |
p. быть поставленным на карту | быть в опасности |
13. to make an impression on sb. |
q. придавать значение чему-л. | делать упор на что- / |
|
чем-л. |
14. to be at stake |
r. доля на рынке | доля рынка |
3.Learn the words and phrases listed in the ‘Essential vocabulary’ section.
4.Match the words and phrases in List A with those in List B.
List A |
List B |
1. to increase in value |
a. рекламный щит |
2. market value |
b. накладные расходы |
3. surplus value |
c. увольнять кого-л. (с работы) |
4. good value for money |
d. покрывать расходы / затраты / издержки |
5. the cost of living |
e. себестоимость (фабричная) |
6. to price oneself out of the market |
f. устанавливать / назначать цену |
7. to cut / reduce costs |
g. указывать цену на товарах |
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8. to cover costs |
h. назначать / котировать цену |
9. running costs |
i. репутация / имидж фирменного товара |
10. direct / variable costs |
j. повышать цену |
11. indirect / fixed costs |
k. приемлемая / справедливая цена |
12. overheads / overhead costs |
l. устанавливать завышенные цены |
13. prime cost / cost price / cost |
m. иметь имидж |
14. to fix / set a price |
n. объявление / плакат / афиша |
15. to quote a price |
o. сокращать расходы / затраты / издержки |
16. to mark up a price |
p. принимать / брать кого-л. на работу | нанимать |
|
кого-л. |
17. to price goods |
q. стоимость жизни |
18. to bear costs |
r. рыночная стоимость |
19. to present / project an image |
s. прямые издержки |
20. a brand image |
t. эксплуатационные / текущие расходы |
21. a hoarding / billboard |
u. фиксированные расходы / косвенные издержки |
22. a poster / bill |
v. повышаться в цене |
23. to hire sb. / to take sb. on |
w. нести расходы |
24. to dismiss / sack / fire sb. |
x. прибавочная стоимость |
5. Suggest words and expressions that correspond to the following definitions. Give their Russian equivalents. Consult the ‘Essential vocabulary’ section.
1.to have a particular price
2.the amount of money that you have to pay in order to buy, do, or produce something
3.a high fence or board on which large advertisements are stuck
4.worth a lot of money
5.to use a person’s services for payment
6.the amount of money for which something is sold, bought, or offered
7.the expenses of running a business, such as rent, rates and management salaries
8.a business that makes its money by finding suitable people for employers who need new workers, especially white-collar workers
9.the general opinion that most people have of a person, organization, product, etc.
10.a situation in which someone has to leave their job, because they are no longer needed
11.the amount of money that something is worth
12.the amount spent on materials, labour and other expenses in actually manufacturing a product
13.to be dismissed from your job
14.to calculate the cost of something or decide how much something should cost
15.a large printed notice, picture, or photograph, used to advertise something or as a decoration
16.someone who has an important job as a manager in a company or business
17.to find new people to work in a company, join an organization, do a job, etc.
18.to fix the price of something that is for sale
6. Explain the meaning of the words and phrases listed below and translate them. Consult the ‘Essential vocabulary’ section.
to cost a plan, to price oneself out of the market, prices skyrocket, at a price, a moderately priced apartment, an employment agency, direct costs, to be bad / poor value, a retail price, to quote a price, fixed costs, an exorbitant price, market value, to make sb. Redundant
Translation practice
1. Translate these sentences. Give synonymous translations if possible. Consult the ‘Essential vocabulary’ section.
1.Shares can go down as well as go up in value.
2.I thought £10 for a record that only lasts 14 minutes was incredibly poor value.
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3.The cost of living rose (by) two percent in the last year.
4.Because of the engine's efficiency the car has verylow running costs.
5.Businesses protested that the new taxes would increase production costs unreasonably.
6.It cost (us) five thousand dollars a year to maintain this house.
7.Videos vary in price depending on the make.
8.We have priced our new product at £5.
9.We spent Saturday morning pricing microwaves.
10.The party is seeking to improve its image with women voters.
11.The company employs 2000 people worldwide.
12.We're taking on 50 new staff this year.
13.We're having difficulty recruiting enough properlyqualified staff.
14.Bryant was dismissed from his post.
15.He got the sack for stealing.
16.The closure of the export department resulted in over 100 redundancies.
2. Translate the following sentences. Give synonymous translations if possible. Consult the ‘Essential vocabulary’ section.
1.Нам пришлось заплатить цену, которая намного превышало рыночную стоимость товара.
2.Это вполне приемлемая цена за данную партию товара.
3.Многим студентам приходится полностью оплачивать стоимость своего обучения в университете.
4.Если экономическая ситуация в стране не изменится, мы не сможем оплатить всех своих расходов.
5.Мы должны значительно сократить все расходы.
6.Этот компьютер обошелся мне в $1000.
7.Нам необходимо произвести расчет стоимости реконструкции предприятия.
8.Цены на бензин постоянно растут.
9.Просим сообщить нам свою цену на 1000 тонн руды. (Просим сделать нам предложение на 1000 тонн руды.)
10.Вы назначили слишком высокую цену за свой товар.
11.Компания стремится создать себе имидж / репутацию защитника окружающей среды.
12.Основная цель правительства на текущий год состоит в поддержании цен на прежнем уровне.
13.В компании работают двадцать человек.
14.Заводу пришлось дополнительно принять на работу 1000 рабочих, чтобы выполнить контракт в установленный срок.
15.У нас проблемы с укомплектованием штата отдела сбыта.
16.Ее уволили с работы за организацию профсоюза.
17.В результате сокращения штатов работу потеряли 120 рабочих и служащих.
3. Translate Text 5.
Text 6:
“Сони”: ошибки гениального менеджера
Смомента своего прихода на должность президента компании “ Сони” (Sony) в 1995 году Нобаюки Идеи показал себя прекрасным руководителем. Идеи смог повысить эффективность американского филиала “ Сони”, до его назначения несшего серьезные убытки, и удвоил объем продаж концерна, которые достигли $60 млрд. Идеи принял долгосрочную стратегию по превращению “ Сони” из производителя аудио- и видеотехники в мирового лидера в области информационных технологий и развлечений. Когда два года назад прибыли компании пошли вниз, Идеи отреагировал на это более оперативно, чем руководители других японских корпораций, закрыв 13 принадлежащих “ Сони” заводов и проделав огромную работу по укрупнению ее подразделений и сокращению издержек. К сожалению, сегодня становится ясно, что усилий Идеи оказалось недостаточно для того, чтобы решить все проблемы “ Сони”.
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Несмотря на то, что в этом году компания планирует получить чистую прибыль в размере $83 млн. при объеме продаж в $62,5 млрд., аналитики сомневаются, что “ Сони” удастся выйти на безубыточный уровень. “ Сони” теряет расположение инвесторов: в прошлом месяце цена на акции компании упала на 25% и составила $33.
Разумеется, трудности “ Сони” во многом обусловлены факторами, неподконтрольными Идеи. Крах рынка высоких технологий привел к общемировому сокращению спроса на ряд производимых
“Сони” микропроцессоров и компьютерных компонентов. В свою очередь, теракты 11 сентября нанесли серьезный удар по продажам видеофильмов, игровых приставок и других потребительских электронных товаров.
Кроме того, несмотря на все усилия Идеи, “ Сони” по-прежнему во многом подобна другим громоздким японским конгломератам. “ Сони” одновременно занимается множеством совершенно не связанных друг с другом направлений деятельности, начиная от производства полупроводников и заканчивая страхованием и оказанием банковских услуг через Интернет.
Идеи, ныне являющийся председателем правления и генеральным директором “ Сони”, признает, что компания не смогла достаточно оперативно отреагировать на начавшийся в прошлом году спад на рынке высоких технологий. Однако, он не оставляет попыток вывести компанию из кризиса, дополнительно ассигновав в этом году на реструктуризацию $250 млн. помимо ранее выделенных на эти цели $420 млн. Эти средства пойдут на ликвидацию или перепрофилирование 48 убыточных подразделений “ Сони”. Кроме того, Идеи надеется на то, что ему удастся сократить производственные издержки “ Сони” на 15% за счет более широкого использования компонентов, поступающих от других производителей. Кроме того, Идеи делает ставку на электронную торговлю аудио- и видеозаписями и видеоиграми, считая, что с ростом числа подключений к Интернету этот бизнес должен расцвести.
Однако инвесторы пока предпочитают выжидать, считая, что радоваться успехам “ Сони” еще слишком рано. Так, 40% объема продаж видеоигр в США, являющихся крупнейшим рынком для
“Сони”, приходится на период между Днем благодарения и Новым годом. Таким образом, в условиях текущего сокращения потребительского спроса компания может понести серьезные убытки. Кроме того, сокращение спроса грозит сорвать американские продажи видеоприставки “ Плэйстэйшн 2” (PlayStation 2), выпущенной на рынок в марте 1999 года. Ранее “ Сони” рассчитывала, что до конца года ей удастся продать в США несколько миллионов таких приставок. По словам аналитика Лизы Спайсер, специализирующейся на изучении индустрии развлечений, любое сокращение спроса в США гораздо опаснее для “ Сони”, чем для ее конкурентов, таких как “ Найнтендо” (Nintendo) или “ Майкрософт” (Microsoft), которые планируют выпустить свои новые приставки на рынок только в ноябре.
Не слишком хорошо идут дела у “ Сони” и в области производства мобильных телефонов, три партии которых во втором квартале этого года были забракованы заказчиками из-за сбоев программного обеспечения. В результате, компания понесла убытки в размере $100 млн. Кроме того, инвесторы выражают недовольство тем, что, несмотря на объявленный Идеи курс на укрупнение подразделений компании и повышение рентабельности, “ Сони” увеличила свою долю в несущей убытки компании-производителе недорогой электроники “ Айва” (Aiwa) с 50% до 61%.
Руководители “ Сони” не раз с гордостью заявляли о том, что их компания отличается от других японских электронных корпораций. Сегодня им предстоит доказать, что за этими словами действительно что-то стоит.
(Business Week)
Summarizing
1.Summarize Text 5 in English and Russian.
2.Read Text 6 and then summarize it in English.
3.Find a newspaper or magazine article, written in Russian, which deals with a topic similar to that of Text 5 or Text 6. Summarize it in English.
Essential vocabulary
1.value [countable; uncountable] the amount of money that something is worth: to increase / go down in value | market value (= the amount of money that something can usually be sold for) | surplus value | of
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value (=worth a lot of money) | The alterations doubled the value of the house. | Shares can go down as well as go up in value. | We paid a price that was well above the market value. | The thieves took nothing of value. || стоимость, цена; стоимостное выражение
2.to be good / excellent value (for money) (British English) | to be a good / excellent value (American English) | to be (good) value for money used to say that something is worth what you pay for it, or that its quality is good, considering the price you pay for it: At only £45 a night, the hotel is good / great value (for money). | Every customer is looking for value for money. | Its burgers are a good value. | You might also find an Internet provider is a better value. | This is a good value hotel. || разумная / справедливая /
обоснованная цена
3.to be poor / bad value (for money) (British English) | to be a poor / bad value (American English) used to say that something is not worth what you pay for it, or its quality is not very good, considering the price you pay for it: I thought £10 for a record that only lasts 14 minutes was incredibly poor value. ||
завышенная цена
4.cost [countable] the amount of money that you have to pay in order to buy, do, or produce something: a low / high cost of electric power | the cost of living (= the cost of buying all the food, clothes, etc. that you need to live) | I'll give you $15 to cover the cost of the gas. | The new building's going up at a cost of $82 million. | If no scholarships or other aid are available, students will have to pay the full cost of their education. | The cost of living rose (by) two percent in the last year. | A cassette / radio is included at no extra cost. || цена, стоимость; себестоимость
5.costs [plural] the money that you must regularly spend in order to continue having a home, car, business, etc.: to bear costs | to pay costs | to increase costs | to cut / reduce costs | to cover costs (= to make enough
money to pay for the things you have bought) | running costs (= the cost of owning and using a car or machine) | Businesses protested that the new taxes would increase production costs unreasonably. | We've got to cut costs and we're starting with the phone bill. | At this rate we'll barely cover our costs. | Because of the engine's efficiency the car has very low running costs. || затраты, расходы, издержки
6.direct costs | variable costs costs that are directly related to the production of a particular article or unit and that therefore vary in proportion to the number of articles or units produced || прямые издержки;
переменные издержки на единицу продукции
7.fixed costs | indirect costs | period costs (American English) costs that do not vary with the number of goods produced; costs that have to be paid whether anything is produced or not || косвенные издержки;
фиксированные расходы
8.overhead costs / expenses / charges | overheads costs that cannot be directly related to the separate goods produced, or bought, or sold, by the business; the expenses of running a business, such as rent, rates and management salaries || накладные расходы, непроизводительные издержки
9.prime / first / flat / shut-down cost | cost price | cost (1) production cost the amount spent on materials, labour and other expenses in actually manufacturing a product || (фабричная) себестоимость,
себестоимость производства; производственная цена
(2)the price paid by a trader for what he buys || отпускная цена, фабричная цена
10.to cost (cost, cost) [transitive] to have a particular price: to cost (sb.) sth. | to cost a (small) fortune / the earth (= to cost a lot of money) | to cost a bomb (British English) (= to cost a lot of money) | It cost (us) ten dollars. | It cost (us) five thousand dollars a year to maintain this house. | The meal cost a small fortune, but it was well worth it. | What a fantastic dress. It must have cost a bomb! || стоить (о цене,
выраженной в денежном эквиваленте)
11.to cost (costed, costed) | to cost out (especially American English) [transitive; usually used in the passive] to calculate the cost of something or decide how much something should cost: We'll get the plan costed before presenting it to the board. | The accountants costed out our expenses. | We shall have to bring in professional advisers to help us to cost out this job. || определять стоимость, производить
калькуляцию, рассчитывать цену
12.price [countable; uncountable] the amount of money for which something is sold, bought, or offered: to fix / set a price | to quote a price | to put / place a price on sth. | to pay a price | to increase / raise prices | to cut / lower / reduce / slash prices | to mark up / mark down a price | prices go up / rise / shoot up / skyrocket | prices drop / fall / go down / slump | to freeze / hold down / keep down prices | to bring down
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prices | to maintain prices | an exorbitant / high / inflated / outrageous / prohibitive / steep / stiff price | an attractive / bargain / competitive / low / moderate / popular / reasonable / reduced price | a retail / wholesale price | Fuel prices are rising steadily. | Can you tell me what the price of a new window would be? | They agreed on a price of £2000 for the car. | You can get cars in Europe at very low prices. | Experts say that price rises will be gradual. | We can get a three-course meal at a fairly reasonable price. | Videos vary in price depending on the make. || цена; стоимость; плата
13.at a price used to say that you can buy something, but only if you pay a lot of money: You can get goat's cheese at the local delicatessen – at a price! || по высокой цене, дорого
14.to price [transitive] (1) [usually used in the passive] to fix the price of something that is for sale: a moderately priced apartment | We have priced our new product at £5. | The tennis rackets are priced at £75 each. | You have priced it too high / low. || назначать цену, оценивать
(2)to put the price on goods to show how much they cost || указывать цену (на товаре)
(3)to compare the prices of things: We spent Saturday morning pricing microwaves. || узнавать цену,
прицениваться
15.to price oneself out of the market to demand too much money for the goods or services that you are selling || устанавливать завышенные цены
16.image [countable] the general opinion that most people have of a person, organization, product, etc.: to present / project an image | a brand image | The party is seeking to improve its image with women voters. | The princess aimed to project an image of herself as serious and hard-working. || имидж, репутация,
лицо; престиж; образ
17.hoarding (British English) | billboard (especially American English) [countable] a high fence or board on which large advertisements are stuck || рекламный щит, доска / щит для объявлений / плакатов /
афиш; наклеенные объявления / плакаты / афиши
18.poster | bill (especially American English) [countable] a large printed notice, picture, or photograph, used to advertise something or as a decoration: the bedroom wall was covered in posters || рекламное
объявление, плакат, афиша
19.to employ [transitive] (1) to use a person’s services for payment: They employ 20 salesmen. | The company employs 2000 people worldwide. | There is not enough work to keep them employed. | Dave is employed as a baggage handler at the airport. | Freelance consultants have been employed to look at ways of reducing
waste. || держать на службе, иметь в штате
(2)to hire (especially American English) | to take on to engage the services of a person for payment: They agreed to employ the job applicant. | We have hired 50 additional mill-hands. | We're taking on 100 new staff this year. | The factory has to take on 1,000 additional workers in order to complete the contract on time. || брать на работу, нанимать, предоставлять работу (по найму), давать работу,
принимать на службу; приглашать на работу
20.to engage [transitive] to arrange to employ someone: to engage a carpenter | His father engaged a private tutor to improve his maths. || нанимать (проводника, адвоката, прислугу и т.п.)
21.to recruit [transitive; intransitive] to find new people to work in a company, join an organization, do a job, etc.: We're having difficulty recruiting enough properly qualified staff. || нанимать / набирать /
вербовать (людей на работу / рабочую силу)
22.employment agency a business that makes money by finding jobs for people || бюро / агентство по
трудоустройству
23.recruitment agency a business that makes its money by finding suitable people for employers who need new workers, especially white-collar workers || агентство по найму на работу, агентство по найму
/ набору работников / рабочей силы
24.to dismiss [transitive] to remove someone from their job: Bryant was dismissed from his post. | Will they dismiss Woods for stealing the money? || увольнять (с работы), освобождать от должности /
работы / обязанностей; отстранять от исполнения служебных обязанностей
25.dismissal [countable; uncountable] an act of removing someone from their job: Wilson was claiming compensation for unfair dismissal. || увольнение (с работы), отставка, освобождение от
должности; отстранение от исполнения служебных обязанностей; сокращение (штатов)
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26.to sack | to give sb. the sack [transitive] (British English) (informal) to dismiss someone from their job:
She was sacked for organizing a union. | They've never actually given anyone the sack. || увольнять (с
работы), снимать с работы, выгонять (с работы)
27.to get the sack (British English) (informal) to be dismissed from your job: He got the sack for stealing. ||
быть уволенным (с работы)
28.to fire [transitive] (especially American English) to force someone to leave their job: If she stole that money, she'll be fired. || увольнять (с работы), снимать с работы, выгонять (с работы)
29.redundant (British English) if you are redundant, your employer no longer has a job for you: to make sb. redundant | Seventy factory workers were made redundant in the resulting cuts. || уволенный (по
сокращению штатов), сокращенный, потерявший работу
30.redundancy [countable; uncountable] (British English) a situation in which someone has to leave their job, because they are no longer needed: The closure of the export department resulted in over 100 redundancies. | 2,000 workers now face redundancy. | We were offered a £3,000 cash bonus to take voluntary redundancy. || увольнение рабочих или служащих, сокращение штатов (увольнение из-
за отсутствия работы, из-за излишка рабочей силы или из-за неспособности нанимателя выплачивать заработную плату)
31.manager [countable] someone whose job is to manage part or all of a company or organization: a middle / senior manager | a bank manager | a branch / district manager | a commercial / marketing / office / production / personnel / sales / works manager | the General Manager of Chevrolet | one of our regional managers | Can I speak to the manager? || менеджер, управляющий; руководитель, директор, глава
(предприятия); заведующий; руководящий работник; администратор
32.executive [countable] someone who has an important job as a manager in a company or business: a publishing executive | a marketing executive || менеджер высшего звена управления; член правления /
совета управляющих компании / корпорации; менеджер, управляющий; руководитель, директор, глава (предприятия); заведующий; руководящий работник; администратор
Supplementary Text
Assignments
∙Read the text and make sure you understand it.
∙Pick out words and phrases relevant to business.
∙Consult English-English and English-Russian dictionaries to find the definitions and translations of these lexical units as well as the way they are contextualized.
∙Translate the text.
∙Summarize the text in English and Russian.
Text 7:
Service with a smile
Most knowledge workers do their jobs with computers. At ISS they use mops and buckets. What can service companies learn from cleaning?
It is hard to envy the young woman when you first glimpse her, pedalling through the cold streets of Copenhagen at 4 am. But as the video continues, and she arrives at the building, it is easier to see why she might enjoy her job. When she checks her uniform in the mirror, the pride is evident. As she goes about her work, she recalls her training: she knows how to organise her shift, how to catch little things that an ordinary cleaner would miss, and how to deal with an unkind office worker she encounters later that morning. When the video ends, you almost feel like applying to join the ISS team yourself.
Since the video was prepared by the Danish service company, it is just as well that it has this effect. But the image that ISS projects is a fair one. In an industry marked by low-skilled workers and high staff turnover, ISS trains its people relentlessly, and the company does everything it can to cultivate their loyalty. Most firms make recruiting videos to attract clever young MBAs; ISS thinks that cultivating its cleaners matters just as much.
And ISS is probably right. Few companies these days fail to mention "knowledge" and "skills" as vital to business success. But in many service industries, the emphasis on training and know-how is confined to high-
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paid workers. As important as managers and professionals are, however, the ability to satisfy customers depends ultimately on the behaviour of frontline employees. If they do their jobs badly, a brilliant marketing strategy and a whizz-bang computer system will achieve little.
Hence the endless stream of initiatives to empower employees and encourage a customer-friendly attitude among staff. Most of these efforts, however, boil down to little more than pep talks. To change employees' behaviour fundamentally, firms must combine lofty aspirations with a hard-headed analysis of the way their industry works.
The commercial-cleaning business provides an immaculate example of what this means in practice. Because of their size and their back-office skills, international firms such as ISS, Britain's Rentokil Initial and America's ServiceMaster are able to co-ordinate their marketing and logistics more effectively than smaller fry. This helps them to win big contracts with factories, offices and hospitals, and has led to consolidation. ISS has not had an easy ride, selling its American business in January last year after an accounting scandal in 1996. Nevertheless, the firm's success in training and keeping staff has begun to attract attention. ISS has operations throughout Europe and Asia, as well as a business in Brazil. Last year it had revenues of DKr 11.8 billion ($1.8 billion), in an industry that was once considered the most local of businesses.
Commercial cleaning involves far more than just running a hoover over the carpet. To serve big clients well—and profitably— employees must do their jobs e fficiently. That means conserving time and cleaning supplies, improving quality, and avoiding accidents and injuries. This can be difficult enough in an ordinary office building. But at many hospitals, food-processing plants and factories, the equipment and skills needed can be surprisingly tricky—an MBA who showed up unp repared would struggle during the first week on the job. And besides these technical skills, commercial cleaners must also learn to spot the idiosyncrasies of different customers, and deal with them when their paths cross. In short, they must use their heads.
To see how much difference training can make, consider the programme that ISS Denmark uses in one of its simplest operating divisions, the one that services small companies. During the first six months on the job, employees are given training in cleaning techniques—such as which chemicals to use on specific stains and surfaces—as well as on safety.
After six months, employees move from applied chemistry to applied economics. In particular, they learn how to interpret the contracts for each client, so they can understand how profitable the contract is meant to be, where those profits are coming from, and how the client's profitability contributes to that of ISS's ocal branch. Of course, few employees need such training after six months on the job. But it becomes invaluable if they are promoted to team leader, which can happen after a year.
Windows 9-to-5
Once employees become team leaders, they shift to fuzzier management techniques. They receive advice on dealing with customers, and learn how to coach the junior members of their team. The team leaders must rely on these skills to meet their performance targets, which are based not only on profitability, but also (lest they cut corners to trim costs) customer retention.
All of this training makes it easier for ISS employees to do their jobs well. But knowing how to do something, and being motivated to do it, are different things entirely. To motivate its employees, ISS must think carefully about the way it organises its operations. It relies heavily, for example, on peer pressure (referred to in management circles as "teamwork"). In the small-company division, most of the accounts could easily be handled by a single person, ISS Denmark, however, has grouped its cleaners into twoor three-person hit squads, which work together and travel from site to site. Because of the extra travel involved, this approach is in some ways less efficient than sending a single person to each site. But ISS believes that the extra motivation more than offsets these costs.
ISS can also count on the peculiarities of its industry to help motivate employees. Poul Poulin, head of the ISS Job Centre in Copenhagen, argues that the contact between ISS's supervisors and its clients' sitemanagers is crucial. If they are not happy, superiors find out about it. In order to generate more contact with customers, ISS is rescheduling many of its accounts, so that its teams overlap for half an hour or so with office workers. This makes it easier for clients to voice their complaints.
Besides motivating employees, ISS must also encourage them to stick around, lest all of that training be wasted. One way to do this is by paying them a little more. Last year, for example, Waldemar Schmidt, the
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company's boss, encouraged managers in northern England to stop competing on wage costs, even if it meant that the company would lose some bids.
At the moment, ISS believes that it can continue to win new business, in spite of these higher costs. Thanks to the extensive training programmes as well as its back-office expertise, the company can bid for 72 complicated contracts offering cleaning, catering and laundry services to, say, a hospital. Last year ISS won a contract to clean the hotel rooms at Disneyland Paris—a company famous for its attention to detail. Mr Schmidt points out that ISS is now up against only two or three competitors for many contracts, whereas a few years ago it would face a couple of dozen rival bidders. That, he argues, is a sign that his firm can raise wages without being undercut—provided that quality improves as we ll.
In order to continue these improvements, however, the company thinks that it must offer still more training. Over the next five years Mr Schmidt wants ISS to dramatically increase its retention rates of employees and customers. They are higher than the industry average, but too much training is still being lost.
Appropriately, when ISS stumbled in America in the mid-1990s, it was its backroom accountants who let its frontline workers down. Lax internal controls meant that the head office knew nothing of flawed accounting that was going on in a division that brought in 40% of ISS's revenues. The crisis, which Mr Schmidt first discovered in mid-1996, almost drove the company into bankruptcy.
Since then, however, the share price has almost trebled, and Mr Schmidt is promising that profits will grow by 15% a year. To improve returns on capital, the company has sold ISS University, which used to coordinate many of the regional training efforts. By decentralising training, ISS's national units hope to be able to tailor their efforts to local conditions. ISS's knowledge workers have studied chemistry, economics and psychology. Time for them to start learning topography too.
(The Economist)
Unit 3: Economic Development
Text 1:
The great paradox of globalisation
Rich-country multinationals benefit from wider markets. But they also face more competition, says John Kay
Business leaders applaud it, protesters demonstrate against it, Thomas Friedman writes a column about it and politicians tell us it is inevitable. As the World Trade Organisation celebrates it in the comparative peace of Qatar, it is time to ask what exactly we mean by globalisation.
People first started to use the term in the 1980s, when American business discovered the rest of the world. Of course, Ford and General Motors had owned foreign car plants for more than 50 years. But their overseas facilities manufactured dinky models for agoraphobic Europeans and were quite separate from the mainstream American operations. US consumers had always imported Burberrys and French perfumes but trade was and is a much lower percentage of national income in the US than it is in any European country.
There was a rude awakening. Ford and GM realised that Asian competitors could make cars that were not only cheaper but also better. (Their customers discovered it first.) Other US firms such as Gap and Compaq realised that an American brand and offshore manufacture made an unbeatable combination in textiles and computers. Jobs migrated from the US to the developing world.
Within a short time, every large US company had a director of international operations and every US business school a course in international strategy. Some chief executives even predicted that their successors might have worked overseas or might even not be American nationals. These fears mostly proved to be exaggerated. The Ford family is still in the saddle.
But globalisation received a further boost from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Where once there had been two great trading blocs in the world, now there was only one. Or perhaps there were now three. Americans responded to the growing influence of the European Union by establishing their own free trade area and the rapidly growing Asian economies came closer together.
The world trading system was also restructured in the multilateral reduction in trade barriers negotiated under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Gatt was the precursor of the WTO and, with hindsight, its boring name was a huge advantage. If you want to confer quietly and unmolested, it is unwise to call yourself the World Bank, the World Economic Forum or the International Monetary Fund.
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