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此帖为精华讨论帖，详见“回帖推荐”。关于“细节记忆”的讨论。
大家好，周三经管来了~
首先推荐一篇有关地震与经济损失的文章，难度不大，但文章比较长，我就不放在今天作业里了。
http://mceer.buffalo.edu/publications/workshop/97-SP01/preface.asp
接下来是今天的作业，越障是一篇有关NGO（Non-Governmental Organizations）的文章，希望大家喜欢。
Here we go~~
[Speed] Article 1 (Check the title later)
Google and antitrust: Try it and see
[Time 1] WITHIN a few days the future of Google has come into slightly sharper focus. In one respect, almost literally so: on April 15th the search giant said that it was about to start sending Google Glass—a computer resembling spectacles, with a display before the user’s eyes—to developers eager to create applications for it. The firm has also published Glass’s technical specifications and the rules for developers. Among other things, Glass apps must be free of advertising. Nor may data from them be used for advertisements.
One day this may change: ads, after all, are how Google makes its money. But far more important for now is the extra clarity about how Google will conduct business in the European Union. More than three years after Joaquin Almunia, the EU’s competition commissioner, first received formal complaints that Google was abusing its dominance of online search, the commissioner and the company have agreed on how Google should change its ways. As expected, Google is conceding more to Mr. Almunia than it has to America’s Federal Trade Commission, which completed its own investigation in January. It will also avoid formal charges and fines.
Officially, much is still blurred, because neither the European Commissionnor Google has made the terms public. Unofficially, they have become fairly clear (at first via the Financial Times).
[219 words]
[Time 2] Last May Mr Almunia spelled out four concerns and invited Google to suggest ways of assuaging them. First and foremost was that Google favoured its own searches (for flights or restaurants, say, or to compare the prices of consumer goods) over those of specialist competitors. The essence of Google’s answer to this is to label its promotional search results and separate them from more general ones. For some categories, such as news and weather, that will be all. For services from which Google makes money, it will also be obliged to display links to rival search engines. Restaurant searches, for instance, will bring up links to a minimum of three competitors as well as to Google’s listings of places to eat. For shopping, the rivals’ slots will be allocated by auction.
Second, Mr Almunia worried that Google might be pinching rivals’ content, such as reviews of restaurants or hotels, and serving it up as its own. Google is allowing competitors to choose not to appear in its specialised results. It will also provide software that will let them hide upto 10% of a webpage from Google’s gaze.
Third, the commissioner was concerned by exclusive deal sin which website-owners gave Google the sole right to provide ads called forth by searches from Google-powered boxes on their pages. His fourth worry was that advertisers could not easily transfer campaigns and data from Google to other providers. Google is dropping both sets of offending terms.
[242 words]
[Time 3] The agreement is not yet sealed. Next comes a “market test”. Despite the terminology, this does not mean putting the changes into practice and seeing what happens. Rather, the commission invites complainants, consumer groups and anyone else who is interested to comment on the proposals. The terms could be amended—but the commission is unlikely to want the embarrassment of changing much. Only when the market test begins will the proposals be published, and only after it ends will a formal settlement be signed. Google will then be bound for five years, overseen by an independent monitor.
Google’s detractors know only what has been in the newspapers. “We will comment on remedies after the commission shares them,” says Thomas Vinje, counsel for one group, Fair Search Europe. But some have read enough to be dismayed. “As it stands, what we’ve seen…is dramatically insufficient,” says David Wood, counsel for another, the Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace. “Labelling is not any kind of solution to the competition problems…we’ve identified.”
Google’s antitrust battles may not end here. Its foes could keep this fight going by suing the commission, if they dislike the final settlement enough. A couple have filed civil suits against the company. Fair Search has just asked Mr Almunia to examine the power Google wields through Android, its mobile operating system. And—who knows?—if Glass becomes a raging success then Google may one day find itself accused of abusing its dominance of wearable computing platforms.
[246 words]
Source: http://www.ecocn.org/thread-185870-1-1.html
Article 2 (Check the title later) Preventing Rejection at Work
[Time 4]
You walk into a meeting late and people are already in huddles. Colleagues glance over ever so briefly then turn back to their conversations. You sit down in a corner and use your smartphone to check email. Once the group discussion starts, you want to offer an opinion but can't seem to get a word in. Eventually, you give up, take a few notes, check more email and wait for the meeting to end. You stay at your desk the rest of the day but don't get much done.
Rejection, or the fear of it, is a powerful social trigger — and, at work, it can be a debilitating one. When people feel left out of or excluded from important circles of influence at the office, they can't be productive, innovative, or collaborative because their brains' neurochemistry has changed. They feel threatened. Cortisol flows in. Their executive centers shut down. Behavior shifts from trust to distrust. And the effects can last for hours. I like to say that rejection alters reality: we Reveal less, Expect more, Assume the worst, Look at the situation with caution, Interpret the context through fear, Think others are taking advantage of us and Yearn to be included.
But managers who understand this vicious pattern can break it — in themselves and their employees. Here are some conversational rituals designed to help the people on your team regroup, and become part of the group — to alter their inner, mental spaces by changing the outer, social environment
[248 words]
[Time 5] 1 Prime the room for trust. While long, rectangular conference tables promote hierarchy and give those at the head an advantage, round tables do the opposite, fostering inclusion. Meeting leaders can also explicitly point out that all colleagues at the table are equal. This should spur the production of oxytocin in everyone's brains, ease fear of rejection and put people into a more collaborative state of mind.
2 Start with a shared reality. Whenever possible, send agenda items out before a meeting and ask people for their input. This signals "I care about what you think", rather than "I control this". Another way to encourage a common mindset is to give team members an article to read and ask them to find something inspiring in it; have them share these thoughts at a meeting and encourage the group to listen for common themes. This will trigger everyone's prefrontal cortex mirror neurons, which enable us to connect with others' emotions and opinions, enhancing empathy and our understanding of different perspectives.
3 Encourage candor and caring. Use open, non-judgmental language and listen with respect and appreciation in all conversations. Imagine that the words people use are like suitcases; you need "unpack" them to understand what colleagues are really thinking. Thank people for sharing, and make sure that there are no negative repercussions for doing so. Tell everyone you're committed to a welcoming, collaborative environment, and that you don't want anyone to feel rejected.Remember, we all thrive on being connected to others. Don't let your office become a place where people feel threatened by rejection. Instead, bring your conversational intelligence to work.
[270 words]
Source: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/04/preventing_rejection_at_work.html
[Obstacle]
Article 3(Check the title later)
Global NGOs Spend More on Accounting Than Multinationals
Benchmark data isn't sexy stuff, but occasionally the numbers reveal surprising findings. Who, for instance, would have guessed that global NGOs spend nearly 80% more to track their finances and employ nearly twice as many finance staff as comparable for-profit multinationals?
This hardly seems right given that multinationals are thought to be awash in money and NGOs have the image of cash-strapped, waste averse organizations — which they are. But the data, gathered in our new study "Stop Starving Scale" and compared against benchmarks from APQC (American Productivity & Quality Center), hint at a little-known story: most global NGOs today struggle to master the complexities of managing efficient, integrated operations in large part due to restrictions placed on them by funders.
In that regard, NGOs find themselves facing the same issues that vexed multinational corporations as they began to master globalized operations several decades ago. While their missions couldn't be more different, the organizational challenges are strikingly similar.
As globalization began to shift into high gear in the 1980s, corporations grew by opening international outposts to access new markets. But they soon realized that dotting the globe with factories and staff led to fragmentation that begged for better integration and coordination. In time, corporations learned to build the administrative and technical infrastructure needed to manage their sprawling operations.
Today, NGOs are struggling to do the same — with one key difference. Multinationals are masters of their own fate when it comes to investing in people and infrastructure. By contrast, NGOs rely on the generosity of funders who, for the most part, restrict their investments to specific programs, leaving NGOs starved for general operating support.
This fixation on program-based funding results in a patchwork of fragmented, short-term engagements across countries and continents. While successful in appearance, it's a pattern of growth that starves the operational core. Like multinationals in the early days of globalization, many NGOs today struggle to grow the essential management capabilities and systems required to effectively manage their operations and growth.
Decentralized, program-focused operations also squander precious dollars. Hence, the comparatively high cost of NGOs' bookkeeping operations. Perversely, funders view such high costs as proof that NGOs already spend too much on administration, apparently oblivious to their role in pushing up the very costs they question.
The absence of efficient financial management systems reflects comparatively low spending on information technology. In fact, the benchmark data revealed that NGOs spent less than half as much on IT systems as comparable for-profit companies, resulting in slower and less comprehensive reporting capabilities at a higher cost.
Just as telling, the NGOs surveyed reported spending one-third as much on program monitoring and evaluation as is generally recommended by evaluation experts. This all but eliminates NGOs' ability to talk about what really matters — impact per dollar.
The path out of this starvation syndrome is easy to see but difficult to tread. Just as multinationals before them, NGOs need to invest in core administrative and technical capabilities to manage global scale.
For funders, this means a change in attitudes and actions. They need to come to grips with the unintended consequences of starving NGOs of the resources needed to invest in leadership, management, program evaluation, and integrated systems.
NGO board members, especially those with corporate backgrounds who understand the importance of investment, must change the mindset that equates success with revenues and views low overhead as a proxy for organizational effectiveness.
And NGO leaders need to stop playing the low-overhead-is-good game and lead the charge for adequate general operating support. "This issue is one of my pet peeves," says Rich Stearns, CEO of World Vision US, the largest affiliate of a $2.8 billion NGO with operations in 97 countries. "Asking about an organization's overhead rate is the wrong question," he continues. "The right question to ask is what impact the organization is having per donated dollar? Because when we ask the wrong question, we punish the organization that's investing enough (in administration) to have real impact.
[660 words]
Source: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/04/ ... trap_of_global.html
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发表于 2013-4-24 23:26:09
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