prep2 essay1-Q3

Essay #1.  009          (21233-!-item-!-188;#058&00009-00)

定义The modern multinational corporation is described as having originated when the owner-managers of nineteenth-century British firms carrying on international trade were replaced by teams of salaried managers organized into hierarchies.  Increases in the volume of 【Q2】transactions in such firms are commonly believed to have necessitated this structural change.  Nineteenth-century inventions like the steamship and the telegraph, by facilitating coordination of managerial activities, are described as key factors. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century chartered trading companies, despite the international scope of their activities, are usually considered irrelevant to this discussion: 被驳斥的观点 the volume of their transactions is assumed to have been too low and the communications and transport of their day too primitive 原始
            to make comparisons with modern multinationals interesting.

转折In reality, however, early trading companies successfully purchased and outfitted ships, built and operated offices and warehouses, manufactured trade goods for use abroad, maintained trading posts and production facilities overseas, procured goods for import, and sold those goods both at home and in other countries.  The【Q2】 large volume of transactions associated with these activities seems to have necessitated hierarchical management structures well before the advent of modern communications and transportation.  For example, in the Hudson's Bay Company, each far-flung trading outpost was managed by a salaried agent, who carried out the trade with the Native Americans, managed day-to-day operations, and oversaw the post's workers and servants.  One chief agent, answerable to the Court of Directors in London through the correspondence committee, was appointed with control over all of the agents on the bay.

The early trading companies did differ strikingly from modern multinationals in many respects.  承认有差异They depended heavily on the national governments of their home countries and thus characteristically acted abroad to promote national interests.  Their top managers were typically owners with a substantial 充实的minority share, whereas senior managers' holdings in modern multinationals are usually insignificant.  They operated in a preindustrial world, grafting 嫁接a system of capitalist international trade onto a premodern system of artisan and peasant production.【Q3】  Despite these differences, however, early trading companies organized effectively in remarkably modern ways and merit further study as analogues of more modern structures.结论句【Q1】

Question #3.  009-05            (21371-!-item-!-188;#058&000009-05)

The passage suggests that modern multinationals differ from early chartered trading companies in that

(A) the top managers of modern multinationals own stock in their own companies rather than simply receiving a salary

(B) modern multinationals depend on a system of capitalist international trade rather than on less modern trading systems

(C) modern multinationals have operations in a number of different foreign countries rather than merely in one or two

(D) the operations of modern multinationals are highly profitable despite the more stringent environmental and safety regulations of modern governments

(E) the overseas operations of modern multinationals are not governed by the national interests of their home countries

OA:E,我觉得是B，我已经把答案的选择放在原文中。

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