OG 39-244

xaquarius

Passage 39

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 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: the

volume of their transactions is assumed to have been too low and the communications and

transport of their day too primitive to make comparisons with modern multinationals interesting.

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 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.

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 minority share, whereas senior managers’ holdings in modern

multinationals are usually insignificant. They operated in a pre-industrial world, grafting a system

of capitalist international trade onto a pre-modern system of artisan and peasant production.

Despite these differences, however, early trading companies organized effectively in remarkably

modern ways and merit further study as analogues of more modern structures.

 

244. The author lists the various activities of early chartered trading companies in order to

(A)   analyze the various ways in which these activities contributed to changes in management structure in such companies

(B)   demonstrate that the volume of business transactions of such companies exceeded that of exceeded that of earlier firms

(C)   refute the view that the volume of business undertaken by such companies was relatively low

(D)  emphasize the international scope of these companies’ operations (C)

(E)   support the argument that such firms coordinated such activities by using available means of communication and transport

 

这道题觉得ets不太对。选项C中，1。说得是作者refute了其他人的观点，我觉得这个词太重了。原文作者列了一大堆，也不过用了一个seem，语气非常委婉的；2。作者最多是想否认当时的transaction volume 不是“too low and the communications and transport of their day too primitive to make comparisons with modern multinationals interesting”，也绝对没有否认它是relatively low的呀！或者哪里有，我没有读出来？？那位大虾指点一二？

 

其实其他的选项我也觉得都有问题，但我实在无法同意这道题应该选C。

 

附上og的解释。

244.

This question asks you to identify the function served by the author’s listing the various activities

of early chartered trading companies. The best answer is C. In the last sentence of the first

paragraph of the passage, the author states that the volume of early chartered trading companies’

transactions is usually assumed to have been low. The author then contradicts this view in the

second paragraph by listing many different kinds of trade-related activities undertaken by trading

companies that indicate a significant volume of business. Thus the author’s list serves to refute the

belief that the volume of early chartered trading companies’ transactions was relatively low.

Choice A is incorrect because the passage indicates that the nature of the various transactions

engaged in by early chartered trading companies required a complex management structure, but

the author’s listing of activities does not indicate ways in which the management structure

changed. Choices B, D, and E can be eliminated: the list of examples of the various activities

engaged in by early chartered trading companies does not follow a statement about the

international scope of these companies or a comparison with the activities of earlier firms, and it is

not offered in support of an argument about how chartered trading companies used available

means of communication and transport.