Prep01阅读multinational in19th centry &16th or 17th centry那篇第二题

scarlettcheng

原文：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.

第二题：It can be inferred from the passage that the author would characterize the activities engaged
in by early chartered trading companies as being
(A)   complex enough in scope to requrie a substantial amount of planning and coordination on the part of management
(B)    too simple to be considered similar to those of a modern multinational corporation
(C)    as intricate as those carried out by the largest multinational corporations today
(D)    often unprofitable due to slow communications and unreliable means of transportation
(E)     hampered by the political demands imposed on them by the governments of their home countries

答案是A，不明白为什么是complex enough啊……有没有大牛可以详细解释一下，prep的解释看不懂
跪谢~~~~

scarlettcheng

补充说明：下一题The author lists the various activities of early chartered trading companies in order to
答案是： refute the view that the volume of business undertaken by such companies was relatively low

那到底list那些activities是为了说明 the volume was not low 还是会说明complex enough。。。

scarlettcheng

米有人回复么……？好桑心……