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.
247. The author mentions the artisan and peasant production systems of early chartered trading
companies as an example of
(A) an area of operations of these companies that was unhampered by rudimentary systems of
communications and transport
(B) a similarity that allows fruitful comparison of these companies with modern multinationals
(C) a positive achievement of these companies in the face of various difficulties
(D) a system that could not have emerged in the absence of management hierarchies
(E) a characteristic that distinguishes these companies from modern multinationals
这一题我做错了，看了解释后明白，因为整个第三段都是在描写trading companies和multinational companies的区别，而artisan and peasant production在这一段出现也是作为一个例子来说明两者区别的~
可是这一句话到底应该怎么理解呢? artisan 是手工艺人，peasant是农民的意思，这句话该怎么翻译呢？
谢谢大家~~~ | 
京公网安备11010202008513号 京ICP证101109号 京ICP备12012021号
发表于 2004-11-21 22:20:00
