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【文章內(nèi)容簡(jiǎn)介】 PART THREEQuestions 13– 18l Read the following article about ‘GoFast’, a costsaving grogramme introduced by the car manufacturer General Motors, and the questions on the opposite page .l For each question 13 – 18 , mark one letter (A, B, C or D ) on your Answer Sheet for the answer you choose. Somewhere today a group of staff from General Motors will meet as part of the ‘GoFast’ programme, and hammer out a new initiative to cut costs and bureaucracy. They may focus only on wiperblades, staff appraisal, or showroom design. But by this afternoon there should be an outline savings plan, which will, when implemented, be measured carefully for signs of success. The aim is to transform GM from a lumbering leviathan into the corporate equivalent of a sports car. The intention is not just to be big – GM is one of the biggest car manufacturers in the world – but to be fast, particularly in its responsiveness to the market. The success of the programme is reflected in the large number of suggestions being introduced – far more than in the old days, when every change had to e from senior managers focusing on the ‘big picture’. The progress made has transformed investor perceptions of GM. Before the GoFast programme was introduced, the conventional wisdom was that GM’s market share was in permanent free fall and its organistion incapable of doing anything about it. Now the decline has been turned around, and the senior managers’ change of approach has led to the pany being energized with a winning spirit that has unlocked longdormant capabilities. That it took a firm of consultants to help devise the progrtamme is perhaps a sad reflection of the danger of corporate thinking being inflexible.The shareholders’ support of GM’s strategy to bee more outward looking and innovative is something of a luxury, though in the long run success would convince even the most skeptical shareholders. The strategy includes bearing down on costs and extracting maximum synergies from GM’s numerous alliance partners, such as its tooling suppliers, and exchanging ideas and management tools with other corporations of widely differing sizes, sectors and nationalities. Having such input is one thing, but its value would be undermined without a coherent mechanism to put ideas into practice, and this is where the consultants proved invaluable.In the car industry, however, there was plenty of skepticism about the programme when it was first announced, with many convinced that that only much smaller organizations stood a reasonable chance of making such a transformation, particularly when it involved changes to the pany culture. Surprisingly, perhaps, this fear was not shared by the consultants who helped senior management to design the programme and, crucially, effect a change in leadership skills。 rather, they were more concerned about the impact that pockets of opposition within GM might have.The results of the scheme so far give rise to cautious optimism. No aspect of GM’s work can hide from scrutiny, and initial fears of a lack of ‘joinedup thinking’ about the impact of one change on other areas soon dissipated, as the ‘leadership panels’ responsible for approving and implementing changes took a broader view. But while internal management has improved dramatically, many analysts are skeptical that initiatives can outweigh GM’s mountainous pension obligations. The pany is still suffering the effects of poor decisions in the past, such as the choice of certain alliance partnerships, and a major change of strategy might be necessary to recover from these. If this were to take place, the pany’s core car manufacturing would need to be much more firmly rooted than it is at present, to ensure it didn’t suffer from lack of focus. However, the architects of the scheme are confident that GM will be far more outward – looking and innovative in the near future . 15 What point is made in the first paragraph about
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