Практический курс английского языка = Practical Course of English for Students of Economics. Учебное пособие для студентов экономических специальносте

Political and regulatory climate. A final factor that favors the merger wave is the political and regulatory climate. Deregulation has shaken up transportation industries to such an extent that railroads, trucking companies, and airlines have found it necessary and desirable to consolidate. Similarly, deregulation of the financial-services industry has paved the way for bank mergers. In addition to deregulating certain industries, the government has relaxed its position on trusts, thus paving the way for mergers that would have been ruled illegal only a few years ago.

In the final analysis, mergers are probably a mix of good and bad. In some cases and for some people, the results are beneficial; other cases, no real advantages are achieved for either a company or society.

Unit 4

S M A L L B U S I N E S S .

E N T R E P R E N E U R S H I P

Text 1

An Entrepreneur Can Be Made as well as Born

The following essay is by Mr Kian Petit, the secondary school winner in the Young Business Writers Award, which is sponsored by Ericsson, organized by Dublin City University and supported by The Irish Times.

The term “entrepreneurship” has become very fashionable over the past decade. It is associated with enterprise, small businesses and job creation.

High-profile entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson and Gillian Bowler have become well-known media personalities.

Small business has become an important engine of job creation and the European Union had taken a particular interest in encouraging a higher rate of small business start-ups. The general work climate has become less secure, leading more people to consider the option of selfemployed or contract work. Within Ireland, attitudes towards enterprise are changing, and government policy is now geared towards giving more incentives to would-be entrepreneurs.

The term “entrepreneur” has its origins from the French word entreprendre, meaning to undertake something. Entrepreneurs were viewed as people undertaking risk.

Cantillon (1755), an Irish businessman living in France, was the first economic commentator to identify an entrepreneur as a person who takes on uncertainty in the hope of making a profit. He observed that

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some traders “buy at a certain price and sell at an uncertain price, and those who cope with this are the true entrepreneurs.

John Stewart Mill (1862) described the entrepreneur as a bearer of risk and supervisor of business enterprise. He introduced the word entrepreneur to the English language, using it to refer to an individual who founded a business.

Many studies have tried to analyse the psychological make-up and personality of the entrepreneur. The most widely known psychological theory is that entrepreneurial behaviour is the result of a need for achievement.

In the Irish context, a study by O’Connor and Lyons, contained in the book Modern Management – Theory and Practice for the Irish Student, found that the most common personal traits among the entrepreneurs they surveyed were: a strong self-image, a need for control and independence, a need for achievement, calculated risk-taking and seeing money as a tool to achieve aims rather than an end in itself.

Generally, the entrepreneur has the following distinguishing characteristics: the ability to recognise an opportunity; the ability to marshal resources in response to an opportunity; and the ability to undertake risk, which by its nature implies being willing to live with the consequences of failure.

Dr Michael Smurfit, the highly-respectful and highly successful Irish entrepreneur, once said: “I must, I can, and I will.” Any other attitude is doomed to instant failure, he said.

Richard Branson is a good example of someone who possesses the above characteristics and is perhaps one of the world’s best-known entrepreneurs.

There are two Richard Bransons: the public man is informal, friendly, idealistic, happy-go-lucky, attached to his family, guided by strong principles and concerned to improve the society he lives in.

The private man is a ruthlessly ambitious workaholic, a hard bargainer, an accountant with an instinctive feel for minimizing the losses on each new venture, and a gambler who prefers to put his assets at risk every day rather than retire to a life of luxury on what he has already made.

He is an empire-builder who keeps the inner workings of his businesses secret.

And where did it all start? At 44 Albion Street, Shamley Green, Surrey, where a 17-year-old Branson, out of school and looking for something to do, established Student, a student magazine, and his very own record company selling records from the local phonebox. From there, many years of diversification later, he has his millions his mother told him he would get as a child.

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I believe that one can be taught the criteria and attitude to be an entrepreneur at any age. Richard Branson’s childhood was full of parental observation and in his autobiography he tells us of tests set by his parents even before the age of 12, when he was woken early in the morning and told by this mother to cycle to Bournemouth, which was 50 miles away.

Even at the age of four, Branson remembers his mother stopping the car on the way home and telling little Richard to find his own way back through the fields.

On the other hand, Michael Smurfit was taught these essential criteria through his school years and, unlike Branson, Smurfit has three university qualifications.

So it is quite clear to see that one can be taught the necessary information and also one can be taught to adapt to a certain way of thinking and a certain essential attitude.

A Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, said: “If you can conceive it, you can achieve it.”

Text 2

Power of a Great Idea

A dream in the hands of the right person is a winner every time

In this era of multinational corporations run by Masters of Business Administration, lone entrepreneurs don’t have a chance. Or do they?

This is a story how.

On October 30, 1980, 35-year-old pipe fitter Ross Hansen of Fredericton was driving home from work when his car blew a tire and plunged into a ditch. The next thing Hansen knew, he was in the neurological unit of Saint John General, paralyzed from the neck down. Doctors told him he’d never walk again, but Hansen was determined to prove them wrong.

During three years of rehabilitation, Hansen had to relearn everything, from sitting up to writing with his unparalyzed left hand. Though he was able to get around with a cane in good weather, winter’s snow and ice proved insurmountable. Frustrated at being “marooned,” he scoured the market for anti-slip footwear, but the local stores carried what he considered cheap junk. “I can do better than that in my garage,” he scoffed.

A qualified journeyman-tradesman who once worked his way around the world, Hansen had loved working with his hands. With the help of longtime friend Peter Baldwin, a former schoolteacher and musician, he put together a prototype sole that used the principle of studded snow tires to create traction. Although Hansen knew little about running a business, Baldwin thought he was onto something. They pooled their savings of $5,000 and incorporated their company in 1987. Super Soles was born.

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Two years of intensive research and development followed, including 26 working prototypes and hundreds of design changes. Friends and neighbours were enlisted for tests on icy walkways as the partners experimented with a variety of tire studs and other materials. Finally a consensus was reached on the winning product: strap-on rubber soles studded with modified sheet-metal screws. With business plan firmly in hand, Hansen took out a $100,000 loan, but only after mortgaging the equity on his house.

By the spring of 1989, production was under way. A staff of five worked out of a rented church basement, cutting and assembling the materials by hand. Hansen, who was easily fatigued and prone to muscle spasms, sometimes felt overwhelmed by the demands of his business. But he drew strength of his business that he had something useful to contribute.

At first Hansen thought Super Soles’s market would be limited to the elderly and disabled. But as he searched for a way to establish credibility in the marketplace, he came up with the true acid test. Who better for field-testing than letter carriers? His ingenuity paid off. A major contract with Canada Post to gradually outfit thousands of postmen nationwide reeled in safety-supply companies – and healthy sales, which more than doubled in the second year to $150,000.

By now, company headquarters was bursting at the seams. Raw materials, finished product and shipping containers vied for space as orders poured in. Hansen leased a warehouse complete with a loading dock. With a second loan of $50,000 he bought new machinery and set himself the goal of expanding into foreign markets.

After licensing Super Soles to a U.S. manufacturer in 1991, Hansen found a distributor in Norway. He got more than he bargained for. Instead of perhaps 50 units, Norway was ordering 500 at a time. For three months Hansen and his team struggled to keep up with the demand.

Once he’d caught his breath, Hansen determined never to be caught short again. He leased a larger warehouse and crammed it with supplies. Sales broke $300,000. He made further inroads into cold climates – Sweden, Switzerland, Greenland – which meant annual sales that continued to increase. By 1995 Super Soles (now renamed Icer’s Inc.) reached close to $1 million in sales. More than 500,000 pairs are in use in nine countries, where they’re worn by, among others, utility and sanitations workers and, of course, letter carriers.

Hansen’s struggles were enlightening. ”I’ve been everything from CEO to janitor,” he says. “I realized I could do a lot more than what I originally thought I could.”

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Unit 5

E M P L O Y M E N T

Text 1

The Importance and Role of the Personnel Department

Personnel refers to all the people who work for a firm. Most large companies have special personnel departments which are responsible for employer-employee relations. The personnel department is a staff department, which means that it is not directly involved with production, but that it provides a service to the managers. The most important services which the personnel department provides are recruiting, that is, finding new workers or managers for the company, deciding which company applicants are most suitable for employment by the firm, and developing putting into use and implementing personnel policies and procedures for the benefit of good the company as well as the employees.

Most businesses continually need to recruit good personnel to replace workers who retire or quit and to fill new jobs created when the company expands. After management has determined the goals of the company and the positions needed, the personnel department must find qualified people to fill those positions. Depending upon management policy and the nature of the position, recruiting may be done internally or externally. Internal recruitment means that the person chosen for the position is selected from the current employees of the company. This is either by promotion or transfer. Promotion means an employee receives a job with more authority and responsibility than his present job. The employee usually expects to receive an increase in salary along with the new position. A transfer refers to a job or department change for a worker. A transfer without promotion is a lateral transfer. It may involve different working conditions or different hours. Companies that recruit internally often promote internally, which means that the managers have worked their way up from lower positions. It may also mean that the company may hire new employees only at lower positions.

External recruitment means that the company is looking for new employees from outside the firm. All companies do some type of external recruitment. If they are looking for employees with special training or education, they will often recruit at university campuses. They make arrangements with the placement office at the campus to interview graduating students. Sometimes they are seeking top level managers who they will recruit from other firms, often from their competitors. Other

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methods of recruiting involve the use of advertising in newspapers and professional publications, and even paying a fee or commission to an executive placement service.

Most recruiting involves a job announcement containing a description of the job. The personnel department produces a formal job description. If the firm is not well known, the job description may begin with some basic information about the company and its products. This is usually followed by the title of the position the company wants to fill, for example, Senior Design Engineer or Vice President in Charge of Finance. Then the duties and responsibilities of the job are given, as well as where that position fits in the organizational chart (that is, who the person reports to and who the person supervises). Next appear the qualifications for the job, such as the professional training or skills needed. The salary and fringe benefits paid for by the company should also be mentioned. Finally, the job description will tell the applicant exactly what to do if he is interested in the position.

The personnel department should have a method for choosing the best candidate from among the applicants for the position. In some companies this may involve testing prospective employees. Civil service or government jobs often require applicants to compete with each other on written tests. Those applicants with the highest scores are selected for an interview. Other companies may assign points for certain items on the application form, such as experience or education. They may then total the points and select the applicants with the highest totals. After the applications have been evaluated, the best qualified applicants are invited to an interview. In the interview the applicant’s personality and ability to work with others may be judged.

Some people feel the most important function of the personnel department is the development of personnel policies. For efficiency and fairness, a company should have a specific formal written procedure for dealing with its employees. Otherwise, decisions must be made on a case by case basis, and this could adversely affect employee morale. These procedures should state working conditions, salary scale, and fringe benefits such as paid vacation, paid sick leave, group insurance, pension or retirement plan—all things received in addition to pay. Part of the policy may also include a procedure for notifying employees of openings or promotional opportunities. In addition, there is often a procedure for handling grievances, which an employee can use if he feels that he has been treated unfairly by the employer. All of these items may be part of a union contract between the employer and the employees who are members of a union.

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Text 2

Trade associations and trade unions

In most industries, there are trade associations, like the British Clothing Industry Association (BCIA), which represent employers, and trade unions, like the GMB, which represent employees.

Trade associations have three main functions:

•They negotiate national rates of pay and conditions of employment with’ trade unions in some industries

•They present the industry’s views to the European Union, the government and the public.

•They provide advice and information, and sometimes carry out industrial research, for member firms.

There are 114 main employers’ associations in Britain. Many of the other trade associations are small and cover only part of an industry.

Employers as a whole are represented by the Confederation of British I Industry (CBI). More than 200 trade associations and employers’ organizations and more than 250,000 public and private companies are members. About half of the members are smalland medium-sized firms with less than 200 employees.

The CBI’s main task is to state the views of British business to the government, the public and the European Commission in Brussels, where the CBI has a permanent office. In addition, it has regional offices in Britain and provides information and research services for its members.

The main functions of trade unions are to:

•negotiate rates of pay and

•conditions of work with employers, including health and safety matters

•give members legal advice about problems at work and provide lawyers to represent members in courts or at industrial tribunals

•support members financially during strikes and lock-outs by employers and after accidents at work

•provide a range of other services for members, such as mortgages, insurance, personal loans and discounted holidays.

There are 256 trade unions. Many of them are very small craft unions formed in the last century for skilled workers in one trade, such as the Pattern Weavers Society with its 58 members! Some kinds of employees still have their own separate union, such as the National Union of Journalists or the British Airline Pilots Association. In recent years, however, there have been many mergers of smaller unions. Bigger general unions

have been formed to represent skilled, semiskilled and unskilled workers in a variety of industries. One of the most striking changes in recent years has been the growth of white-collar unions, such as the Manufacturing,

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Science and Finance Union, for clerical workers, managers and professionals in different industries.

The largest union is Unison with 1,400 000 members. It was formed in 1993 by a merger of three unions: the Confederation of Health Service Employees, the National Union of Public Employees and the National and Local Government Officers’ Union. Other big unions include:

•Transport and General Workers’ Union, 900,000 members.

•GMB (formerly the General, Municipal, Boilermakers and Allied Trades Union), 790,000 members.

•Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union, 750,000 members.

•Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union, 452,000 members. Most unions have a president, general-secretary and national execu-

tive, who have to be elected by members in a secret ballot. They have paid officials to assist them. Bigger unions have regional or district committees, also elected by members. There are usually paid officials in the regions. Most negotiations in the workplace are carried out by shop stewards, who are unpaid union representatives elected by their workmates.

Most of the bigger unions, 67 in all, are attached to the Trades Union Congress (TUC), which represents the union movement as a whole, as the CBI represents business.

Trade union membership has fallen dramatically in recent years. It reached a peak of 13.3 million in 1979. It is now about 7 million, the lowest since 1946. This represents about 40 per cent of people in employment.

The main reasons for the decline are an increase in the number of unemployed and part-time workers who are less likely to be trade union members.

From 1979, Conservative governments passed a series of laws to reduce the power of trade unions. Strikes were one of the unions’ main weapons. As a result of the new laws, a strike can only be called after there has been a secret postal ballot of members. The result has to be checked by independent persons. Employers must be given seven days’ notice of any industrial action. If a strike takes place, peaceful picketing is allowed, but there must be no more than six persons at each entrance to the workplace. Secondary picketing by workers from other firms is illegal, as are all unofficial strikes. Under the Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act of 1993, anyone deprived of goods or services by illegal industrial action can apply to a court for it to be stopped. The Act also made it more difficult for unions to collect subscriptions automatically from members’ pay. Other laws have made it almost impossible to set up a closed shop where only union members can be employed.

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Text 3

Collective Bargaining

In some industries, rates of pay are decided nationally by collective bargaining between employers and trade unions. The employers are represented by their trade associations and the trade unions by representatives of all the unions involved. These representatives decide a minimum rate of pay for workers in the industry. In a few industries, they decide the actual rates of pay. In addition, they usually decide the length of the working week overtime rates and the minimum length of holiday. There may also be talks on working conditions and other matters, including:

•sick pay

•maternity leave

•fringe benefits

•changes in working practices

•training

•recruitment

•health and safety

•pensions.

National bargaining is also used in much of the public sector to set salary scales and other working conditions for employees throughout the country.

In the private sector, the working conditions in firms vary so much than it has long been common to hold local talks on pay and conditions in addition to the national discussions. This collective bargaining between management and unions goes on at both company and factory level. For example, the managers and unions at plant level might agree that shop-flora workers should be paid 50p an hour extra for working evening shifts and 140p an hour extra for night shifts. Extra payments for white-collar workers might also be decided at the local level. There can be a lot of hard bargaining over pay at local level. Very often, the unions are forced to accept a productivity deal, which means that higher wages have to be paid for by greater productivity or efficiency.

Other matters that might be decided locally include:

•redundancy policies

•productivity agreements

•appraisal systems.

In recent years, there has been a great decline in collective bargaining. It now covers less than half of all employees. In the private sector, many employees, particularly white-collar workers, have been taken out of collective bargaining. They now have personal contracts of employment with their employers. The Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act of 1993 encouraged the change by allowing employers to of-

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fer pay rises or other inducements to employees who opted out of collective bargaining.

As the Study Points have shown, pay is often decided by some form of job evaluation. Many firms have switched from set salary scales to performance-related pay rises. Employees’ performance during the year might be judged by a manager. Or they might be given pay rises for achieving certain targets. For example, bank employees might have to sell a certain number of insurance policies to customers to get a pay rise. There has also been a change to performance-related pay in some parts of the public sector. It has been introduced in parts of the Civil Service and in National Health Service trusts. From 1996, all government departments and agencies became responsible for their own pay negotiations with staff below the senior level.

Some Far Eastern companies with factories in Britain and trade unions have introduced ‘new style’ agreements which depend on much closer co-operation between managers and unions. Some of the main features of these ‘new style’ agreements are:

•Recognition of only one union. It is easier for management to make deals with only one union than with a number of unions. It also strengthens the union if no other union is allowed to join in the talks.

•Single-status employment. The traditional differences between managers and workers, between ‘them’ and ‘us’, is ended. Manual workers have the same hours of work, holidays, canteens and car parking as whitecollar workers.

•Labour flexibility. All workers do any job which they are capable of doing.

•Teamwork. There is a greater emphasis on teamwork and co-opera- tion between all grades of employees.

•No-strike agreements. The union agrees not to strike. Both management and union agree to accept the decision of an arbitrator, or independent judge, in any dispute. Pendulum arbitration is often used.

In pendulum arbitration, the arbitrator makes a straight choice between the views of the management and the union. For example, if the management has offered a pay rise of Ј1 an hour and the union wants Ј2 an hour, the arbitrator cannot say that the rise should be Ј1.50 or Ј1.75. He or she has to say ‘yes’ to either the managers or the unions: the pay rise has to be either Ј1 an hour or Ј2 an hour. This kind of arbitration encourages both sides to be moderate in their demands. They know that if their case is extreme it is likely to be rejected outright.

Some trade unionists see these ‘new style’ agreements as the way forward into a new era of co-operation between management and workers. Others believe it a sacrifice of their basic rights.

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