"What’s the difference between God and Larry Ellison?" asks an old software industry joke. Answer: God doesn’t think he’s Larry

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问题     "What’s the difference between God and Larry Ellison?" asks an old software industry joke. Answer: God doesn’t think he’s Larry Ellison. The boss of Oracle is hardly alone among corporate chiefs in having a reputation for being rather keen on himself. Indeed, until the bubble burst and the public turned nasty at the start of the decade, the cult of the celebrity chief executive seemed to demand bossly narcissism, as evidence that a firm was being led by an all-conquering hero.
    Narcissus in Greek myth met a nasty end, of course. And in recent years, boss-worship has come to be seen as bad for business. In his management besteller, Good to Great, Jim Collins argued that the truly successful bosses were not the self-proclaimed stars who adorn the covers of Forbes and Fortune, but instead self-effacing, thoughtful, monkish sorts who lead by inspiring example.
    A statistical answer may be at hand. For the first time, a new study, "It’s All About Me", to be presented next week at the annual gathering of the American Academy of Management, offers a systematic, empirical analysis of what effect narcissistic bosses have on the firms they run. The authors, Arijit Chatterjee and Donald Hambriek, of Pennsylvania State University, examined narcissism in the upper echelons of 105 firms in the computer, and software industries.
    To do this, they had to solve a practical problem: studies of narcissism have hitherto relied on surveying individuals personally, something for which few chief executives are likely to have time or inclination. So the authors devised an index of narcissism using six publicly available indicators obtainable without the co-operation of the boss. These are: the prominence of the boss’s photo in the annual report; his prominence in company press releases; the length of his "Who’s Who" entry; the frequency of his use of the first person singular in interviews; and the ratios of his cash and non-cash compensation to those of the firm’s second-highest paid executive.
    Narcissism naturally drives people to seek positions of power and influence, and because great self-esteem helps your professional advance, say the authors, chief executives will tend on average to be more narcissistic than the general population. How does that affect a firm? Messrs Chatterjee and Hambrick found that highly narcissistic bosses tended to make bigger changes in the use of important resources, such as research and development, or in spending and leverage; they carried out more and bigger mergers and acquisitions; and their results were both more extreme (more big wins or big losses) and more volatile than those of firms run by their humbler peers. For shareholders, that could be good or bad.

选项 A、people conceive of the boss as an all-conquering hero.
B、the chief executive is an essential person in corporation.
C、lots of bosses always show their narcissistic trait.
D、the truly successful bosses are those who love themselves.

答案C

解析 第一段第三、四句:The boss of Oracle is hardly alone among…having a reputation for being rather keen on himself.Indeed,...the cult of the celebrity chief executive seemed to demand bossly narcissism,as evidence that a firm was being led by an all-conquering hero.第一段以软件业的笑话作为开头,提到了甲骨文公司老板Larry Ellison,他以自恋闻名;keen的意思是"热衷于",keen on himself等同于fond of himself"喜爱自己"。而后作者阐述了自恋的老板大有人在,对知名首席执行官的顶礼膜拜似乎使得自恋一直都是老板们必须具备的条件,因为它表明一个公司是在一位无敌英雄的领导之下;因此可推断出许多老板都有自恋的特征,故C符合题意。B选项这句话本身没错,陈述一个事实,但并不是这个例子所要告诉读者的。第二段第三句指出真正成功的老板是为人谦卑、考虑周全、心无杂念并通过干一些鼓舞人心的事来领导公司的人,而不是那些自恋的人,所以排除D选项。A选项和B选项中的某些词虽然在文章中出现过,但不能准确体现作者举Larry Ellison为例的意图,所以均排除。
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