Picture a typical MBA lecture theatre twenty years ago. In it the majority of students will have conformed to the standard model

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问题     Picture a typical MBA lecture theatre twenty years ago. In it the majority of students will have conformed to the standard model of the time: male, middle class and Western. Walk into a class today, however, and you’ll get a completely different impression. For a start, you will now see plenty more women—the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, for example, boasts that 40% of its new enrolment is female. You will also see a wide range of ethnic groups and nationals of practically every country.
    It might be tempting, therefore, to think that the old barriers have been broken down and equal opportunity achieved. But, increasingly, this apparent diversity is becoming a mask for a new type of conformity. Behind the differences in sex, skin tones and mother tongues, there are common attitudes, expectations and ambitions which risk creating a set of clones among the business leaders of the future.
    Diversity, it seems, has not helped to address fundamental weaknesses in business leadership. So what can be done to create more effective managers of the commercial world? According to Valerie Gauthier, associate dean at HEC Paris, the key lies in the process by which MBA programmes recruit their students. At the moment candidates are selected on a fairly narrow set of criteria such as prior academic and career performance, and analytical and problem solving abilities. This is then coupled to a school’s picture of what a diverse class should look like, with the result that passport, ethnic origin and sex can all become influencing factors. But schools rarely dig down to find out what really makes an applicant succeed, to create a class which also contains diversity of attitude and approach—arguably the only diversity that, in a business context, really matters.
    Professor Gauthier believes schools should not just be selecting candidates from traditional sectors such as banking, consultancy and industry. They should also be seeking individuals who have backgrounds in areas such as political science, the creative arts, history or philosophy, which will allow them to put business decisions into a wider context.
    Indeed, there does seem to be a demand for the more rounded leaders such diversity might create. A study by Mannaz, a leadership development company, suggests that, while the bully-boy chief executive of old may not have been eradicated completely, there is a definite shift in emphasis towards less tough styles of management—at least in America and Europe. Perhaps most significant, according to Mannaz, is the increasing interest large companies have in more collaborative management models, such as those prevalent in Scandinavia, which seek to integrate the hard and soft aspects of leadership and encourage delegated responsibility and accountability.
What is the author’s concern about current business school education?

选项 A、It will arouse students’ unrealistic expectations.
B、It stresses competition rather than cooperation.
C、It focuses on theory rather than on practical skills.
D、It will produce business leaders of a uniform style.

答案D

解析 结合第1段和第61题可知,第2段末句中“不同性别、肤色、母语”是现代商学院学生的特点,指代的是现代的商学院教育,故将本题的出处定位到第2段末句。该句提到,在不同性别、肤色、母语的背后暗藏着相同的东西,可能会有这样的风险:在未来的商界领导人中产生一批相同的人。结合上段和上题可知,“不同性别、肤色、母语”是现代商学院学生的特点,指代的是现代的商学院教育。作者说这种现代的商学院教育背后存在着风险,即是在表达自己的担心。D)It will produce business leaders of a uniform style“将产生统一风格的商界领导人”是对这一风险即担心的同义转述,故为答案。a uniform style对应clones。A)是针对第2段末句中的expectations设的干扰项,文中未提到作者担心学生有不切实际的期望。B)是针对文章末句Mannaz提到的“大公司采用的合作性更强的管理方式”设的干扰项,但文中未提到作者担心现代商业教育会更重视竞争。文中未提到作者担心现代商业教育重理论不重实践,故排除C)。
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