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  3. The corporate world is increasingly rejecting imperial chief executives in favour of anonymous man-agers—prudent and boring men

The corporate world is increasingly rejecting imperial chief executives in favour of anonymous man-agers—prudent and boring men

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问题     The corporate world is increasingly rejecting imperial chief executives in favour of anonymous man-agers—prudent and boring men and wo men who can hardly get themselves noticed at cocktail parties, let alone stop the traffic in Moscow. Some of the world’s most powerful bosses are striking mainly for their blandness: Sam Palmisano at IBM, Tony Hayward at BP, Terry Leahy at Tesco, Vittorio Colao at Vodafone. These men are at the head of a vast army of even more forgettable bosses.
    It is true that there are a few more women and members of ethnic minorities at the top of companies than there used to be. But physical diversity has not translated into cultural diversity or intellectual vitality.【B6】________________
    The women who were profiled in a recent article in the Financial Times about the "top 50 women in world business" were every bit as adept with the cliche as their male colleagues.【B7】______________Andrea Jung, the boss of Avon, said her biggest inspiration came from "Avon’s six million sales representatives worldwide".
    【B8】____________________Some, such as Jeff Skilling of Enron, broke the law
    and helped inspire a dramatic tightening of government regulation. Others, such as Home Depot’s Bob Nardelli, paid themselves like superstars but delivered dismal results.
    【B9】_________________Their average tenure has declined from ten years in the 1970s to six years today, and boards are becoming ever more likely to fire bosses if they get out of line, particularly in Europe. The financial crisis has also produced a wave of popular fury about over-paid executives and their unaccountable ways. In this sort of climate it is not just the paranoid, but the faceless, who survive.
    Facelessness—or at least humility—is also the height of fashion among management consultants. Corporate headhunters are helping firms find "humble" bosses. Jim Collins, one of America’s most popular professional experts, argues that the best chief executives are not showy visionaries but "humble, self-effacing, diligent and resolute souls".【B10】_____________________
    Yet there is surely a danger of taking all this too far. A low profile is no guarantee against corporate failure. In general, the corporate world needs its showy visionaries and raging self-centered bosses rather more than its humble leaders and corporate civil servants. Think of the people who have shaped the modern business landscape, and "faceless" and "humble" are not the first words that come to mind.
    [A]  Business journalists have taken to producing glowing profiles of self-effacing and self-denying bosses such as Mike Eskew, the former boss of UPS, who flew coach and shares an administrative assistant with three other people.
    [B]   The turbulent business climate is another factor that encourages today’s chief executives to keep their heads down.
    [C]  Almost without exception, today’s bosses speak lengthily of the same tired old management cliches— about the merits of doing well by doing right, the importance of valuing your workers, the virtues of sustainability and so forth.
    [D]  Indra Nooyi, the boss of PepsiCo, proclaimed that she spends her weekends "doing everything that normal people do".
    [E]  Watch the parade of chief executives who appear on CNBC every day, or drop in to a high-powered conference, and you begin to wonder whether cloning is more advanced than scientists are letting on.
    [F]   The fashion for faceless chief executives is part of an understandable reaction against yesterday’s imperial bosses, many of whom were vivid characters but who collectively brought severe criticism and disgrace on the system that let them shine.
    [G]  The European Union is not the only institution that prefers faceless technocrats to people with star power.
【B9】
选项
答案B
解析 空格处仍然位于段首。空格后提到金融危机下，高管的任期变短，他们一旦违规更容易被踢走，其高薪厚酬以及做事方式令人不满，而默默无闻的高管由此变得更加受欢迎。可见本段重点在于指出金融危机影响了人们(尤其董事们)对高管的态度。各选项中与金融危机相关的只有B。B说到动荡的经济环境是促使现在的总裁保持低调的另外一个因素，与空格后所描述的情况吻合，空格后内容是对这一观点的具体说明。故正确答案为B。
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