Final 的Test on Business English Reading.docVIP

Final Test on Business English Reading （for Grade 99，January，2002） Part One ：Reading comprehension Passage One Over the past decade, American companies have tried hard to find ways to discourage senior managers from feathering their own nests at the expense of their shareholder. The three most popular reforms have been recruiting more outside directors in order to make boards more independent, linking bosses pay to various performance measure, and giving bosses share options, so that they have the same long-term interests as their shareholders. These reforms have been widely adopted by Americas larger companies, and surveys suggest that many more companies are thinking of following their lead. But have they done any good? Three papers presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management in Boston this week suggest not. As is usually the case with boardroom tinkering, the consequences have differed from those intended. Start with those independent boards. On the face of it, dismissing the bosss friends from the board and replacing them with outsiders looks a perfect way to make senior managers more accountable. But that is not the conclusion of a study by Professor James Westphal. Instead, he found that bosses with a boardroom full of outsiders spend much of their time building alliances, doing personal favors and generally pleasing the outsiders. All too often, these seductions succeed. Mr. Westphal found that, to a remarkable degree, independent boards pursue strategies that are likely to favor senior managers rather than shareholders. Such companies diversify their business, increase the pay of executives and weaken the link between pay and performance. To assess the impact of performance-related pay, Mr. Westphal asked the bosses of 103 companies with sales of over $ 1 billion what measurements were used to determine their pay. The measurements varied widely, ranging from sales to earnings per share. But the researchers big discovery was that