单选题 Every day, employees make decisions about whether to act like givers or like takers. When they act like givers, they contribute to others without seeking anything in return. They might offer assistance, share knowledge, or make valuable introductions. When they act like takers, they try to get other people to serve their ends while carefully guarding their own expertise and time.
Organizations have a strong interest in fostering giving behavior. A willingness to help others achieve their goals lies at the heart of effective collaboration, innovation, quality improvement, and service excellence. In workplaces where such behavior becomes the norm, the benefits multiply quickly.
But even as leaders recognize the importance of generous behavior and call for more of it, workers receive mixed messages about the advisability of acting in the interests of others. As a matter of fact, various situations put employees against one another, encouraging them to undercut rather than support their colleagues' efforts. Even without a dog-eat-dog scoring system, strict delineation of responsibilities and a focus on individual performance metrics can cause a "not my job" mentality to take hold.
As employees look around their organizations for models of success, they encounter further reasons to be wary of generosity. A study by the Stanford professor Frank Flynn highlighted this problem. When he examined patterns of favor exchange among the engineers in one company, he found that the least- productive engineers were givers-workers who had done many more favors for others than they'd received. I made a similar discovery in a study of salespeople: The ones who generated the least revenue reported a particularly strong concern for helping others.
This creates a challenge for managers. Can they promote generosity without cutting into productivity and undermining fairness? How can they avoid creating situations where already-generous people give away too much of their attention while selfish coworkers feel they have even more license to take? How, in short, can they protect good people from {{U}}being treated like doormats{{/U}}?
Part of the solution must involve targeting the takers in the organization-providing incentives for them to collaborate and establishing repercussions for refusing reasonable requests. But even more important, my research suggests, is helping the givers act on their generous impulses more productively. The key is for employees to gain a more subtle understanding of what generosity is and is not. Givers are better positioned to succeed when they distinguish generosity from three other attributes-timidity, availability, and empathy-that tend to travel with it.
单选题 According to the author, givers are characterized by being ______.
  • A. sharing.
  • B. selfless.
  • C. productive.
  • D. collaborative.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】[解析] 该题考查givers(付出者)的特点。第一段第1句提到问题的关键词givers，指出公司员工每天都要做出充当付出者还是索取者的决定。随后第2、3句用来说明什么是付出者。从第2句的without seeking anything in return可知，givers的特点是为他人着想，不考虑自己的利益。故答案选B。 该段第3句提到share knowledge可知givers有乐于分享的特点，但是第3句用了三个并列动词来描述付出者的特点，而乐于分享只是其中一部分，不足以概括所有特点，故A项不可选。C项中productive一词在第四段第3句出现，但文中讲的是研究发现工作最无成效(least-productive)的是付出者，可见productive不是givers的特点。D项所说的“合作”在文中没有任何语言表述可以体现这个特点。
单选题 We know from paragraph 3 that ______.
  • A. leaders fail to appreciate the value of giving behavior.
  • B. workers are encouraged to provide mutual support.
  • C. many working environment discourages generosity.
  • D. employees are told to mind their own businesses only.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 题目考查对第三段内容的理解。首先要关注第三段开头的转折词But，说明接下来的内容与第二段意思相反或相对。该段第2句以As a matter of fact(事实上)引出解答该题的关键句。various situations公司的各种情况，即工作环境影响员工为他人付出的积极性，故答案为C项。 从第三段首句可知公司领导者意识到了付出行为的重要性，甚至还号召大家为他人付出更多，所以A项错误。从第2句encouraging them to undercut rather than support...可知员工实际上没有被鼓励相互扶持，而是被迫相互倾轧，故B项也不对。从本段最后一句可知not my job是可能会导致的一种心态，而非公司本意，D项are told错误。
单选题 Prof. Frank Flynn's study has found that ______.
  • A. employees are wary of generosity in the workplace.
  • B. there are more takers than givers among the engineers.
  • C. takers are the most productive among the employees.
  • D. generosity seems to be an obstacle to productivity.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 首先根据该题关键同Prof. Frank Flynn锁定第四段第2、3句。he found后面的宾语从句就是发现的内容，即工作最无成效的是那些付出者，由此可知慷慨的付出行为有可能影响工作效率，故答案选D。 第四段第1句提到员工谨慎为他人付出，这是公司存在的一个问题，不是Frank Flynn教授研究所发现的，其研究事实上是更加凸显了这一问题(further reasons to...)，故A项可排除。根据第3句可知教授的研究只是发现了这家公司中最无工作效率的工程师是付出者，并非指所有工程师大多是索取者，故排除B项。C项也是对原文的曲解，研究只是发现过分为他人付出会影响自己的工作效率和成绩，并没有提出索取者是员工中最富有工作成效的。
单选题 The phrase "being treated like doormats" (Last Line, Para. 5) implies that ______.
  • A. the takers have posed a challenge for the managers.
  • B. the takers are praised for their high productivity.
  • C. the givers have been unfairly taken advantage of.
  • D. the givers have been blamed for low productivity.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 考查的是第五段最后一句的一个短语在本段中的含义。找到该短语所在的句子后，关键是搞清楚这个good people是指谁。该词对应的是上一句提到的already-generous people，即givers，可知C项为正确答案。 本段第1句中的This是指前段中所提到的问题，给管理者提出了挑战，而非索取者本身提出挑战，故排除A项。本段乃至通篇都没有提到要嘉奖或指责员工的问题，故可排除B项和D项。
单选题 In the author's view, the most important way to solve the problem under discussion is to ______.
  • A. take some measures to make takers be more collaborative.
  • B. reasonably refuse or turn down some requests of the takers.
  • C. ask the givers to get rid of being timid, available as well as sympathetic.
  • D. make the concept of generosity well understood and practised by employees.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 最后一段提出解决问题的方法和建议。注意线索词Part of the solution...，even more important...以及The key is to...。题干问的是最重要的解决方法，因此迅速锁定该段第3句。D项是原句to gain a subtle understanding of.．．的同义转换。由此可知选D项。 A项在最后一段首句，也是解决办法之一，有一定的干扰性，但该选项只是part of the solution的内容，并非题干所强调的the most important way，故排除。B项错误解读了原文的establishing repercussions for refusing reasonable requests．原文讲的是制订回应机制防止索取者拒绝他人合理的请求。C项无中生有，文中最后一句只是说要让付出者把慷慨和timidity，availability，and empathy区分开来，并没有提及付出者要远离这些，故排除。