填空题
· Choose the best sentence from the opposite page to fill in each of the gaps.
· For each gap (9-14), mark one letter (A-H) on your Answer Sheet.
· Do not use any letter more than once.
· There is an example at the beginning.
When 10 IBM management trainees piled into a minibus in the Philippines for a weekend tour last October, the last thing they expected was to wind up local heroes. Yet that's what happened in the tiny village of Carmen. After passing a water well project, they learned the effort had stalled because of engineering mistakes and a lack of money {{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}They organized a meeting of the key people involved in the project and volunteered to pay $250 out of their own pockets for additional building materials. Two weeks later the well was completed. Locals would no longer have to walk four miles for drinkable water. And the trainees learned a lesson in collaborative problem-solving. "You motivate people to take the extra step, you created a shared vision, you divide the labor, and the impact can be big", says Erwin van Overbeek, 40, who runs environmental sustainability projects for IBM clients.
While saving a village well wasn't part of the group agenda for that trip, it's the kind of experience the architects of IBM's Corporate Service Corps had in mind when they launched the initiative last year. Modeled on the U.S. Peace Corps, the program aims to turn IBM employees into global citizens {{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}Those people were then trained and dispatched to emerging markets for a month in groups of 8 to 10 to help solve economic and social problems. The goal, says IBM's human resources chief, is to help future leaders "understand how the world works, show them how to network, and show them how to work collaboratively with people who are far away."
Like most corporations, IBM trains managers in classrooms, so this represents a dramatic departure, while other companies encourage employees to volunteer for social service, IBM is the first to use such programs for management training, says Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School. "This is a big innovation. This kind of active service is a good way to train managers." {{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}This year some 500 people will participate, and the list of countries will expand from five to nine, including Brazil, India, Malaysia, and South Africa. The teams spend three months before going overseas reading about their host countries, studying the problems they're assigned to work on, and getting to know their teammates via teleconferences and social networking Websites. On location, they work with local governments, universities, and business groups {{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}
Participating in the program is not without its risks. Charlie Ung, a new-media producer from IBM Canada, got malaria while working in Ghana and spent a week in the hospital {{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}}IBM planners deliberately choose out-of-the-way places and bunk the teams in guest houses that lack such amenities as Western food and CNN. "We want them to have a transformative experience, so they're shaken up and walk away feeling they're better equipped to confront the 21^st century." says Kevin Thompson, the IBMer who conceived of the CSC program and now manages it.
IBM concedes that one month overseas is a short stint, but it believes participants can pick up valuable lessons. Debbie Maconnel, a 45-year-old IT project manager in Lexington, Ky., says the trip prompted her to change her management style {{U}} {{U}} 6 {{/U}} {{/U}}She used to give assignments to the overseas employees and then leave them on their own. Now she spends more time trying to build a global team.
A. The program is growing rapidly.
B. It has set up a Peace Corps-like program that aims to turn top management prospects into global players.
C. The IBMers decided to do something about it.
D. It was coordinated with activities of 13 people in the U.S. and 12 in India, Mexico and China.
E. Anything there would be done from upgrading technology for a government agency to improving public water quality.
F. Other participants report encounters with wild dogs in Romania.
G. Last year, IBM selected 300 top management prospects out of 5,400 applicants.
H. Yet that's what happened in the tiny village of Carmen.