1998 Passage 2

　　Well, no gain without pain, they say. But what about pain without gain? Everywhere you go in America, you hear tales of corporate revival. What is harder to establish is whether the productivity revolution that businessmen assume they are presiding over is for real.
　　The official statistics are mildly discouraging. They show that, if you lump manufacturing and services together, productivity has grown on average by 1.2% since 1987. That is somewhat faster than the average during the previous decade. And since 1991, productivity has increased by about 2% a year, which is more than twice the 1978-1987 average. The trouble is that part of the recent acceleration is due to the usual rebound that occurs at this point in a business cycle, and so is not conclusive evidence of a revival in the underlying trend. There is, as Robert Rubin, the treasury secretary, says, a "disjunction" between the mass of business anecdote that points to a leap in productivity and the picture reflected by the statistics.
　　Some of this can be easily explained. New ways of organizing the workplace — all that re-engineering and downsizing — are only one contribution to the overall productivity of an economy, which is driven by many other factors such as joint investment in equipment and machinery, new technology, and investment in education and training. Moreover, most of the changes that companies make are intended to keep them profitable, and this need not always mean increasing productivity: switching to new markets or improving quality can matter just as much.
　　Two other explanations are more speculative. First, some of the business restructuring of recent years may have been ineptly done. Second, even if it was well done, it may have spread much less widely than people suppose.
　　Leonard Schlesinger, a Harvard academic and former chief executive of Au Bong Pain, a rapidly growing chain of bakery cafes, says that much "re-engineering" has been crude. In many cases, he believes, the loss of revenue has been greater than the reductions in cost. His colleague, Michael Beer, says that far too many companies have applied re-engineering in a mechanistic fashion, chopping out costs without giving sufficient thought to long-term profitability. BBDO's Al Rosenshine is blunter. He dismisses a lot of the work of re-engineering consultants as mere rubbish —  "the worst sort of ambulance-chasing".

    
 作业：
    ①：解释划线红色部分？ 
    ②：找出几个你不认识的单词，短语或句子。（希望大家找不到 ^_^）
    ③：The official statistics on productivity growth ________.  难度系数:0.14 --!
　　[A] fall short of businessmen's anticipation
　　[B] meet the expectation of business people
      [C] exclude the usual rebound in a business cycle
　　[D] fail to reflect the true state of economy    
    ④：你复习这个text时，碰到什么困难了呢，有什么好的收获了呢？有多少写多少~~
   
   我把真题中难度系数较高的（<0.5的）再次出给大家，组成第三问，只不过把一些顺序搞乱了，呵呵~~考虑到难句分析论坛上已有很多节目主持了，单词也有，现在呢就是要大家有问题尽量提出来，咱们的事一起讨论，比如你想到某个答题技巧啊，考到某个单词的偏僻意思啊，发现了某个佳句啊。多多建议~~~  
    
   奖励：100HY  题不要求全做，也不存在答不答对，关键看你理没理解。主要大家互动下。
        设置回复可见...这样大家可以参考其它人的好方法，也可以指出其不足或错误之处
        视互动积极情况另加50HY小红包~~~呵呵，，一起来发掘吧~~~^_^
                                                        by---paglezjq（爱听音乐的青蛙）