Passage 1
The term “quality” is one of the most misused in the business world. What exactly does it mean? Our grandparents would have been in no doubt. Quality meant excellence: a thing was the best of its kind, and that was that. In business, however, the word has acquired a very different meaning: consistency, a lack of defects.
Around 1970, it is said, a group of investment analysts visited a world-famous UK engineering company. They asked the questions of their trade: about profit margins, stock control and balance sheets. The company’s executives did not see the point of all this. Their products were the finest in the world. Why all these detailed questions about numbers?
Rolls Royce, the company in question, duly went bust in 1973. The trouble with old-style quality was that it encouraged supply-driven management. The engineers would make the product to the highest possible standard and price it accordingly. If the public was so uncultured that they turned it down, so much the worse for the public. It was all very well for artists to produce masterpieces. The job of companies was to please the market.
Quality has a third meaning: that of value for money. To qualify for that meaning, a product must be of certain standard; and it should convey a sense, not of outright cheapness, but of being sold at a fair price.
The US fast foods group McDonald’s, for instance, talks of its ‘high quality food’. But at 99c or 99p, its hamburgers are as close to absolute cheapness as any person in the developed world could desire. They are also highly consistent. Eat a McDonald’s anywhere around the world and the results will be roughly similar. But as anyone who has eaten a really good American hamburger knows, a McDonald’s is also a long way from quality in its original sense.
45.Companies should learn from artists and produce masterpieces.
A、True
B、False
【正确答案】：B
【名师解析】:根据文章内容，选项A的陈述是"Companies should learn from artists and produce masterpieces." 然而，文章中并没有提到公司应该从艺术家那里学习并制作杰作。相反，文章讨论了"quality"一词在商业世界中的不同含义，以及公司应该如何适应市场的需求。文章指出，老式的高质量观念鼓励了以供应为导向的管理，这可能导致产品定价过高，而公众可能并不买账。文章通过Rolls Royce的例子说明了这种观念可能导致的问题，即公司可能因为过于关注产品的高标准而忽视了市场需求和价值。此外，文章还提到了质量的第三种含义——物有所值，这与制作杰作的观点并不相符。因此，选项B是正确的，即陈述是错误的。
