阅读理解：
Japanese Style of Management
Time clocks are banned from the premises. Mangers and workers converse on a first-name basis and eat lunch together in the company cafeteria. Employees are briefed once a month by a top executive on sales and production goals and are encouraged to air their complaints. Four times a year, workers attend company-paid parties. Says Betty Price, 54, an assembly-line person:“Working for Sony is like working for your family.”
Her expression, echoed by dozens of other American Sony workers in San Diego, is a measure of success achieved at the sprawling two-story plant, where both the Stars and Stripes and the Rising Sun fly in front of the factory’s glistening white exterior. In 1981 the San Diego plant turned over 700, 000 color television sets, one-third of Sony’s total world production. More significantly, company officials now proudly say that the plant’s productivity approaches that of its Japanese facilities.
Plant manager Shiro Yamada, 58, insists that there are few differences between workers in the United States and Japan. Says he: “Americans are as quality conscious as the Japanese. But the question has been how to motivate them.” Yamada’s way is to bathe his U.S. employees in personal attention. Workers with perfect attendance records are treated to dinner once a year at a posh restaurant downtown. When one employee complained that a refrigerator for storing lunches was too small, it was replaced a few days later with a larger one. Vice-President Masayoshi Morirnoto, known as Mike around the plant, has mastered Spanish so he can talk with his many Hispanic workers. The company has installed telephone hot lines on which workers can anonymously register suggestions or complaints. The firm strives to build strong ties with its employees in the belief that the workers will then show loyalty to the company in return, It carefully promotes from within, and most of the assembly-line supervisors are high school graduates who rose through the ranks because of their hard work and dedication to the company. During the 1973 1975 recession, when TV sales dropped and production slowed drastically, no one was fired. Instead, workers were kept busy with plant maintenance and other chores. In fact, Sony has not laid off a single employee since 1972, when the plant was opened. The Japanese managers were stunned when the first employee actually quit within one year. Says Richard Crossman, the plant’s human relations expert: “They came to me and wanted to know what they had done wrong. I had to explain that quitting is just the way it is sometimes in Southern California.”
This personnel policy has clearly been a success. Several attempts to unionize the work force have been defeated by margins as high as 3 to 1. Says Jan Timmerman, 22, a parts dispatcher and former member of the Retail Clerks Union: “Union pay was better, and the benefits were probably better. But basically I’m more satisfied here.”
Sony has not forced Japanese customs on American workers. Though the company provides lemon-colored smocks for assembly-line workers, most prefer to wear jeans and running shoes. The firm doesn’t demand that anyone put on uniforms. A brief attempt to establish a general exercise period for San Diego workers, similar to the kind Sony’s Japanese employees perform, was dropped when managers saw it was not wanted.
Inevitably, there have been minor misunderstandings because of the differences in language and customs. One worker sandblasted the numbers 1 2 6 4 on a series of parts she was testing before she realized that her Japanese supervisor meant that she was to label them “1 to 64.”Mark Dempsey, 23, the plant’s youngest supervisor, admits that there is a vast cultural gap between the Japanese and Americans. Says he; “They don’t realize that some of us live for the weekend, while lots of them live for the week-just so they can begin to work again.” Some workers grumble about the delays caused by the Japanese system of managing by consensus, seeing it instead as an inability to make decisions. Complains one American; “There is a lot of indecision. No manager will ever say do this or do that.”
Most American workers, though, like the Japanese management style, and some do not find it all that foreign. Says supervisor Robert Williams: “A long time ago, Americans used to be more people-oriented, the way the Japanese are. It just got lost somewhere along the way.”
We can learn from the passage that the relationship between the Japanese employers and their American employees at Sony is _________.
A、detached
B、harmonious
C、unfriendly
D、very formal
【正确答案】：B
【名师解析】:根据文章内容，我们可以了解到索尼公司在管理上采用了日本风格，这种风格强调了与员工的亲密关系和高度的个人关注。文章中提到，管理者和员工之间使用名字相互称呼，共同在公司食堂用餐，员工每月由高层管理人员通报销售和生产目标，并且鼓励提出投诉。此外，公司还为员工提供年度的公司付费聚会，以及在员工有完美出勤记录时提供奖励晚餐。公司还安装了电话热线，让员工可以匿名提出建议或投诉。在经济衰退期间，公司没有裁员，而是让员工忙于工厂维护和其他杂务。索尼公司还通过内部晋升来建立与员工的牢固联系，大多数装配线主管都是因他们的辛勤工作和对公司的忠诚而从基层晋升上来的。此外，尽管公司提供了柠檬色的围裙，但大多数员工更愿意穿牛仔裤和跑鞋，公司也没有强制要求穿制服。这些措施都显示了公司与员工之间建立了一种和谐的关系。
文章中还提到，尽管存在语言和文化上的小误解，但大多数美国员工喜欢这种日本式的管理风格。例如，一位员工表示，"为索尼工作就像为家庭工作一样"，这反映了员工对公司的高度满意和归属感。此外，尽管有员工对日本共识管理方式的决策延迟有所抱怨，但大多数员工并不觉得这种管理风格陌生，甚至认为美国人过去也是以人为中心的，只是这种风格在某个时候丢失了。
因此，结合文章内容，我们可以得出结论，日本雇主和他们在美国索尼公司的美国员工之间的关系是和谐的。