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.”
What is the main idea of the passage?
A、American employees working for Sony.
B、How Sony established business in the United States.
C、How Japanese manage their business.
D、The difference between Americans and Japanese.
【正确答案】：C
【名师解析】:题目的主要内容是描述了索尼公司如何将其日式的管理风格应用到美国的工厂中，并且这种管理方式受到了员工的欢迎和认可。文章通过举例说明索尼如何通过个人关注、员工参与、内部晋升等措施来提高员工的满意度和忠诚度。同时，文章也提到了在语言和文化差异上存在的一些误解和挑战。通过这些描述，可以看出文章的中心思想是关于日式管理方式的，因此正确答案是选项C：How Japanese manage their business。
文章首先提出了索尼公司在美国工厂的管理风格，包括不使用打卡机、员工与管理层的亲密交流、定期的员工简报会、公司支付的聚会等，这些措施使得员工感到被重视和尊重。接着，文章通过员工的直接引语来表达他们对这种管理风格的积极评价。此外，文章还提到了索尼如何通过激励措施来提高员工的工作动力，例如对全勤员工的奖励、对员工投诉的快速响应、以及在经济衰退期间不裁员的政策。这些措施帮助索尼建立了强大的员工忠诚度，并且成功地抵制了工会化的尝试。
最后，文章指出尽管存在文化差异和误解，但大多数美国员工还是喜欢这种日式管理风格，并且认为这与他们传统的以人为本的管理方式相似。通过这些描述，可以清楚地看出文章的主旨是关于日式管理方式的，而不是单纯地描述美国员工、索尼在美国的商业建立、或者美日之间的差异。