Preparation. Reading 1

Transcription

1 2017 Spring Lesson5

2 2 Preparation Reading 1 What use would a country with more people over the age of 70 than under 20 have with amusement parks? More than you might think. U.S. cable giant Comcast Corp. certainly seems to think so, judging by its decision to spend $2.3 billion buying full control of Universal Studios Japan. Comcast s NBCUniversal unit previously paid $1.5 billion for 51 percent of the Osaka theme park back in 2015, suggesting a 60 percent jump in equity value in less than 18 months. Forget what you may have heard about Japan as a nation in demographic decline. Despite the undeniable fact of an aging population, it s home to three of the world s top five theme parks, all of which have consistently boosted visitor numbers while rivals in South Korea, Hong Kong and France have stagnated. The easy explanation for this performance is that Japan s weak yen has made it the beneficiary of a wave of tourism from more buoyant corners of Asia, particularly China. That doesn t hold up to scrutiny, though: Of the 30 million-odd visitors to the two Disney-branded properties in Tokyo operated by Oriental Land Co. in fiscal 2016, just 6 percent came from overseas. The truth is that Japan s domestic economy is a lot healthier than pessimists realize. The country is still the world s third-biggest consumer market, with final consumption expenditure of $2.5 trillion during 2015 outstripping all the rest of East Asia bar China. That s particularly the case for women. Children account for less than 30 percent of visitors at Tokyo s two Disney parks, so the split between female and male attendees at the resort can t be dismissed simply as schoolgirls attending the Anna and Elsa show. A larger proportion of Japan s working-age women are in jobs than in the U.S. or Europe, and while the gender pay gap is higher than in most other rich countries, it s diminishing faster. It s possible that the wave of amusement parks now opening in China from Shanghai Disneyland, through Dalian Wanda Group Co. s network of properties, to Comcast s own Universal Beijing site due to open in 2020 will eventually eclipse Japan s resorts. In the meantime, they can still provide investors with an exciting ride.

3 Preparation 3 Study Guide Points to Consider: (para. 1, line 1) What use would a country with more people over the age of 70 than under 20 have with amusement parks? (para. 2, line 2)... it s home to three of the world s top five theme parks, all of which have consistently boosted visitor numbers... (para. 3, line 3) Of the 30 million-odd visitors to the two Disney-branded properties in Tokyo operated by Oriental Land Co. in fiscal 2016,... (para. 6, line 1)... from Shanghai Disneyland, through Dalian Wanda Group Co. s network of properties, to Comcast s... equity stagnate outstrip demographic buoyant eclipse Question: Why are Japanese amusement parks doing well? Give both the ostensible and real reasons cited in the article. (Hints: tourists, Asian, domestic consumption, women)

4 4 Preparation Reading 2 Mess is Good for Business Organization is big business. Every week, countless seminars and workshops take place around the world to tell a paying public that they ought to structure their lives in order to be more productive. We have more strategies for time management, project management, self-organization than at any other time in human history. Ironically, however, the number of businesses that fail has also steadily increased. Work-related stress has increased. A large proportion of workers from all demographics claim to be dissatisfied with the way their work is structured and the way they are managed. And new research suggests that the obsession with efficiency is misguided. The problem is not necessarily the management theories or strategies we use to organize our work; it s the fundamental assumptions we hold in approaching how we work. Here it s the assumption that order is a necessary condition for productivity. This assumption has also fostered the idea that disorder must be detrimental to organizational productivity. The result is that businesses (and people) spend time and money organizing themselves for the sake of organizing, rather than actually looking at the end goal and usefulness of such an effort. What s more, recent studies show that order actually has diminishing returns. Order does increase productivity to a certain extent, but eventually the usefulness of the process of organization and benefit it yields reduces until at one point any more increase in order reduces productivity. Some argue that in a business if the cost of ordering something outweighs the benefit of ordering it, then that thing ought not to be ordered. Instead, the resources involved can be better used elsewhere. In fact, research shows that, when innovating, the best approach is to create an environment void of structure and hierarchy and enable everyone involved to engage as one organic group. These environments can lead to new solutions that, under conventionally structured environments (filled with

5 Preparation 5 Reading 2 bottlenecks in terms of information flow, power structures, rules, and routines), would never be achieved. In recent times companies have slowly started to embrace this disorganization. Many of these organizations embrace it in terms of perception (embracing the idea of disorder, as opposed to fearing it) and in terms of process (putting mechanisms in place to reduce structure). A large Danish manufacturer of hearing aids, Oticon, for example, used what it called a spaghetti structure in order to reduce the organization s rigid hierarchies. This involved scrapping formal job titles and giving staff huge amounts of ownership over their own time and projects. This approach proved to be highly successful initially, with clear improvements in worker productivity in all facets of the business. In similar fashion, the former chairman of General Electric embraced disorganization, putting forward the idea of the boundaryless organization. Again, it involves breaking down the barriers between different parts of a company and encouraging virtual collaboration and flexible working. Google and a number of other tech companies have embraced (at least in part) these kinds of flexible structures, facilitated by technology and strong company values to glue people together. A word of warning to others thinking of jumping on this bandwagon: the evidence so far suggests disorder, much like order, also seems to have diminishing utility, and can also have detrimental effects on performance if overused. Like order, disorder should be embraced only so far as it is useful. But we should not fear it nor venerate one over the other. This research also shows that we should continually question whether or not our existing assumptions work.

6 6 Preparation Study Guide organization efficiency detrimental void of hierarchy bottleneck bandwagon (para. 2, line 2) A large proportion of workers from all demographics claim to be dissatisfied with the way their work is structured and the way they are managed. (para. 4, line 2) Order does increase productivity to a certain extent, but eventually the usefulness of the process of organization and benefit it yields reduces until at one point any more increase in order reduces productivity. (para. 5, line 1) In fact, research shows that, when innovating, the best approach is to create an environment void of structure and hierarchy and enable everyone involved to engage as one organic group. (para. 9, line 5) But we should not fear it nor venerate one over the other. venerate

7 Preparation 7 Study Guide Questions: No. 1 Which of the following is LEAST related to the obsession with order by businesses and people? 1 People tend to think that order is essential to improve productivity, which in turn means disorder is an impediment to performance. 2 Companies are preoccupied with organizing their structures, so much so that they forget to think about why they are doing so in the first place. 3 Many are unaware of the fact that organizing things only raises productivity to a certain point, after which it actually declines. 4 A Danish firm that makes hearing aids introduced a spaghetti structure and some tech companies adopted virtual collaboration. No. 2 What is the author s conclusion about order and disorder? (Hints: both, detrimental, overuse, useful, impartially, question)

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