剑桥雅思14Test2Passage3阅读原文翻译 why companies should welcome disorder

剑桥雅思14Test2Passage3阅读原文翻译 why companies should welcome disorder

剑桥雅思14 Test2 Passage3阅读原文翻译

A部分

Organisation is big business. Whether it is of our lives – all those inboxes and calendars – or how companies are structured, a multi-billion dollar industry helps to meet this need.

组织规划是一门大生意。无论是我们自己的生活中 – 所有那些收件箱与日历 – 还是公司的架构中，都有一项数十亿美元的产业帮助满足这一需求。

We have more strategies for time management, project management and self-organisation than at any other time in human history. We are told that we ought to organise our company, our home life, our week, our day and even our sleep, all as a means to becoming more productive. 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 achieve this.

相比于人类历史上的任何其他时期，我们在时间管理、项目管理和自我组织管理方面都有更多的策略。我们被告知应该安排好我们的公司、我们的家庭生活、我们的每一周，每一天，甚至是我们的睡眠。所有这些都是变得更加高产的方法。每一周，世界各地都举办无数的研讨会和讲习班，告诉付费而来的公众，他们应该精心安排自己的生活以达成这一目标。

This rhetoric has also crept into the thinking of business leaders and entrepreneurs, much to the delight of self-proclaimed perfectionists with the need to get everything right. The number of business schools and graduates has massively increased over the past 50 years, essentially teaching people how to organise well.

这种说法也悄然进入商业领袖和创业者的头脑中。这让那些自封的完美主义者十分愉悦。他们文章来自老烤鸭雅思需要将每件事情都弄得井井有条。在过去50年里，商学院和商科专业的毕业生大量增加。他们本质上是在教授人们如何安排好各项事务。

B部分

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.

然而，讽刺的是，失败企业的数量也在稳定增加。与工作相关的压力同样在上升。从所有的人口统计数据来看，大量的员工表示对他们工作的组织方式和自己被管理的方式感到不满。

This begs the question: what has gone wrong? Why is it that on paper the drive for organisation seems a sure shot for increasing productivity, but in reality falls well short of what is expected?

这就催生出以下问题：究竟是哪里出错了？为什么从纸面上来看，对组织安排的追求是提升生产力的捷径，但现实中却远远达不到预期呢？

C部分

This has been a problem for a while now. Frederick Taylor was one of the forefathers of scientific management. Writing in the first half of the 20th century, he designed a number of principles to improve the efficiency of the work process, which have since become widespread in modern companies. So the approach has been around for a while.

这个问题已经存在了一段时间。Frederick Taylor是科学管理的创始人之一。在20世纪前半叶的着作中，他设计出一系列提升工作流程效率的原则。这些原则后来在现代企业中广泛传播。所以这种方法已经存在了不少时日。

D部分

New research suggests that this obsession with efficiency is misguided. The problem is not necessarily the management theories or strategies we use to organise our work; it’s the basic 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 organisational productivity. The result is that businesses and people spend time and money organising themselves for the sake of organising, rather than actually looking at the end goal and usefulness of such an effort.

新的研究表明，对效率的痴迷存在误导性。问题并不一定在于我们用来组织安排工作的管理理论或者策略，而是在于我们在分析工作方式时所秉持的基本假设。这种假设是，秩序是生产效率的必要条件。该假设同时也助长了以下观念：无序一定对组织的生产力有害。这就造成企业和人们花费时间和金钱为了组织安排而进行组织安排，而不是关注最终目标以及这种努力是否有用。

E部分

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 organisation, and the benefit it yields, reduce until the point where any further increase in order reduces productivity. Some argue that in a business, if the cost of formally structuring something outweighs the benefit of doing it, then that thing ought not to be formally structured. Instead, the resources involved can be better used elsewhere.

此外，最近的研究表明秩序的效用实际上是边际递减的。秩序确实可以将生产力提升到一定的程度，但组织过程的效用以及它产生的收益会逐步减弱到某个临界点。过了这个临界点之后，秩序方面任何进一步的提升反而会降低生产力。一些人认为，在企业中，如果正式组织架构某件事情的成本超过了这样做的收益，那么这件事就不应该被正式地组织架构。相反，其中所牵扯到的资源可以被更好地用在其他地方。

F部分

In fact, research shows that, when innovating, the best approach is to create an environment devoid 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 bottlenecks in terms of information flow, power structures, rules, and routines) would never be reached.

事实上，研究显示，在进行创新的时候，最好的方法是创造一个没有组织结构和层级的环境，从而让每个人都能参与进来形成有机的团体。这种环境能够催生出传统井井有条的环境下（在信息流动，权利结构，规章制度与常规操作方面充满各种障碍）无法实现的新的解决方案。

G部分

In recent times companies have slowly started to embrace this disorganisation. Many of them 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).

最近一段时间，企业已经开始慢慢接受这种去组织化的趋势。许多企业不仅在观念上接纳它（拥抱无序的概念，而不是畏惧它），而且在流程上也采用它（设立一些机制来削弱固有机构）。

For example, Oticon, a large Danish manufacturer of hearing aids, used what it called a ‘ spaghetti ’ structure in order to reduce the organisation’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.

例如，Octicon，一家生产助听器的丹麦企业，使用了一种它称为“spaghetti”的结构来削弱组织机构内部僵化的层级。这包括去除正式的工作头衔，赋予员工大量的自主权来安排自己的时间和项目。这种方法从一开始就大获成功。在企业各个方面，工人的生产力都有大幅提升。

In similar fashion, the former chairman of General Electric embraced disorganisation, putting forward the idea of the ‘boundaryless’ organisation. 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 which glue people together.

通用电气前任主席也以类似的方式接纳去组织化，提出“无界”组织的理念。它同样涉及打破公司内部不同部分之间的壁垒，鼓励具有实质意义的合作，以及灵活的工作方式。谷歌和其他一些科技公司也已接受（至少部分如此）这种灵活的结构，由技术和能把人们团结在一起的强大的企业价值观来推动。

H部分

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.

总给那些想要追随这一潮流的其他人一句警告：到目前为止的证据表明，无序与秩序一样，似乎同样存在边际效用递减的问题，如果过度使用的话，还可能对各方面表现产生不利影响。与秩序相同，无序只应该在有用的时候被采纳。但我们不应该畏惧它，也不应该重此轻彼。这一研究同样表明，我们应该持续追问现存的假设是否有用。