Passage 1

Changing technology and markets have stimulated the team approach to management. Inflation, resource scarcity, reduced personnel levels and budget cuts have all underscored the need for better coordination in organizations. Team management provides for this coordination. Team management calls for new skills if personnel potential is to be fully realized. Although a team maybe composed of knowledgeable people, they must learn new ways of relating and working together to solve cross-functional problems.

When teams consist of experienced employees from hierarchical organizations, who had been conditioned to traditional organizational culture, cooperation may not occur naturally. It may need to be created.

Furthermore, the issue is not just how the team can function more effectively, but how it integrates with the overall organization or society it supposedly serves.

A group of individuals is not automatically a team. Therefore, teambuilding may be necessary in order to improve the group’s performance.

Casey, an expert in this filed, suggests that the cooperation process within teams, must be organized, promoted and managed. He believes that team cooperation results when members go beyond their individual capabilities, beyond what each is used to being and doing. Together, the team may then produce something new, unique, and superior to that of any one member. For this to happen, he suggests that the multicultural managers exhibit understandings of their own and others’ cultural influences and limitations. They should also cultivate such skills as toleration of ambiguity, persistence and patience, as well as assertiveness.

If a team manager exemplifies such qualities, then the team as a whole would be better able to realize their potential and achieve their objectives.

问题+答案：
16. What should team members do to fully realize their potential?
B) Follow closely the fast development of technology.
17. What needs to be considered for effective team management?
B) What type of personnel the team should be composed of.
18. What conclusion can we draw from what Casey says?
D) A team manager should develop a certain set skills.

Passage 2
In early 1994, when Marc Andreessen was just 23 years old, he arrived in Silicon Valley with an idea that would change the world. As a student at the University of Illinois, he and his friends had developed a program called Mosaic, which allowed people to share information on the worldwide web. Before Mosaic, the web had been used mainly by scientists and other technical people, who were happy just to send and receive text. But web Mosaic, Andreessen and his friends, had developed a program, which could send images over the web as well.

Mosaic was an overnight success. It was put on the university’s network at the beginning of 1993, and by the end of the year, it had over a million users. Soon after, Andreessen went to seek his fortune in Silicon Valley. Once he got there, he started to have meetings with the man called Jim Clark, who was one of the valley’s most famous entrepreneurs.

In 1994, nobody was making any real money from the Internet, which was still very slow and hard to use. But Andreessen had seen an opportunity that would make him and Clark rich within 2 years. He suggested, they should create a new computer program that would do the same job as Mosaic, but would be much easier to use. Clark listened carefully to Andreessen, whose ideas and enthusiasm impressed him greatly. Eventually, Clark agreed to invest 3 million dollars of his own money in the project and raised an extra 15 million from venture capitalists who are always keen to listen to Clark’s new ideas.

问题+答案：
19. What do we learn about Mosaic?
A) It is a program allowing people to share information on the Web.
20. What did Andreessen do upon arriving Silicon Valley?
B) He met with an entrepreneur named Jim Clark.
21. Why would venture capitalists willing to join in Clark’s investment?
B) They had confidence in his new ideas.