DOTCOMS may be moribund， but inside companies， the Internet is still finding cost-saving new uses. “B2E——business-to-employee——didn't have a crash，” says Bipin Patel， in charge of developing the potential of the corporate intranet at the Ford Motor Company. “It's still growing.”

Ford has gone further than most companies to get its employees online： it offered its American employees personal computers， and 90% of them accepted. Ford hopes that the free PCs will save its own and its employees' time by moving services online. General Motors， Ford's great rival， considered a similar scheme but found that most employees willing to use PCs already had them. It is helping staff to pay for high-bandwidth connections instead.

At Ford， the human-resources department has pioneered a scheme to provide up-to-the-minute information to employees about pay and benefits. In the past， employees sometimes found that it took weeks to get a copy of the pay information they needed to do their tax returns， and the department's staff spent mind-numbing hours answering the same questions from hundreds of different employees. Now employees can look at a password-protected site that displays their payslips over the previous 18 months. They can see all deductions， and the hours they worked. All this information was on the human-resources database： displaying it to employees has saved staff time.

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“People want more and more of this self-service information， which they can manage themselves，” observes Mr Patel. “There is no such thing as information overload here， because it's their information.” Even training seems to work better online： Ford employees can now download a range of courses， including one on “Listening and Handling Tough Situations”， all designed for digestion in ten- or 15-minute gobbets. The company claims to have cut training costs by $2m during the past six months， as fewer people leave their desks to learn.

The company also uses its intranet to communicate with its staff around the world. Jacques Nasser， Ford's boss， sends out “Let's chat” notes once a week. In fact， Mr Nasser does most of the chatting. He gets hundreds of e-mails in reply， but the communication is basically a one-way flow. The company also runs chatrooms， in which employees can question various inhouse experts and outside analysts live on the corporate intranet.

In time， thinks Mr Patel， communications technology will reshape corporate behaviour. It will encourage collaboration and team-working. Already， the Internet is causing disintermediation within companies， he argues， just as it did in e-commerce： the human-resources department does much less administration once the benefits system is more self-service， but rather more advising and consulting. One day， working in human resources might even be fun.

注(1)：本文选自Economist; 8/25/2001， p50， 1/3p;

注(2)：本文习题命题模仿对象2004年真题Text 1(其中个别题目顺序做了部分调整);

1. How does the author introduce his topic?

[A]Posing a contrast.

[B]justifying an assumption.

[C]Explaining a phenomenon.

[D]Making a comparison.

2. Why did Ford and GM intend to provide their employees with PCs?

[A]PCs can help them save a lot.

[B]B2E is a growing thing.

[C]The employees prefer to use PCs.

[D]Proving PCs is a way of competition.

3. Which of the following is not the advantage of internet?

[A]It can save time.

[B]It can save cost.

[C]It encourages collaboration and team-working.

[D]It makes human-resources department an easy job.

4. The expression “a one-way flow”(Line 3， Paragraph 5) most probably means

__________.

[A]not encouraging open answers

[B]only one side asking questions

[C]only yes or no questions

[D]the topics lack variety

5. Which of the following is true according to the text?

[A]The Internet can help DOTCOMS come back to life.

[B]The courses downloaded are practical， but time-consuming.

[C]The internet makes the work of human-resources department more direct and interesting.

[D]The employees can manage all the information by themselves.

答案：CADBC

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