2013年商务英语考试听力精选资料3

内容摘要：小编为大家整理了这些听力精华资料供学习使用，希望各位学员们好好利用哦……

The PeopleSoft takeover

COMMENTATOR   I think you could sum up PeopleSoft's approach to their employees like this:"We want you to be happy, we want you to do the things you've good at and that you enjoy doing. ' Very few big IT consulting companies are like that.They usually throw people straight in at the deep end: put them on jobs where they don't necessarily have much skill or experience, arguing that it's good for them to learn. But I think that although they have talked a lot about caring for their people and having fun, PeopleSoft put a lot of responsibility on them too. Like they were saying, ' Here's a job you can do and will enjoy doing,but you'll be accountable for the results.' To enforce that they generally started people on low salaries - and I mean low - and explained that greater rewards would come in time. In fairness, it was direct and honest. In December 2004,when Oracle took over,a lot of employees decided to leave. For a start, the feeling was that their applications just weren't as good as PeopleSoft's - in fact they were probably just more difficult to use - and secondly people thought that Oracle didn't respect employees as much. The CEO of PeopleSoft, Dave Duffield, had a very paternalistic approach - he used to sign his emails ' DAD '(which were his initials). It wasn't well-paid work but people felt valued, which is often more important. Also there was a relaxed atmosphere around the company.The moment the merger was announced, that kind of evaporated. It seemed to become tense, people wondering if the new CEO was going to live up to his reputation for wielding the axe. And, in retrospect, you would have to say they were right to be worried!

INDUSTRY ANALYST  Oracle gets a lot of flak because of its aggressive growth strategy,but i'm afraid in this sector only the big guys are going to survive. The merger with PeopleSoft was a business necessity. It didn't happen because the two companies were so alike - their cultures were very different.At Oracle there's a greater sense of urgency ... It's a stressful environment, but the rewards are huge. I know some reps there who are making millions of dollars. Sure, if you don't cut it, you've toast pretty fast,but that's business. It's survival of the fittest. The differences really come from the nature of the two businesses. Oracle's core product is databases and with databases the customer often make a decision whether to buy or not in a matter of weeks. With ERP applications, which is more PeopleSoft territory, you can be in discussions with customers for months, analysing their needs and then proposing the right solution before a sale is agreed. So that naturally makes for a different culture. The other thing is that the merger happened really quickly - like marrying before you've really got to know the bride. So, of course people are uncertain. I think in the end, though, as both sets of employees adapt to each other's way of working, things will settle down.