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English to Chinese: Enlightenment and its Enemies General field: Art/Literary
Source text - English For Kant, the French Revolution had been a turning-point in world history, the evidence that his long-held belief in the ineluctable progress of mankind towards a republican, cosmopolitan existence, was demonstrably true. For others, however, in particular for those who had lived through the Revolution and its aftermath, the lessons to be drawn were often very different. The Revolution of 1789, when the French had briefly created a constitutional monarchy, had, said Richard Price, been the moment when the seed which “Montesquieu, Fénelon, Turgot, etc.” had sown in France had “taken root and is now growing up to a glorious harvest. To the information they conveyed by their writings we owe those revolutions in which every friend of mankind is now exulting.” Those revolutions, which had forced the King to defer to the Estates-General, and then led to a new constitution in 1791, had been the true children of the Enlightenment. Subsequent events, however—the trial and execution of the King and Queen, and the creation of the so-called Reign of Terror—cast a very different light on the whole process. Between 1793 and 1794 the Committee of Public Safety, dominated by the “incorruptible” Maximilien Robespierre, and the very young demagogue Louis-Antoine Léon Saint-Juste, began an attempt to transform France not merely into a republic, but into what Robespierre called “a Virtuous Republic,” one which would “substitute morality for egoism, honesty for love of honor, principles for conventions, duties for decorum, the empire of reason for the tyranny of fashion.” And such a republic, in Robespierre’s view, could only be created though terror, “without which virtue has no power.” Thousands, and not only aristocrats and other more obvious “enemies of the Revolution,” but even its intended beneficiaries, like the unfortunate seamstress Mary Angelica Plaisant who was overheard to say that she did not give a “a fig for the nation,” lost their heads to Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotin’s new humane instrument of execution, the “National Razor,” in order to protect the purity of the new republic.
The Terror wholly altered the subsequent perception of the Revolution and demonstrated to what lengths “licentiousness” as opposed to “liberty”—as James Madison had expressed it—would inevitably lead. What he called the “possibility of setting law on the throne,” wrote the German poet Friedrich Schiller in 1794, in bitter resignation, had been nothing but a “vain hope.” Now, with the Revolution in effect dissolved into a form of autocracy, the whole world had turned on the one hand “to the savage state, on the other to complete lethargy. In other words, to the two extremes of human depravity, and both united in single epoch!”
Behind this catastrophe it was easy for many to see the influence of the more radical figures of the Enlightenment. The destruction of “the system,” which had originally only been an intellectual project, had eventually brought down the entire edifice of
society, without ever having suggested very clearly what would take its place. Kant had been right. The Revolution was proof that “metaphysics” could alter the course of human affairs. And it had been a disaster. The French constitution, said the conservative Hanoverian statesman August Wilhelm Rehberg—described by Jachmann as “the finest mind” among all Kant’s students, and derided by Fichte as a German Sophist—differed from all other constitutions “which had ever been established, including that of the United States of North America,” in having been dreamt up out of nothing by “savants and men of state seized by Ideas.” This was not meant as praise. In Rehberg’s view, constitutions grew up over time; they were the product of experience and reflection, not of “metaphysics,” and while “the laws of nature and of reason” are fixed and immutable, those of “human understanding” are, and must be, constantly changing. Like Edmund Burke, with whom he has always been closely linked, Rehberg deplored the ways in which the savants of the Revolution—whom he identified as Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire, the abbé Mably, and Raynal—had manipulated the “metaphysics of politics” so as to eliminate every memory of all past “constitutions, customary rights, and conditions,” so that they might finally be able to “play with citizens as if they were pieces on a chess board.” The result had been inescapable: destruction, chaos, and bloodshed.
But for all this post-revolutionary angst, in particular in Germany, the “Enlightenment” had, in fact, always been identified with reform rather than revolution. None of the philosophes, not even the most radical, not even Rousseau, had openly proposed armed insurrection as a means of bringing about his idealized state, although, like many before him, Rousseau was also highly ambiguous about quite how he did think it would come into being. Most of the major figures of the French Enlightenment were already dead by 1789, but many had been aware, as early as the 1760s, that some cataclysm was on its way, which at least some of them looked upon as both inevitable and desirable. “Everything I observe is sowing the seeds of a revolution,” Voltaire had written in 1764, “that will inevitably come to pass, but which I will not have the pleasure of witnessing.” There is some truth in the Catholic reactionary Louis Gabriel Ambroise de Bonald’s sneer, that Voltaire, Rousseau, D’Alembert, and Helvétius, “and other writers of the same period,” were responsible for advocating radical transformations in society that, had they ever been put into practice, “they would have detested, and to which, sooner or later they would have fallen victim.” Rousseau, politically the most extreme of the philosophes, was the most obvious target for the anti-revolutionaries. Robespierre may have been the architect of the Terror, wrote the German poet Heinrich Heine in 1833, but Robespierre had merely been “the bloody hand that drew from the womb of time the body whose soul Rousseau had created. ” Rousseau, in particular, had become something of a patron saint for the new Republic. During the Revolution passages from his one major, and potentially most inflammatory, political work, the Social Contract, had been read aloud to enthusiastic, if also no doubt mystified, crowds, and streets had been named after both it and him. In 1794 his body had been disinterred and taken to the Panthéon, along with a copy of the Social Contracton a velvet cushion. “Ah,” wrote Robespierre after the event, “if he had witnessed this revolution which has carried him to the
Panthéon, who can doubt that his generous soul would have embraced with rapture the cause of justice and equality.”
But it was not only Rousseau who was at fault. For many, in particular those who had experienced both the Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars which followed, the entire Revolutionary process, from the storming of the Bastille to the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1815, had been the inescapable, and wholly deplorable, consequence of the Enlightenment insistence that mankind had, in Kant‘s formulation, to rid itself of all those “dogmas and formulas, those mechanical instruments for rational use (or rather misuse) of [mankind’s] natural endowments,” which were “the ball and chain of an everlasting permanent minority.”In the subsequent retelling, the whole Enlightenment project had been directly responsible for the collapse of the ancien régime.
English to Chinese: Strategic Management General field: Bus/Financial
Source text - English Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
1-1. Discuss the benefits of strategic management
1-2. Explain how globalization, innovation, and environmental sustainability influence strategic management
1-3. Discuss the differences between the theo- ries of organizations
1-4. Discuss the activities where learning orga- nizations excel
1-5. Describe the basic model of strategic man- agement and its components
1-6. Identify some common triggering events that act as stimuli for strategic change
1-7. Explain strategic decision-making modes
1-8. Use the strategic audit as a method of analyzing corporate functions and activities
1-9. Explain the employment opportunities in Strategic Management
American Airlines—Keeps Slipping Behind the Competition
Much of our work in strategy is about aligning the organization around those resources, capabilities, and activities that differentiate us in the market. However, an equally important element of strategy is keeping the conventional operations of the business up to the median expectation of customers. Those conventional operations can slip for a variety of reasons that often have to do with a lack of investment and a lack of focus by management while dealing with significant changes in the market.
American Airlines is one of the legacy carriers in the United States and was a pioneer in the passenger airline industry. The end of airline regulation in 1978 led to a roller coaster of profitability for the industry that was tied to dramatic fluctuations in fuel prices, too much airframe capacity, route saturation, and a business model that was not oriented to customer service. Many storied airlines failed in the new environment including Eastern Airlines, Pan Am, and Braniff at the same time that many specialty airlines were finally allowed to expand their services, including Southwest and People Express. The regulatory change took existing business models and made them almost instantly obsolete. Competitor moves changed what was once accepted as conventional operations while at the same time creating new competitive reasons that customers should choose one airline over another. American Airlines responded to the new environment by creating the first airline mileage program in May 1981. Prior to deregulation, there was no incentive for a customer to be loyal to a particular airline. American aimed to reward loyalty with a combination of perks. This remained a competitive advantage for American until most of the other airlines matched the offering. This is the nature of competitive advantages. What was once
an advantage becomes the expectation in the industry as soon as competitors match it.
However, over the years since, American Airlines has been a laggard in the industry. Others innovate and American Airlines follows slowly.
■Continental Airlines introduced the Mobile Boarding Pass in early 2007; American did so at the end of 2008.
■United founded the Star Alliance of carriers in 1997; American helped found the One World Alliance 2 years later in 1999.
■Delta pioneered the Hub-and-Spoke system in 1955; American did so after deregulation in 1981.
3
This inability to differentiate itself along with some questionable debt practices pushed the company into bankruptcy in 2011. It was unable to compete with its major competitors who had gone through bankruptcy years earlier and combined operations (United Airlines joined with Continental Airlines and Delta Airlines joined with Northwest Airlines). American emerged from bankruptcy in December of 2013 only by merging (being acquired by) with US Airways. The result was the largest airline in the world in terms of both passenger traffic and flying capacity.
Ever since deregulation, but especially as a result of the dramatic worldwide recession of 2008–2010, the airlines have looked for ways to ensure that they would remain profitable. With those moves customers have been treated to charges for checked luggage (something that provides over US$1 billion in revenue a year), food and beverage service on board, premium cabin seats or seats that were just closer to the front, early boarding, and, with the new bargain class tickets, carry-on luggage. In 2017, the then CEO of American Airlines proudly announced to investors that “I don’t think we’re ever going to lose money again,” Then the Covid-19 pandemic struck.
While American has pursued these upcharges, they have once again found that they are behind their competitors. The company has dramatically increased its debt as it tries to renovate its fleet of planes, something that the competitors did years earlier. While the competitors crafted together mobile apps that allow customers to choose premium products at will, American was unable to deliver these convenience choices to customers. In 2019, the carrier’s on-time ranking was among the worst and it cancelled more flights than any other domestic airline.
The company seems to be perpetually in a state of trying to catch up to basic industry expectations, leaving little room for real competitive differentiation.1
The Study of Strategic Management
Strategic management is a set of managerial decisions and actions that help determine the long-term performance of an organization. It includes environmental
1-1. Discuss the benefits of strategic management
analysis (both external and internal), strategy formulation (focusing on a few competitive advantages while ensuring that the organization also meets the table- stakes expectations of customers), strategy implementation (the complex effort to align employee action to deliver on the strategy promise of the organization), as well as evaluation and reassessment. Originally called business policy, strategic management has advanced substantially with the concentrated efforts of researchers and practitioners. Today, we recognize both a science and an art to the application of strategic management techniques.
PHASES OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
The concepts and processes of effective strategic management have been developed over many decades by both researchers and practitioners.They are used successfully by the largest business organizations in the world as well as the newest startups. Over time, business practitioners and academic researchers have expanded and refined these con- cepts. One of the most critical drivers of business success is the leadership team’s ability to design and implement a strategy for the company. Increasing risks of error, costly mistakes, and even economic ruin are causing today’s leaders to take strategic manage- ment seriously in order to keep their companies competitive in an increasingly volatile environment that must deal with everything from new competitors to pandemics.
As organizations develop, they appear to evolve through the following four phases of strategic management:2
Phase 1—Basic financial planning: Managers initiate serious planning when they are requested to propose the following year’s budget. Projects are proposed on the basis of very little analysis, with most information coming from within the firm.The sales force usually provides the small amount of environmental information used in this effort. Such simplistic operational planning only pretends to be strategic management, yet it is quite time consuming. Normal company activities are often suspended for weeks while managers try to cram ideas into the proposed budget. The time horizon is often only one year.
Phase 2—Forecast-based planning: As annual budgets become less useful at stimulat- ing long-term success, managers attempt to propose five-year plans. In addition to internal information, managers gather any available environmental data—usually on an ad hoc basis—and extrapolate current trends.This phase is also time consum- ing, often involving a full month or more of managerial activity to make sure all the proposed budgets fit together.The process gets very political as managers compete for larger shares of limited funds. Seemingly endless meetings take place to evaluate proposals and justify assumptions. The time horizon is usually three to five years, with most of it being guesswork.
Phase 3—Externally oriented (strategic) planning: Frustrated with highly political five- year plans that consistently fail to deliver results, top management takes control of the planning process by initiating a formal strategic planning system.The company seeks to increase its responsiveness to changing markets and competition by thinking and acting with more processes and rigor. Planning is taken out of the hands of lower-level managers and concentrated in a planning staff whose task is to develop strategic plans that are well grounded. Consultants might provide the sophisticated and innovative techniques that the planning staff uses to gather information and forecast future trends. Organizations start competitive intelligence units. Upper- level managers meet once a year at a resort “retreat” led by key members of the planning staff to evaluate and update the current strategic plan. Such top-down planning emphasizes formal strategy formulation and leaves the implementation issues to lower-management levels. Top management typically develops long-term plans with help from consultants but minimal input from lower levels.
Phase 4—Strategic management: Realizing that even the best strategic plans are worthless without the input and commitment of lower-level managers, top management forms planning groups of managers and key employees at many levels, from various departments and workgroups. They develop and integrate a
series of plans focused on emphasizing the company’s true competitive advantages while simultaneously addressing areas of the organization that have fallen behind competitors. Strategic plans are expected to detail the implementation, evaluation, and control issues. Rather than attempting to perfectly forecast the future, the plans emphasize probable scenarios and contingency strategies. The sophisticated (though often flawed) annual five-year strategic plan revision is replaced with a continuous process at all levels of the organization throughout the year. Strategic information, previously available only centrally to top management, is used by people throughout the organization. Instead of a large, centralized planning staff, internal and external planning consultants are available to help guide group strategy discussions. Although top management may still initiate the strategic planning process, the resulting strategies may come from anywhere in the organization. Planning is typically interactive across levels and is no longer strictly top down. People at all levels are now involved.
Translation - English Japan Pullback Presents Buying Opportunity
Driven by a positive global economic outlook and strong corporate earnings, the Nikkei Index is poised for new highs this year. XXX recommends that stock investors increase their stock market exposure.
Recent weakness in the Tokyo stock market can be attributed to the continued depreciation of the yen against the US dollar and tempered earnings forecasts from Japanese companies during this month's earnings season.
However, a soft landing for the US economy and the ongoing chip boom are expected to support the Tokyo market.
The minutes from last night's Federal Reserve meeting struck a hawkish tone, indicating that further progress is needed to reach the 2% inflation target. Inflation risks remain a key concern, and the Fed is prepared to further tighten policy if necessary.
Nvidia's better-than-expected first-quarter earnings, which sent its share price soaring past $1000 in after-hours trading, are likely to boost the Nikkei Index at the open today.
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