题型:阅读理解 题类:常考题 难易度:普通
天津市第一中学2020届高三上学期英语第二次月考试卷
"If they hated me they didn't talk to me about it," says a young German manager at a media firm in Frankfurt. Still, he says it was noticeable that when an employee 20 years older than him thanked him for buying lunch he had to swallow twice before adding the word "boss".
Older workers sometimes envy being managed by a younger colleague. Precocious (老成的) youngsters, too, can feel awkward about bossing their elders around. But in Germany a shortage of skilled workers means that such situations are becoming even more common.
The country's population is projected to shrink. As more Germans retire, fewer youngsters are entering the work-place to replace them. As a share of the working population the number of 15-to-24-year-olds has fallen by ten percent since the 1980s, says the German Federal Employment Agency. Firms competing to hire young talent have to promote them earlier as a result. A paper by professors at the university of Cambridge and WHU, a German business school, to be published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, suggests this could be a problem.
As in many countries, German work-places are legally obliged to overlook age when deciding whom to promote. Yet according to Jochen Menges, one of the authors, when an ordinary worker leap-frogs a more experienced one it can leave the latter with feelings of "anger, fear and disgust." People tend to judge their own standing by the success of their peers, and to see failure in being bossed about by someone younger. The relationship between feelings of anxiety and the age of the boss is clear, according to Mr Menges. A manager who is younger by one year is somewhat unsettling; a gap of 20 years is far more discouraging.
German firms certainly shouldn't return to a system in which age equals to rank. But young people tend to be sensitive about managing upwards. And older workers should be encouraged to see the bright side of learning new skills. Daimler, a big German car firm, says it promotes age- mixed teams, so that knowledge can be transferred between generations. It also supports young managers by asking retired employees to provide temporary support.
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