early on with Ray Kroc who started the McDonald‘s system in 1955, and back then franchises were just starting to proliferate, and there were not a lot of laws about how they would conduct businesses. And one of the things was done, sadly, was that many of those franchisors would take commissions back from suppliers that supplied the franchisees product. From the beginning, that's now how we‘re gonna do businesses. We‘re gonna have integrity, we‘re gonna be honest with our franchisees, I wanna the franchisees to make the first dollar, I‘ll make the second dollar, and that kind of got into the DNA very early. And to this day, there is a wonderful relationship of integrity and honesty with our relationships with our operators, with our vendors.
Tanya: And I would imagine that motivates everybody because you feel like if you do well, you will get rewarded.
Paul: That‘s correct. Absolutely, no question about that. How important everybody working together as a team is!
Tanya: Right, and another secret to McDonalds‘ success, I understand, is relationships, and the company apparently promotes the idea that relationships are sort of the secret sauce, as, if you will, and everyone who works for the company is a part of an extended family, is that right? Paul: The Mcfamily!
Tanya: Yeah.
Paul: It's a great safe way from honesty and integrity. If you start with the foundation of honesty [and] integrity, it goes right into relationships. And Fred Turner, who is still to this day, 54 years later, is active, was actually the one that coined the phrase ―the three-legged stool‖. What it really meant was, that there were three legs in our relationship: the franchisees, the suppliers and the company people. And all of us pulling together, and working together as a team and the synergy of that team, is how it will be successful. And if you think about that, you know how important that is, that you really don‘t want to let your team members down and you want them to be successful.
Tanya: Sure, and every leg of the stool is only as strong as the other leg, right? Paul: Absolutely.
Tanya: And another secret is the idea of standards. One of the McDonalds‘ mottos, apparently, is never be satisfied? [Yes.] Tell us about the company‘s no excuses working environment.
Paul: Yeah, well, standards are very important and you know is – in order to have a standard, you have that measurement, and if it‘s worth doing, it‘s worth measuring. And every time you measure something, performance improves because people have a guideline –
they know where they‘re going, and that, that‘s actually part of even the people side of that. The meritocracy wasn‘t based on anything, but clear metrics on how you advance through the ranks on that. But it was never satisfied, we always felt we could do it harder, quicker, faster. And that stayed one step ahead of the competition and kept our franchisees the best in the system.
Home Listening ．．．．．．．．．．．．．
International business is a term used to collectively describe all commercial transactions (private and governmental, sales, investments, logistics, and transportation) that take place between two or more nations. Usually, private companies 1) __undertake____ such transactions for profit; governments for profit and for political reasons. It refers to all business activities which involve cross 2) border____ transactions of goods, services and resources between two or more nations. Transaction of economic resources include capital, skills, people, etc. for international production of physical goods, and services such as finance, banking, 3) ___ insurance construction, etc.
The increase in international business and in foreign 4)
investment___has created a need for executives with knowledge
of foreign languages and skills in cross-cultural communication. Americans, however, have not been well trained in either area
and, consequently, have not enjoyed the same level of success in 5) _negotiation__ in an international arena as their foreign counterparts. Negotiating is the process of communicating back and forth for the purpose of reaching an agreement. It involves persuasion
and
compromise,
but
in
order
to
6)
___participate___in either one, the negotiators must understand the ways in which people are persuaded and how compromise is reached within the culture of the negotiation.
Home Listening ．．．．．．．．．．．．．
In studies of American negotiators abroad, several traits have been 7 identified that undermine the negotiator’s position, two of which, in particular, are directness and 8) impatience . Furthermore, American negotiators often insist on realizing short-term goals. Foreign negotiators, on the other hand, may value the relationship established between negotiators and may be willing to invest time in it for long-term benefits.9) In order to solidify the relationship, they may choose indirect interactions , without regard for the time involved in getting to know the other negotiator.
Clearly, perceptions and differences in values affect the outcomes of negotiations and the success of negotiators. 10) . For Americans to play a more effective role in international business negotiations, they must put forth more effort to improve cross-cultural understanding.
UNIT 2 Made in China ．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．．
Script ．．．．．．Why buy products made in China? One of the most important reasons is that buying goods from China saves Americans over $100 billion annually. This is mostly due to the fact that Chinese workers are paid substantially less than comparable American employees, as the cost of living is much higher in the U.S. American buyers (small companies, major corporations, as well as every size in between) team up with Chinese suppliers to establish a genuine win-win situation for all involved parties, as well as both countries. The Chinese suppliers make money because they are selling their ―Made in China‖ products, and the American buyers are happy because they are purchasing fine quality, inexpensive products for their business, therefore reducing their overall costs. If such an American buyer is in the retail industry, the low prices are passed on to the consumer, all while paying an American worker to unpackage, monitor, maintain and sell the item.
? As you can see, the trade market with China has more benefits than it‘s given credit for by the advocates for homegrown