Recording Three
Welcome to the third lecture in our series on the future of small businesses in Europe. The purpose of today’s lecture, as you have seen from the title and the abstract, [23] is to examine in more detail the problems facing small and medium-sized enterprises which arise at least in part from having to adapt to rapid advances in technology. And I want to look at these both from a financial and from a personnel point of view and to offer a few hopefully effective solutions.
Here we have three of the most important problems facing small businesses that I want to look at today.
First, keeping up with the pace of technological change, recruiting high quality staff in a time of skills shortages in IT as a whole and in a highly competitive market, and the issue of retaining staff once they’ve been recruited and trained. Now, all of these problems involve significant costs for all businesses. But they are particularly challenging issue for small and medium-sized enterprises. And those costs would vary depending on the size and scale of the businesses.
So let’s come to the first issue on our list which is keeping pace with developments in technology. [24] Now we all know that the technology industry is intensely competitive with new products being launched all year round as the various companies strive to compete with each other, rather than, say once a year or every couple of years. And this is a real headache for smaller businesses. So, let’s imagine we have a small company which is doing ok. It’s just about making a profit and it spends most of its income on the overheads. So for a company in this situation, keeping up to date with the latest technology, even if it’s only for the benefit of key staff, this can be hugely expensive.
So in my view, some creative thinking needs to come in here to find ways to help companies in this situation to stay ahead in the game, but at the same time, to remain technologically competitive.
Well, there’s a possibility that small groups of companies with similar requirements but not directly competing with each other, [25] they could share the cost of upgrading in much the same way as, let’s say, an intranet operates within larger organizations. [25] In fact, cost sharing could be a very practical solution, especially in times of financial difficulty. If there’s a downward pressure on costs, because of a need for investment in other areas, I would argue that this is a perfectly feasible solution.
23. What does the speaker say about the problems facing small and medium-sized enterprises?
【试题答案】D
【试题解析】题目问关于中小企业面临的问题，说话者说了什么？本篇讲座在开头就提到讲座的目的是详细分析中小企业在适应技术的快速进步方面所面临的问题。由此可知，中小企业面临的问题来源于技术的进步，因此D选项正确。A选项“没有政府的支持，问题不能解决”和 B选项“利用现代科技很容易解决”在录音中均没有信息涉及；C选项“到目前为止，问题还没有详细研究过”，在这次讲座中说话者明确分析了中小企业面临的三个问题，而且接着展开了对第一个问题的详细剖析，因此C选项不正确。
24. What does the speaker say about the technology industry?
【试题答案】A
【试题解析】题目问关于科技行业，说话者说了什么？说话者在说跟上科技发展步伐这个问题时提到，科技行业是竞争激烈的行业，各公司相互竞争，一年到头都可能有新产品推出市场。A选项“竞争非常激烈”与原文表述一致，因此正确。B选项“专注于新产品”；C选项“它要求巨大的投资”和D选项“它对企业家是有吸引力的”在录音中均没有信息提及，均可排除。
25. What is a practical solution to the problems of small and medium-sized businesses?
【试题答案】B
【试题解析】题目问什么是解决中小企业问题的可行方案？说话者最后提到有相似需求和要求的小型企业，如果相互之间没有直接的竞争关系，可尝试共同分担技术的升级成本，而这不失为一种实用的解决方法。因此B选项“互相分摊成本”正确。A选项“与大公司合作”和D选项“信息技术人员的在职培训”在录音中没有信息提及；C选项“招聘更能胜任工作的员工”在录音中虽有提及，但这是中小型企业面临的第二个问题，并非实际解决中小型企业问题的方法，因此可排除。
