Exercise 19. Free discussion.

A) Answer the following questions. Give your opinion and justify it.

1)What is corruption?

2) Do you agree that the level of corruption depends on the political system of the country?

3) Which countries are the most corrupt to your mind?

4) What are the common characteristics of countries with high corruption in your opinion?

5) What is the magnitude of corruption?

6) Do higher wages for bureaucrats reduce corruption?

7) Can competition reduce corruption?

8) Is it possible to eliminate corruption completely in a human society?

B) Write down a short summary based on the results of the discussion.

Exercise 20. Role play “At the Anti-Corruption Conference”.

Turn to page 104 to choose your role and get ready to present it.

Unit 5. A Competitive Spirit in Business

Lead-in

Exercise 1. Starting up:

1. Do you think that negative feelings can boost progress?

2. Do you consider a competitive spirit as belonging to positive or negative feelings?

3. Where does a competitive spirit come from?

4. Could you differentiate between personal animosity and a competitive spirit?

Reading and Vocabulary

Exercise 2. You are going to read the report “A Competitive Spirit in Business”. Do you agree that competition is a mighty force in business? How can you prove it?

Exercise 3. Mach the English phrases from the report with their Russian equivalents:

1. to come up with an idea	всего лишь дилетант
2. to respond to the accusation	расчетливый хищник
3. to do grudges	не подпускать (держать на расстоянии)
4. to keep something at bay	ответить на обвинение
5. a mere amateur	источник вражды
6. a calculating predator	ошеломляющие комментарии
7. on the ground	быть в ссоре с кем-либо
8. a wellspring of innovation	Вот вам и…
9. to be at loggerheads with somebody	личная вражда
10. an incubator of animosity	на основании
11. personal animosity	предложить идею
12. So much for…	принимать что-то близко к сердцу
13. a mighty force	неистощимый источник изобретений
14. gobsmacked comments	ворчать (выражать недовольство)
15. to take something personally	могучая сила

Exercise 4. Read the report “A Competitive Spirit in Business” on the problem of competition in business and make a list of all the companies mentioned and their bosses. What are these companies famous for?

Personal animosity is a mighty force in business, for good as well as ill.

The third world war, it seems, has broken out in an unexpected place: Silicon Valley. Apple and Google were once so close that Eric Schmidt, Google's boss, joked that they should merge and change their name to AppleGoo. Now, however, the two companies are at loggerheads over everything from apps to acquisitions – and Mr Schmidt and Apple's boss, Steve Jobs, are tak­ing the fight personally.

So personally, in fact, that tech types are lost for superlatives. The New York Times quotes a long list of gobsmacked comments. Meetings have been "heated" and "confrontational". The sense of rivalry is "intense". The two men are treating the world to "an unusually vivid display of enmity and ambition". One of the Times' insiders not only likens the squabble to "world war three" but also dubs it "the biggest ego battle in history". So much for Ju­lius Caesar and Mark Anthony.

The only surprise in all this is that anybody should be sur­prised. The business world has always been a cauldron of perso­nal animosity, and those animosities have been particularly in­tense in Silicon Valley. Few do grudges quite as well as geeks. Steve Jobs is legendary for his grudge matches. He has been feuding with Bill Gates for decades. He has described Microsoft's pro­ducts as "third rate" and complained that the company has "ab­solutely no taste". ("I don't mean that in a small way. I mean that in a big way.") Apple's annoying "I'm a Mac" ads are strikingly personal: they pitch a frumpy Bill Gates lookalike against a too-cool-for-school Jobs doppelganger (with added hair).

Mr Jobs has shared his spleen around over the years. He has accused Michael Dell of making "un-innovative beige boxes", for example. And Messrs Gates and Dell have given as good as they have got. Mr Gates once described Apple's software as nothing more than "warmed-over Unix".

Yet Mr Jobs is a mere amateur in the grudge wars compared with Larry Ellison, the boss of Oracle. Mr Ellison has feuded with both fellow software titans and up-and-coming employees in his own company. He once described Mr Gates's PCS as "ridiculous" on the (in fact far-sighted) grounds that they should be replaced with simpler devices that could access software over the internet. He drove Tom Siebel, Oracle's most talented salesman, out of the company ("I hate Tom," he is quoted as saying). He even develops grudges in his leisure time: he has recently been engaged in an ex­pensive feud with Ernesto Bertarelli, a Swiss billionaire, over the America's Cup, a boat race.

Silicon Valley is an incubator of animosity for the same rea­son it is a wellspring of innovation: it is a small world populated by people who want to prove how clever they are. The bound­aries between markets are vague and transitory. Companies flit between friendship and enmity. The pace of innovation is so fast that it is difficult to determine who first came up with an idea. (Steve Jobs once responded to the accusation that he had "bor­rowed" somebody else's idea with a quote from Pablo Picasso: "Good artists copy, great artists steal.") People in the technology industry talk about spreading FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Andy Grove, the former boss of Intel, entitled his autobiography "Only the Paranoid Survive".

Even by the Valley's elevated standards, Do-No-Evil Google is a lebensraum-seeking and paranoia-inducing company. Tech ri­vals such as Yahoo! and Microsoft have long seen Googlezilla as a calculating predator. The bosses of media and advertising com­panies worry that Google is destroying their business models, as more and more activity goes online. Rupert Murdoch has com­plained that it and other online news "aggregators" steal his newspapers' stories. Apple is rightly worried that Google's An­droid phone is aimed directly at its iPhone-and has unleashed its arsenal of legal and commercial weapons to try to keep it at bay.

It is always potentially dangerous when competition bleeds over into personal animosity: judgments can be clouded and strategy distorted. The danger is particularly pronounced with internal grudge-matches. Mr Ellison's unwill­ingness to share the limelight with his employees could eventual­ly lead to a messy succession crisis. Family companies are forever being destroyed by internal squabbles.

(“The Economist”, March 20^th 2010, page 74)

Exercise 5. Comprehension check. Answer the following questions:

1. What are the reasons for the “third world war” according to the report?

2. What is Steve Jobs legendary for?

3. Who is Mr. Jobs compared with as a mere amateur?

4. Why did Mr. Ellison drive his most talented salesman out of the company?

5. Hollywood is considered to be an incubator of animosity and a wellspring of innovation, isn’t it?

6. Why is it difficult to determine who first came up with an idea?

7. What does FUD stand for?

8. How is Google described in the text?

9. What is the usual reason for destruction of family companies?

10. What does the list of gobsmacked commentaries in the New York Times include?

Exercise 6. Study the text again (Exercise 4) and find the adequate English equivalents of the following words and phrases in the text: 1) аппарат, 2) приобретение (захват), 3) обращаться с чем-либо (относится к чему-либо), 4) сравнивать, 5) ссора (перебранка), 6) окрестить (дать прозвище), 7) враждовать, 8) двойник, 9) призрак-двойник, 10) энергичный напористый, 11) дальновидный (предусмотрительный), 12) неясный (смутный), 13) скоротечный (кратковременный), 14) соперник, 15) беспорядочный.

Listening

Exercise 7. Translate the following phrases into Russian:

commercial nous, to get in somebody’s way, dust-up, outsize personalities, competitive spirit, to drive somebody to fury, go hand in hand.

Exercise 8. Read the following statements and decide whether they are true (T) or false (F):

1. But bilious outbursts and business success often go hand in hand.

2. Charles Revson boasts that he has never been a bastard.

3. Sometimes personal animosity can actually create business opportunities.

4. Mr Jobs's habit of personalizing his commercial rivalry with Microsoft and Dell has honed Apple's self-image as the coolest company on the block.

Exercise 9. Listen to the end of the text “A Competitive Spirit in Business” on the problems of competition in business and check your answers (“The Economist”, March 20^th 2010).

Exercise 10. Listen to the end of the text “A Competitive Spirit in Business” on the problems of competition again and fill in the gaps in the script using the target vocabulary from exercise 7.

But bilious outbursts and business success often go hand in hand. This is partly because people with outsize ______________________________ also tend to have ________ personalities. The same passions that drive them to make something from nothing also drive them to crush anybody who gets in their way. Charles Revson, the architect of Revlon, boasted, "I built this business by being a bastard, I run it by being a bastard. I'll always be a bastard."

But it is also because personal animosity can be the grit in the oyster of competition. Sometimes it can actually create business opportunities: Mr Murdoch's personal dislike of smug liberals has helped him create a right-of-centre media empire that now includes both Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. Even when vituperation does not drive competition – as is the case in the Google-Apple dust up – it can certainly sharpen it. Mr Jobs's habit of personalising his commercial rivalry with Microsoft and Dell has honed Apple's self-image as the coolest company on the block. Mr Ellison's ____________________________ has helped his company to thrive for decades. The Ellisons and Jobses of this world may drive their fellow executives to carpet-chewing ___________. But the world is the better for them.

Exercise 11. Translate the following sentences into English using the target vocabulary (Exercises 3, 6, 7):

1. Если вы всего лишь дилетант, не стоит тратить время на починку этого сложного аппарата.

2. Используйте более дальновидный п одход, чтобы ответить на обвинения и при этом не довести вашего тренера до бешенства.

3. Дух конкуренции является неистощимым источником изобретений.

4. Коммерческая жилка позволила ему правильно оценить смутные и опасные перспективы этого предложения и вовремя отказаться от него.

5. Директора этого ресторана прозвали «расчетливым хищником», так как он всегда добивался своих целей любой ценой.

Exercise 12. Paraphrase the following sentences using the target vocabulary (Exercises 3, 6, 7):

1. You are welcome to offer your ideas anytime.

2. An unusual concentration of extraordinary people in the department was the reason for generating the source of enmity.

3. You are taking it too close to heart – relax and try to avoid such quarrels and scandals.

4. The consultant advised the director to stop grumbling and use his most energetic personnel to cope with the opponents.

Speaking

Exercise 13. Work in pairs. Give examples of uncompromising competitors in business worldwide using the target vocabulary (Ex 3, 6, 7). Work together with another pair and compare your examples.

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