Bonus（奖金） culture has become the subject of many studies nowadays. Many people have been angered by the way some bankers and high officials seem to have been rewarded for failure. Others find the idea of offering many-million-dollar bonuses morally disgusting.
But few have asked whether performance-related bonuses really do improve performance. The answer seems so obvious that even to ask the question can appear ridiculous. Indeed, in spite of all the complaints about them, financial encouragements continue to be introduced in more and more areas, from healthcare and public services to teaching and universities.
So it may come as a shock to many to learn that paying for results can actually make people perform badly in many circumstances, and that the more you pay, the worse they perform.
No one is arguing that bonuses can help companies and institutions attract and keep the best staff. Nor does anyone argue against the idea that you can encourage people to do specific tasks by linking payments to those tasks. Rather, the point is about how to get the best out of people. Do employees really perform better if you promise to pay them more for getting results?
There are some obvious reasons why such payments can fail. It has been argued, for instance, that cash bonuses contributed to the financial crash, because traders had little enthusiasm to make sure that their companies enjoyed long-term survival.
Most bonus projects are poorly designed, says Professor Malcolm Higgs. He thinks the reason is that organizations try to keep bonus arrangements simple. Nevertheless, he thinks bonus projects can work as long as they link the interests of individual employees with the long-term goals of a business.
Bonuses can also encourage cheating. “Once you start making people’s rewards dependent on outcomes rather than behaviors, the evidence is people will do whatever they can to get those outcomes,” says Professor Edward Deci. “In many cases the high officials simply lied and cheated to make the stock (股票) price go up so they got huge bonuses.”
But the work of Deci and others suggests the problem with bonuses runs far deeper than poor design or cheating. In 1971, he asked students to solve puzzles, with some receiving cash prizes for doing well and others getting nothing. Deci found those offered cash were less likely to keep working on puzzles after they had done enough to get paid.
These studies suggest that offering rewards can stop people doing things for the pure joy of it. This was the basis for a series of books by Kohn in which he argues that rewarding children, students and workers with grades, scholarships and other “bribes” (贿赂) leads to low-quality work in the long run.
Those who believe in the power of bonuses fail to distinguish between inner drive and outside pressure — wanting to do something because you like it for itself in contrast to doing something because you want the reward, Kohn says. “It’s not just that these two are different, it’s often that the more you reward people for doing something, the more their inner drive tends to decline.”
A “do this and get that” approach might improve performance in the short term, but over longer periods it will always fail, Kohn says. People who receive bonus will naturally play safe, become less creative, cooperate less and feel less valued, he adds. What’s more, the studies also suggest that offering rewards can also stop people taking responsibility.
71. The effect of performance-related bonuses has not been well studied because people _______.
A. take the function of bonuses for granted
B. see that bonus offering is done everywhere
C. think financial encouragement is disgusting
D. are shocked by the practice of rewarding for failures
72. According to Malcolm Higgs, designs that _________ are the good ones.
A. drive people to finish short-term tasks
B. help to attract and keep good employees
C. link financial rewards with the quality of the outcomes
D. connect individual interests with long-term business goals
73. If a person plays safe to get a bonus, he is probably being ________.
A. more enthusiastic B. more risk-taking
C. less daring D. less responsible
74. Which of the following do you think the author would most probably agree with?
A. Companies should make their bonus projects simple.
B. The benefit of bonus helps to get the best out of people.
C. The biggest problem with bonus is it creates cheating.
D. Bonus offering can stop people doing things for pure joy.
75. Which do you think is the best title of the passage?
A. What Is Bonus? B. Does Bonus Work?
C. Why Bonus Offered? D. How Bonus Works?
孟建平名校考卷系列答案科目：高中英语 来源：2010-2011学年广东省汕头市高一下教学质量检测英语试卷 题型：阅读理解
Computer programmer David Jones makes 35,000 poun
ds a year designing new computer games, yet he cannot find a b
ank prepared to let him have a credit card (信用卡). Instead, he has been told to wait another two years, until he is 18.
The 16-year-old boy works for a small firm in Liverpool, where the problem of most young people of his age is finding a job. David’s firm puts two new games on the home market each month.
But David’s biggest headache is what to do with his money. In spite of his salary, made by inventing new programs within a quite short period of time, the bonus payments and profit-sharing (奖金和分红), he cannot dri
ve a car, get some money from a bank to buy a house, or get credit cards.
He lives with his parents in their house in Liverpool, where his father is a bus driver. His firm has to pay ￡150 a month in taxi fares to get him the five miles to work and back every day because David cannot drive.
David got his job with the firm a year after leaving school with six 0-levels and working for a time in a computer shop. “I got the job because the people who run the firm knew I had already written some programs,” he said.
“I suppose 35,000 pounds sounds a lot but actually that’s not good enough. I hope it will come to more than that this year.” He spends some of his money on records and clothes, and gives his mother 20 pounds a week. But most of his spare time is spent working.
“Unfortunately, computing was not part of our studies at school,” he said. “But I had been studying it in books and magazines for four years in my spare time. I know what I wanted to do and never considered staying on at school. Most people in this business are fairly young, anyway.”
David added, “I would like to earn a million and I suppose early retirement (退休) is a possibility. You never know when the market might di
sappear.”
【小题1】Why is David different from other young people of his age?
A．He earns a very hi gh salary. | B．He has not a job. |
| C．He does not go out much. | D．He lives at home with his parents. |
| A．making the banks treat him as a grown-up | B．inventing computer games |
| C．spending his salary | D．learning to drive |
| A．he had worked in a computer shop | B．he had written some computer programs |
| C．he worked very hard | D． he had learned to use computers at school |
| A．he did not enjoy school |
| B．he wanted to work with computers and staying at school did not help him |
| C．he was afraid of getting too old to start computing |
| D．he wanted to earn a lot of money |
| A．One has to be young to write computer programs. |
| B．He wants to stop working when he is a millionaire. |
| C．He thinks computer games might not always sell so well. |
| D．He thinks his firm might go bad. |
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科目：高中英语 来源：2012届宁夏银川一中高三上学期第一次月考试卷（英语） 题型：阅读理解
According to researchers．money can buy happiness, but only if you spend it on someone else．
Spending as little as $5 a day on someone else could significantly bring you happiness, the team at the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School found．
Their experiments on more than 630 Americans showed they were measurably（适度地） happier when they spent money on others--even if they thought spending the money on themselves would make them happier．
"We wanted to test our theory that how people spend their money is at least as important as how
much money they earn," said Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia．
They asked their 600 volunteers first to rate their general happiness, report their annual income and detail their monthly spending including bills, gifts for themselves, gifts for others and donations to charity．
"Regardless of how much income each person made, those who spent money on others reported greater happiness, while those who spent more on themselves did not," Dunn said in a statement．
Dunn's team also surveyed 16 employees at a company in Boston before and after they received an annual profit-sharing bonus（奖金） of between $3,000 and $8,000．
"Employees who devoted more of their bonus to pro-social spending experienced greater happiness after receiving the bonus, and the manner in which they spent that bonus was a more important predictor of their happiness than the size of the bonus itself," they wrote in their report, published in the journal Science．
They gave their volunteers $5 or $20 and half got clear instructions on how to spend it．Those who spent the money on someone or something else reported feeling happier about it．
"These findings suggest that very minor alterations（改动） in spending allocations（分配） - as little as $5 - may be enough to produce real gains in happiness on a given day," Dunn said．
【小题1】According to the passage,_____________．
| A．the more money you spend on others, the happier you are |
| B．spending money on others can bring you happiness |
| C．Elizabeth Dunn is a psychologist from Harvest Business School |
| D．six hundred volunteers took part in the experiment |
| A．were given clear instructions on how to spend the bonus |
| B．had more happiness than the size of the bonus itself |
| C．experienced greater happiness after receiving their bonus |
| D．felt happier after they contributed much of the bonus of charities |
| A．those who spent money on others felt happier no matter how much they earned |
| B．those who spent more money on themselves felt happier |
| C．people thought spending money could make themselves happier |
| D．the money spent was as important as the money earned |
| A．Experiment on Money Spending |
| B．Spending Money on Others Makes One Happier |
| C．Devoting Your Money to Charities |
| D．Bonus and Pro-social Spending |
查看答案和解析>>
科目：高中英语 来源：2013届甘肃省高三11月月考英语试卷（解析版） 题型：阅读理解
1
The "Occupy Wall Street" movement gained more support on Wednesday as unions and students joined in. With the protests developing from a group of young people's camping out near the New York Stock Exchange on September 17 to large-scale (大规模的) movements across the country and around the world, people can't help asking: What has led to "Occupy Wall Street?"
Three years after the severe economic crisis, the U.S. economy now is stuck again. Protesters are not satisfied with the present economic situation since unemployment rate is above 9 percent and economic growth has slowed. The housing market is still struggling for a recovery three years after the bubble (泡沫) burst. People are losing their houses even after they have paid a large amount of mortgage(抵押). It is getting difficult for young people to find jobs. People feared that a similar crisis like the one in 2008 may be already on its way.
It is Wall Street that possessed the most riches. It is Wall Street greed that, at least partly, led to the financial crisis in 2008. It was Wall Street's "fat cats" who take taxpayers' aid money as their own big bonus (奖金). With the growing economic crisis around the world, people realize that Wall Street is responsible for it. So they try to target people who created the crisis.
The majority of the protesters are young people under 30. Many of them are unemployed. Some are students with mountains of loans (贷款). Some are hard-working people about to lose their houses even if they have paid a large amount of mortgage. They are complaining that the hard-working middle class is getting poor, yet Wall Street stays wealthy.
William Cohan, author of Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the world, wrote recently that Wall Street not only learned nothing from the 2008 crisis, they are also trying to kill all reforms that might "break this dangerous cycle in which bankers get very rich while the rest of working people suffer from their mistakes."
1.. What is the main idea of the passage?
A. The cause of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement.
B. The demand of the protesters of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement.
C. The popularity of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement.
D. The development of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement.
2.. According to the second paragraph, what set off the “Occupy Wall Street” movement?
A. The housing market. B. The bad economic situation.
C. The mortgage D. The high unemployment rate.
3.. We can learn from the passage that Wall Street is the symbol of in the USA.
A. civilization B. power C. wealth D. fashion
4. We can infer that William Cohan .
A. is the organizer of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement
B. lives on Wall Street
C. is against the “Occupy Wall Street” movement
D. approves of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement
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科目：高中英语 来源：2011-2012学年宁夏高三上学期第一次月考试题（英语） 题型：阅读理解
According to researchers．money can buy happiness, but only if you spend it on someone else．
Spending as little as $5 a day on someone else could significantly bring you happiness, the team at the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School found．
Their experiments on more than 630 Americans showed they were measurably（适度地） happier when they spent money on others--even if they thought spending the money on themselves would make them happier．
"We wanted to test our theory that how people spend their money is at least as important as how much money they earn," said Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia．
They asked their 600 volunteers first to rate their general happiness, report their annual income and detail their monthly spending including bills, gifts for themselves, gifts for others and donations to charity．
"Regardless of how much income each person made, those who spent money on others reported greater happiness, while those who spent more on themselves did not," Dunn said in a statement．
Dunn's team also surveyed 16 employees at a company in Boston before and after they received an annual profit-sharing bonus（奖金） of between $3,000 and $8,000．
"Employees who devoted more of their bonus to pro-social spending experienced greater happiness after receiving the bonus, and the manner in which they spent that bonus was a more important predictor of their happiness than the size of the bonus itself," they wrote in their report, published in the journal Science．
They gave their volunteers $5 or $20 and half got clear instructions on how to spend it．Those who spent the money on someone or something else reported feeling happier about it．
"These findings suggest that very minor alterations（改动） in spending allocations（分配） - as little as $5 - may be enough to produce real gains in happiness on a given day," Dunn said．
1.According to the passage,_____________．
A．the more money you spend on others, the happier you are
B．spending money on others can bring you happiness
C．Elizabeth Dunn is a psychologist from Harvest Business School
D．six hundred volunteers took part in the experiment
2.The 16 employees mentioned in the passage _________．
A．were given clear instructions on how to spend the bonus
B．had more happiness than the size of the bonus itself
C．experienced greater happiness after receiving their bonus
D．felt happier after they contributed much of the bonus of charities
3.Dunn’s statement suggested that ______________．
A．those who spent money on others felt happier no matter how much they earned
B．those who spent more money on themselves felt happier
C．people thought spending money could make themselves happier
D．the money spent was as important as the money earned
4.The best title of this passage is ___________．
A．Experiment on Money Spending
B．Spending Money on Others Makes One Happier
C．Devoting Your Money to Charities
D．Bonus and Pro-social Spending
查看答案和解析>>
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