A、Employees in a big company never call each other by their first name. B、Even people in top management have probably never met

W: I wonder if there’s a difference in work attitude--working in a small company or working for a big company.
M: Yes, sure there’re differences. I guess that you’re more...uh...conscious of time when you work for a big company.
W: What do you mean?
M: Well, you get this eight-to-five attitude. You know, five o’clock rolls around, and you get up and go home. And now it’s your time.
W: Uhm.
M: Uh... well, when in a small company, you are personally involved and do things because you want to. In the big corporation, you are not as much in control of the exact environment that you are in.
W: There’s something sort of...uh...impersonal about a big company to a lot of people.
M: Well, it’s impersonal in that...uh...probably just a small percentage of the employees know the top management.
W: Hmm...
M: And none of them probably have ever seen the president of the company. So, from that sense, it’s impersonal.
W: Do you operate on a first-name basis?
M: In our company, almost everybody deals on a first-name basis. When I see the president, I call him by his first name. And everybody does so.
W: Well, it sounds like you’re saying that there’s a certain amount of pride and satisfaction in doing the job.
M: Indeed! And in a small company, I think the individual would have a greater sense of the company’s goal.
W: Sort of group spirit or something?
M: You may say that. People know exactly what the product is, and what they’re performing and why they are performing it. In a large company, people get further away from the end product.
W: In that case, it’s not an identification with the primary goal of the company.
M: That’s exactly what I mean.