Former Head of VISA Corporation Lashes Out at Corporate Values

San Francisco Bay Guardian
January 24, 2000
Credit due Former CEO of Visa lashes out at corporate America's values.

By Ralph Nader

NOTHING IS MORE scarce than thorough, tough, or objective
analysis of today's corporations. What little there is comes mostly from
academics or consumer and other public interest groups.

The majority of the mainstream media skim the surface and usually
serve as little more than cheerleaders for the corporations. Rarely does
anyone from inside the corporate world venture forward with anything
but self-serving clichés about the values, glories, and ethics of
corporate organizations.

But there is at least one exception. His name is Dee Hock. He doesn't
play around with sugarcoated phrases in describing the shortcomings
of the corporate structure or the immense power wielded by
corporations throughout the world.

Dee Hock is no ordinary critic, and certainly no political radical.

He comes to the arena with real credentials from inside the corporate
world. He is founder and CEO emeritus of Visa International, a credit
card corporation owned by 22,000 member banks with 750 million
customers who engage in $1.25 trillion transactions annually.

Here's the way Dee Hock sees the corporations of the 21st century:
"The monetized commercial form of corporation has steadily become
an instrument of those with surplus money (capital) and those with
surplus power (management) to reward themselves at the expense of
the community, the biosphere, and the many without surplus wealth or
power, commonly called 'consumers' and 'human resources.'"

These "human resources," Hock says, "are mined, smelted, shaped
into products, worn out, and discarded with little more consideration on
the part of monetary stockholders and management than they might
give a load of ore or a pile of lumber."

Conservative "think tanks" and corporate public relations operatives
turn out endless tomes about the heavy hand of government regulation
over the corporations. Congress is lobbied for "regulatory relief," and
much of the national media parrot the corporate line about the "burden"
of regulation.

Dee Hock turns this argument on its head.

The "monetized shareholder" form of corporation, he says, "has
demanded and received release from the revocation of its charter for
inept or antisocial acts."

"The roles of giant, transnational corporations and government have
slowly reversed," Hock argues. "Government is now more an
instrument of such corporations than the corporations are instruments
of government."

Hock's critique of the organizational structures of corporations is
contained in his recently published book Birth of the Chaordic Age
(Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc., San Francisco). The book draws
heavily on his experiences at Visa, a chaordic structure involving
"intense cooperation and fierce competition."

Looking not only at corporations but at all forms of organizational
structures, Hock says we're in an "accelerating, global epidemic of
institutional failure" with organizations increasingly unable to achieve
the purpose for which they were created, yet "continuing to expand as
they devour scarce resources, demean the human spirit and destroy
the environment."

Hock argues that our current forms of organization are almost
universally based on compelled behavior or "on tyranny." The
organization of the future, according to Hock, will be the embodiment of
"community based on shared purpose calling to the higher aspiration of
people."

Dee Hock debunks a ton of conventional thinking and lays out a
challenging and exciting view of the future structure of corporations and
society. It makes for exciting reading whether or not you buy into all of
his theory.
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In the Public Interest publishes each Monday on sfbg.com.