Birth of the Chaordic Age: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization

A inside look at the VISA corporation and the new chaordic business organization method, chaos and order combined, describes how this method works for VISA and how it is being put into practice all over the world. 75,000 first printing. $75,000 ad/promo. Tour.

If only the world were more like VISA International, chaos and order would be in balance, and people would work happily together in communities based on ``shared purpose.'' At least, that's the utopian vision of Hock, founder and ``CEO emeritus'' of VISA International and head of a group called The Chaordic Alliance, advising mostly not-for-profits how to reorganize themselves in a new humanitarian way. Hock advocates an evolutionary system of social organization: Top-down control is out, and a blending of cooperation and competition is in. He is not the first businessman to suggest that what he calls ``command-and-control institutions,'' including not only businesses, but social, political and religious institutions as well, are experiencing a ``global epidemic of . . . failure that knows no bounds.'' His solution is harnessing chaos and order in chaordic harmony to the wagon of social evolution. Hock offers a blueprint of sorts for forming a chaordic organization, but warns there is no bottom line, there ``is only becoming.'' That Zen-like mantra echoes the oracular reflections (``Is man machine? Is machine man?'') the author shares with an alter ego, Old Monkey Mind, in boldface sections throughout the book. (Sketches of a lively monkey scamper through the pages.) Lighter face type carries the obligatory saga of Hock's early life and his role in launching VISA as a chaordic enterprise in the early 1970s, a winsome narrative that would be better served by more fundamental description of exactly how VISA works and how it differs from traditional credit card operations. Boxed ``MiniMaxins'' that occasionally rise to the level of ``Saturday Night Live'' affirmations are scattered throughout. Another successful businessman finds meaning in his life by reinventing corporate culture to save the world in this murky, pretentious, and decidedly unchaordic tome. (First printing of 75,000; $100,000 ad/promo) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.