At the Bolivarian Watershed: A new political-social challenge for Venezuela

The world is concerned about what is going on with that tiny but beautiful country called Venezuela. Why a country with plenty of petrol, natural marvels and idyllic beaches has roughly 35% of its population living in extreme poverty. A country with a reputation for successful and efficient mines, leading exports in cocoa and coffee, with great rivers capable of providing electricity for almost half of Latin American continent ... but yet its sui generis social and political system are now in chaos. A country once colonized and exploited by the Spanish, is now demoralized by its own politics, former and current presidents. Venezuela's so called democracy ... which for more than 40 years had been deluding moral values ... is now more like communism! From the moment Hugo Chávez Frías came to power until now, the social balance in Venezuela has become worse. Inexistent State institutions, fiscal opacity, austere budget and general civil disobedience of laws have become more noticeable in this presidential period than others in the past. Furthermore, this situation has been precipitating into a class battle, and a sort of secular anarchy to Venezuelan society motivated by the political turmoil that President Chávez and his evil “Bolivarian Revolution” has created towards establishing a dictatorial regime in the near future. This cleverly set up dictatorial emphasis and socialist systems are claiming concern worldwide and internally due the high level of corruption and wasted resources accrued by Mr. Chavez operations in his long-standing career as a CEO of Venezuela (Corrales, 2006) In general, the economic crisis in Argentina, problems with Colombian guerrillas, corruption in Peru, the lack of leadership in Bolivia and the current situation in Venezuela are consequences of a dilated tradition of populist demagogue by leaders in these countries, including almost all Central America countries as well. I regret to say that in countries from the so-called third world rules work as a Kingdom of Babel. In fact, it does concern us, because the common way to solve those situations and organize society when social problems arise, has been the way of authoritarian governments ... indeed, the military intervention. At the moment, this situation involves a new political-social challenge for Venezuelan leaders and in other Latin-American countries, because this resurrection of new forms of authoritarian governments will break all of the relationship between these countries and their main commercial partners sharply. By copying the legacy of Fidel Castro's activities, the Chavez regime has been provoking a sort of “hate the north” attitude throughout resurgent Latin America’s leaders. It transpires that in coming years Venezuela might turn out, necessarily, to be one of the few providers of domestic goods and services to the Latin American population, so that distribution of national income will be more sectarian and inequitable for Venezuela! Losing the most valuable investment: human capital. Social costs for citizens, especially, middle classes which have been main entrepreneurs, workers and producers of wealth in Venezuela are increasing. Those whom have deserved a country with developmental perspectives are now the ones to lose out. As a consequence of which, confidence in our country and over the people who live, work and protest there have been disappearing due to the increase of Chavez power. As a result there is an increasing community in Venezuela of young talents flying to USA and Europe looking for new opportunities. From my perspective, during Chavez' eight years' regime, Venezuela has divested more than US$92.2 billion of intellectual assets [1]. By losing human capital, the future of Venezuelan democracy and its well-being will be extremely damaged under the current regime. It is not difficult to guess what is in Chavez dreams ... to cut out the exodus of Venezuelans by prohibiting Venezuelans to fly out of the country Human capital forms the roots of competitive advantage for private and public organizations. State institutions have a crucial role to play in this regard. Human life is largely conducted within the context of State Institutions: They prescribe and proscribe behaviours. This is the gap between development countries and those countries trying to achieve some levels of development. State institutions bring together the rules to develop contracts to incentive and monitor those competitive environments but not to punish them. Generally, we find that the above statement is present in developed nations such as the United States and the UK (Britain). Although, it is almost impossible to find in current events the reason behind the fact that USA and the UK are rich and developed while Venezuela is a rich and underdeveloped and in crisis ... but the main problems are corrupt institutions, poor social organization, urban insecurity and general problems with education that make leaders such as Chavez to be proud of. While Latin-American countries still depends on the Military forces to sort out whatever politic and social mayhem is on the road, it empowers the military to change the rules and produce unhealthy State institutions. Young talents do not find opportunities to work and live in the country and so the exodus happens. The effects of this cause and effect relationship are negative so affect the wealth of underdeveloped countries and with it their democracy. Anibal Miranda D. anibalmirandadj@hotmail.com Anibal Miranda D. (Bsc Economics, MBA London) is a Venezuelan based in London, England Sources: Camel, E (2003) “Desempleo promueve éxodo de venezolanos” available at [http://buscador.eluniversal.com/2003/04/24/eco_art_24164DD.shtml] visited 18.02.06 Corrales, J (2006) “Hugo Boss” Foreign Policy. Jan-Feb 2006 available at [http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3332] visited 18.02.06 Méndez, Iván (2002) “Ultravioleta” Analitica.com. Available at [http://www.analitica.com/va/politica/opinion/2117688.asp] visited 18.02.06 Shoer, D (2005) “Canada acoge reciente éxodo de venezolanos” available at [http://www.analitica.com/va/vpi/7826949.asp] visited 18.02.06 [1] A very subjective, conservative and simple calculation, as follows: Assuming that 3% (750,000) of the Venezuela population has left the country per year since 1998 and that they could earn at least a salary of $15,000 per year worldwide, it provides an estimate of $92.2 billion of human capital assets lost by the Chavez regime.

is Organizational Excellence about getting things right first time?

"The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence". John F. Kennedy US Democratic politician (1917 - 1963) The pursuit of excellence in organizations is not new. Since the setting up of the capitalist system, organizations all over the world have been pursuing excellence in many different ways. Firstly, to compete and excel amongst their competitors by using unique set of organizational models or code of best practice, and secondly, by innovating through managerial fads. The effects in organizations of these two approaches are shared but predominantely negative. Many organizations have been trapped by the "ilusion of excellence". Mainly, those companies pursuing excellence without knowing their own capabilitites and visions have ended up following, step by step, what external consultants recommend. The leaders of this industries have defended their positions by justifying their approaches to comply with code of best practices but they have ended up in copying other organizations ways of doing things. As one expert said, these leaders are just wasting their own organizational potential and strategic resources. Organizations need to overcome these issues by acquiring certain knowledge of their own needs and customize their own approaches to resolve their internal conflicts. Surely, this is the path to gain competitive advantage and avoid to be trapped by the 'ilusion of excellence'. What does Excellence mean? The definition of 'excellence' as such is rather complex and mainly used in management jargon and fads. Aristotle defined ’excellence’ as the art of pursuing certain attributes or ‘virtues’. Virtues are either habits or trained faculties. Excellence in some respect is about doing things right at the right time through having the attributes required to be unique. According to Aristotle: ’Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” (in Ross, 1921). The Aristotelian view of excellence brings to light the influence the ancient Greek culture has had over on society, principally through its drive to expand and understand the world around. The Ancient Greeks had a culture of excellence, particularly in the arts of sports, culture and the development of a social order which valued freedom and a public hunger to excel (Makedom, 1996). According to Marrou (cited in Makedom, op.cit.), the model of excellence in Ancient Greece was built mainly by the insertion of heroic ideas and education throughout their society. The internalization of heroic ideas or visions in their people, and particularly the youngsters, was introduced by using a system of educated adults and tutors extended throughout the cities. They built their whole cities with 'education in mind', and the work of these mentors was to serve as role play models for young people and ask them to follow their virtues. The main responsibility of these tutors was to identify young people with special skills or powers and train them to be excellent or virtuous. It is this ethical character of leadership in Aristotle’s sense of virtue which is known in management as "effective leadership" and is one of the main ‘virtues’ that drives success in organizations. The model of excellence from the Ancient Greek culture provides the foundation of excellence in societies and organizations. Organizations are successful or excellent when their leaders identify and understand the success and survival factors within their industries, and how these will evolve in future. As in the Greek model, these leaders create visions that are communicated to the workforce. The vision can be translated to the lower levels of the organization in an effective manner using scorecards, which represent tangible and intangible sets of performance measures (Kaplan and Norton, 1996; Salz, 2005). However, not all the organizations follow this practice, which might be one of the intrinsic characteristics that separate leaders from laggards. Another group of characteristics we have identified in our literature review is that high performance organizations have leaders and managers who are role models for the employees. They invite the workforce to follow their virtues and construct organizational cultures in which values are shared and followed by everyone. These leaders use politics to empower and educate identified groups of people, who may possess diverse self-interests, to work together, progress within the organization and make sure the fundamental aims and values are maintained. While these leaders do this, they reward innovation and entrepreneurship and stimulate employee creativity through their involvement in the decision-making process. Thus they create the kind of place people want to work (Peters et.al., 1982; Coulson-Thomas, 1997). Organizations to excel amongst it peers needs to identify their own strategic resoruces that have to be distinctive- difficult to copy by others- and develop their strategic focuses on them. Same view can be apply for individuals. Excellence, though, is not just pure fashion or meaningless management jargon, it is about doing the right things, at the right time and with the right level of job satisfaction....Therefore, do not leave for tomorrow or pub chatting...make it happen! Sources: Aristotle (350 B.C.E). Politics. Nicomachean Ethics (Ethica Nicomacea). In “The Works of Aristotle”. Tr. W. D. Ross. London, England: Oxford University Press, 1921. Available from [http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.2.ii.html] visited 21.12.05 Collins, J (2002) “Built To last: Succesful Habits of Visionary Companies”. Harper Collins Coulson-Thomas (1997). The Future of the Organisation: Achieving Excellence through Business Transformation. Kogan Page Ltd. Kaplan, R and Makedom, A (1996) “In search of Excellence: Historical roots of Greek Culture” Abacus Publishing. Matteson, Illinois. Norton, D. (1996) “Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System” Harvard Business Review. Jan-Feb. Salz, P (2005) A vital Building Block in Attaining That Corporate Edge Calls for the Creation of a Unique Corporate Anatomy: The crucial culture change. The Wall Street Journal. 02.05.2005. p. A8. Available at [http://www.accenture.com/NR/rdonlyres/281A0D32-6AFB-42E2-B64D-BD119D0BE0A4/0/hpb_corp_anatomy.pdf ] visited on 10.12.05 Aníbal Miranda Bsc. MBA