Introducing Alibaba Company:
Alibaba is one of the global and largest technological company in the world that was established in China. In 1999, Alibaba was started as a very small business from Jack Ma apartment. This organization was initiated by Jack Ma and other 17 founders. Many people assumes that Alibaba is an e-commerce company. However, Alibaba is not an e-commerce company but Alibaba is just a place or ecosystem that helps traditional company to be e-commerce. In the first 3 years, Alibaba does not produce any income or profits. But in the following years up until today, Alibaba keeps growing and now it becomes one of the largest technological company in China or in the world.
The successful keys of Alibaba is only one which is powerful teamwork. Powerful teamwork comes from effective communication between people of Alibaba. Alibaba always put customer as the first priority, employees the second and shareholders as the third. Therefore, Jack Ma always ensure that the people of the team are happy. When the team are happy, they will serve the customers very well.
Jack Ma gave tips that the most important thing is that we hire the right people, not always the best people. Before he build Alibaba, Jack Ma applied jobs and rejected for 30 times. This is why Jack Ma does not prioritize to hire bussiness or academics people. Many MBA’S were hired to work in Alibaba but sadly those people cannot work in a good team. Jack Ma prefer to hire people who were not really powerful in academic but have excellent soft skills.
Organizational Communication:
Alibaba has very creative and innovative culture. Even though Jack Ma is the well known people to be the leader of Alibaba, however there are many other bosses of Alibaba who helped Jack Ma run the company. Those leaders are part of boards of director. Alibaba have formal hierarchical structure where there are CEO, Executive and subordinates. However, in daily communication, Alibaba organizational communication is flat where board directors positioned themselves equally with subordinates.
What makes Alibaba teamwork strong is this company applied bottom-top communication instead of top-down communication. Bottom-top communication allows the subordinate to express ideas, and opinions which is very helpful for communication. In this way it is very easy to influence every employee to believe the same vision. The methods that Alibaba used are mostly applied in Start Up company such as Google, Zappos, Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, etc where subordinate can talk openly to top managers.
Companies that are risk taking like Alibaba are likely to make good communication. Alibaba tolerates employees who made mistakes as process to build good innovation. However, Alibaba does not tolerates the employees who dont try and cannot work together. When companies are too perfectionist and not tolerate mistakes, there will be poor communication. It is very rare for company who cares more on the people than performace. Besides teamwork, Alibaba strongly embrace the value of integrity. Alibaba will fired any employees who are involved in corruption and bribery.
Interpersonal Communication:
Alibaba culture is very unique and different from most company culture. The culture of Alibaba emphasizes on collaboration and communication. In order to build effective communication, the company must eliminate any form of superiority and seniority. Formally, Alibaba has hierarchial structure like most companies with CEO, Executive Chairman, etc. But practically every employees are treated equally. Employees can even called the top manager just with the nick names to create more friendly relationships. By structure, Alibaba adopts hierarchial where there are top managers and subordinates, but culturally its very flat.
Each has the rights to share their ideas and innovation. Subordinates have the rights to criticize the top managers when something goes wrong. Communication between employees is made through open discussion. Alibaba has transparency system where every employees can gets enough information about the company. In the old fashioned company, only the top managers can receive information about the company. But modern company allows subordinate even customers to seek the information about company.
Intergroup Communication:
In order to grow Alibaba, Alibaba cannot only have just one leader. There are senior management and board directors as the top manager and employees. Employees of Alibaba is classified by departments: Research and developments, operations and customer services, sales and marketing and general and administrative. Alibaba always reminds employees to always focus on customers. The problem that exists in big companies is that the environment tends to be competitive, where department dont collaborate with one another. In Alibaba, employees can have open discussion through the Aliway. The office environment is very supportive and filled with decorative stuffs that generates employees enthusiasm. Instead of having rigid cubicle tables, Alibaba provides open space environment
Alibaba is made of groups of subsidiary company such as TaoBao and T Mall and each of them segments different customers. Tao Bao groups are provided for low class bussiness and it’s free of charge. On the other hand, T Mall are opened for higher class bussinessman and it is not free. Alibaba believe that instead of competing inside company or worrying too much on competitors, it is much better to focus on serving customers. When different groups could communicate well and unite, companies can fully focus on serving the customers.
Interorganizational Communication (Communication between Organizations):
The teamwork values of Alibaba is not only applied in Alibaba itself but with other companies. When Alibaba was about to invest in other company, Jack Ma wants to see the collaboration of the people of the company invested. He make sure that the founder could work well with the others. Jack Ma always believe that suceessful team was made when everyone believe the same vision. He always want to invest in a company where the founder and the others work together and believe the same vision.
Alibaba has grown into one of the largest company in China or even in the world. Slowly, Alibaba will change the negative perception of people towards China. China with the help of Alibaba has improved and getting more connected with the world. Overall Alibaba power and vision was started from simple things which is excellent teamwork that is created from effective communication. Alibaba has the vision that the company wanted to survive up until 102 years. This vision will be possible if Alibaba continuously builds powerful teamwork.
References:
- Alibaba: Number of employees per department 2017 | Statistic. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/323060/alibaba-group-employees-department/
- Shao, H. (2014, May 16). A Peek Inside Alibaba's Corporate Culture. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/hengshao/2014/05/13/a-peek-inside-alibabas-corporate-culture/#64c2cc564efc
- Alibaba vs. Amazon: An In-Depth Comparison of Two eCommerce Giants. (2017, July 18). Retrieved from https://www.ecommercefuel.com/alibaba-vs-amazon/
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