Alibaba and Organisational structure

What is so special about this alibaba group..?

Alibaba Group is a privately owned Hangzhou-based family of Internet-based E-Commerce businesses that cover business-to-business online marketplaces, retail and payment platforms, shopping search engine and data-centric cloud computing services.

 Its consumer-to-consumer portal Taobao, similar to American eBay, features nearly a billion products and is one of the 20 most-visited websites globally. Alibaba Group's sites account for over 60% of the parcels delivered in China.

Alipay, an online payment, escrow service, accounts for roughly half of all online payment transactions within China. The vast majority of these payments occur using Alibaba services.

What is an organisational culture?

Organizational culture is the behavior of humans who are part of an organization and the meanings that the people attach to their actions. Culture includes the organization values, visions, norms, working language, systems, symbols, beliefs and habits. It is also the pattern of such collective behaviors and assumptions that are taught to new organizational members as a way of perceiving, and even thinking and feeling. Organizational culture affects the way people and groups interact with each other, with clients, and with stakeholders.

Organizational culture are of several types. The one discussed in class are as follows:

  1. Open Culture – In an Open culture the employees are motivated to voice their values-driven concerns regarding problematic business practices. An open culture helps to counteract any occasional lapse into passivity at the board level or on the part of institutional investors.

2. Safety Culture - A safety culture is one were all employees are proactive in ensuring safety at work place. People immediately report any perceived short comings in the work place safety and in the safety of products given to customers or clients.

3. Quality Culture – In a Quality  culture utmost importance is given to the quality of the product or service being rendered. Volume takes a back seat. So does cost. Batch recalling of cars/computers when defects are found is a good example of the quality culture.

4. Performance Culture – Also known as OUTCOME ORIENTED CULTURE it  emphasizes on achievement, results, and action as important values. A good example of an outcome-oriented culture may be the electronics retailer Best Buy.

                                                             

5. Ethical Culture - A culture where great importance is given to ethical business practices and this importance is seen at all levels in the organization. We see that in such organizations, ethics are given precedence even if being so may lead to a loss of business and profit. The TATA Group is a good example to note.