Meaning and Concept of Enterprise

An enterprise can be explained as an organisation where group of individuals work together to serve goods and services to the society. This business organisation not only helps in earning profit but also contributes to the national income of the country. An enterprise offers various job opportunities to the people which help in reducing unemployment rate as well as it leads to the sustainable development of the country. The person who brings an enterprise into existence is referred as an entrepreneur. Entrepreneur is regarded as the one who performs initial level activities so that an enterprise can be started (Woodside, Bernal and Coduras, 2016). When an organisation is formed, it faces a number of difficulties, possesses competence and also uniqueness then it is demonstrated as entrepreneurship. In modern world of business, there are a number of business enterprises that runs with an objective of exchanging the various services and goods among different parties for achieving higher competitive benefits and shared revenue. In the business enterprise, the entrepreneurs perform a number of activities in order to achieve higher profits (Aier, 2014). There is conversion of the various factors of production which results in generation of the revenues through producing valued services and goods. The study will show the meaning and concept of enterprise, the significance of enterprise in the businesses and the principles of establishing a culture for enterprise by the glimpse of the case study of Alibaba.

Enterprise in general terms is a business organisation that forms, operate and is functioned through an individual. The person responsible for managing the business enterprises is recognized as the entrepreneur and the act of managing the various activities of the enterprise by an entrepreneur is entrepreneurship. A number of theorists and researchers have demonstrated different meanings of entrepreneurship, enterprise and entrepreneur but with some specific common aspects (Turner, Kane and Jackson, 2015). In all the enterprises people used to follow some particular enterprise culture which depicts the key values of the enterprises. There are numerous aspects that are vital in establishing an enterprise and enterprise culture that comprises of the competence of the individuals, the technology required for operating the enterprise function and the access to the labour.

In modern and contemporary business enterprises, the growth and success of the enterprise is highly dependent upon the enterprise culture. Even the employees’ and organisations’’ performances and also the increase in the level of the motivation of the workers is based upon the enterprise culture (Warner, 2014). The enterprise culture in the views and opinions of the theorists can be explained as the shared or the cultural values which are perceived by the business organisations’ while conducting the business operations and the activities. The set of cultural values are extremely vital as they demonstrates the cultural and business ethics that govern the business functioning. Thus, the culture of an enterprise possesses a direct link with the growth, development and the success of the enterprise. In various studies, the theorists have illustrated the enterprise culture as the combined programming of the mind that support in forming a difference among the people of various enterprises (Ujang, Hashim and Lokman, 2017). The enterprise culture is regarded as a nutrient source for all the enterprises and the ability to compete, improve and cultivate. The enterprise culture is gradually developed with a sum of key ideas in respect with the characteristics of the enterprise, cultural environment, lifestyle, regulations and rules, moral values and norms.

Importance of Enterprise in Businesses

The culture of the enterprise can be divided among four phases which includes the material culture and behaviour culture level, system culture, cultural and the spiritual level and the structure level. Every business enterprise has its particular culture depending upon its principles, philosophy and the manner in which decisions are taken (Putthiwanit, 2015). The enterprise culture has its belonging with the ideology concept, social ethics and value concept. All these concepts have their different impacts upon the employees and the organisational performance. The value concept is based upon the customer centric culture where a large focus is imposed on the satisfaction of the customers. The social ethics concept laid down powerful impact upon the success of the organisation as there is paid emphasis upon the ethics and the social norms which are followed by the organisational individuals (Kumar, Loonam Allen and Sawyer, 2016). The next concept is ideology concept which emphasize upon working on the principles of self-discipline, intrinsic constraint and practical business operations. There is an ideology which is adopted while performing the enterprise functions.

Following is a theoretical framework which will help in understanding the significance of the enterprise culture in the enterprise development and enterprise growth.

As per this theoretical framework, it has been explained by the author there are several impact of the enterprise culture in terms of the performance of the enterprise and the organisation. The model explains the difference among the actual or existing culture and between the target cultures. Once the target enterprise culture is ached and followed, the enterprise realises huge success. In the enterprises where there is absence of adequate culture, there is high competition in the market and sustaining becomes difficult. It is also analysed that there are uncoordinated information process which depicts delay or unstructured flow of information among the employees that results in decision making (Hartlieb, Leber, Tuppinger and Willfort, 2007). Other negative impacts of the poor or inadequate enterprise culture are poor staff, poor management, and complicated and complex line management, improper and unequal teams. All such are the outcomes when the enterprises do not have a sound enterprise culture (Ferraro and Briody, 2017).

On the other hand, when there is a sound and adequate enterprise culture in the business organisations, there are several factors that lead to success of the enterprise. when there is sound enterprise culture then there is increased level of cooperation among the various organisations, teams and the individuals which increase the competitive benefit as well as the overall productivity of the enterprise (Burns, 2016). The key impacts of the enterprise culture are that there is effective management of the staff and proper departmentalisation so that improved processes can take place. The overall information process is also very much coordinated where the flow of information is passing on with higher level of effectiveness. There are various types of enterprise cultures adopted by the diverse set of enterprises such as employee-centric culture, customer-centric culture, profit-seeking culture, marketing culture and various other types. If the enterprises have high focus upon their brand name, brand value and the presence in the market, then they tends to adopt the market culture where there is high support given to the management as well as the employees so that the attention of the consumers can be gained  and the company can achieve increased market share (Hartlieb, Leber, Tuppinger and Willfort, 2007). Secondly, if there is an enterprise culture which is customer centric, then it is the one which have its key emphasis on the satisfaction of the needs of the co summers. All the values and norms are customer-centric which seeks the benefit must be gained by the consumers. The third type of culture adopted by the enterprises is the profit-seeking culture, where there is complete focus upon the increase in the revenues and profits of the enterprise. Al the values are based upon the benefit and success of the organisation (Tian, Deng, Zhang and Salmador, 2018). The last and one of the most important cultures which is followed in the enterprises is the employee-centric culture where the organisations or the enterprises have their emphasis upon the growth and success of its employees rather than just focusing upon the revenues. In such type of culture, the businesses try to improve and develop the employees so that they can be retained in the organisation for a longer period of time (Hartlieb, Leber, Tuppinger and Willfort, 2007) When the employees are offered with adequate training and remain satisfied with the enterprise, then it results in increased morale and motivation of the employees. Therefore, it can be illustrated that there is a significant and vital role of the enterprise culture in the improvement in the employees’ performance as well as in the continuous success of the business enterprises (MacDonald and Coffield, 2015).

Principles of Establishing a Culture for Enterprise

Alibaba Group is a globally recognized business organisation which is seen as the enterprise with high ethical values and sound cultural norms. There is a strong belief that the huge success and growth of Alibaba is the result of its sound enterprise culture followed by the Group. The company always maintain high level of innovation and unique entrepreneurship in managing all its business activities by particularly keeping in mind the satisfaction of its customers (Matous, 2015). The major objective of Alibaba is to fulfil the needs of its customers and offer them highly valued services. Thus, there is a highly customer-centric enterprise culture followed at Alibaba.

History, Sector and Turnover

Alibaba is a renowned Chinese multinational organisation which is an online retailer dealing in e-commerce activities. The company established in the year 1999 and have gained enormous success in the past decade. The company was established and run under the successful leadership of Jack Ma.

The company is from China dealing in e-commerce. There are offered customer to customer services and sales as well as business to customer services and sales by the means of the web portals. The other services comprises of search engines, cloud computing services and electronic payments (Matous, 2018).

Alibaba Group has realized high revenues and profits in its business operations. The graph depicts the continuously increasing revenues of the company since the year 2010 to 2017. This continuous growth and increase in the revenues show the enormous success of the company.

This part of the study will present the ley findings and the analysis that shows that to what extent Alibaba possess an enterprise culture and exhibits it in its business operations.

Customer as Priority

The first most and the key aspect of the enterprise culture of Alibaba is that the company is extremely a customer-centric and it is the cultural aspect of the company to keep its customers as the first priority of the company. Alibaba took it as its responsibility to fulfil and satisfy all the needs of its customers. Alibaba Group undertook a number of steps and initiatives which are in the benefit of its customers which depicts its customer-centric approach (Kim, Zhang and Zhang, 2016). There are continuous and never ending efforts to retain and manage the customers in the most efficient manner. Being customer-centric, retaining reliable customer md having strong customer base, there is huge success of Alibaba and thus there exists a relationship been the culture of the enterprise and its success. It can also be described through the customer services available for its customers both before and after the sale of services. Such of kind of support is offered to customers 24*7 so that there issues can be solved (Barczyk, Falk, Feldman and Rarick, 2011).

Types of Enterprise Cultures Adopted by Different Organizations

High level of teamwork, commitment and integrity

Alibaba also emphasize on carrying on its business operations and activities with a culture that have a practice of rewarding its employees and their hard work. The organisational culture of Alibaba makes sure that the employees work in a sound and happy working environment. There are a number of initiatives which the company takes for increasing the commitment and morale of the employees (Alibabagroup, 2018). There is a cultural practice of performing a grand and splendid event of Annual Mass Wedding. In such sound practice, the organisation performs a mass wedding ceremony every next year for the employee. Due to such activities, the company also had to experience loss of money (Fan and Liu, 2015). But then, also the company carries on the similar cultural aspect. Then culture love Aliababa also has its major emphasis upon perceiving high level of integrity as well as team member in its work. It is required by all the employees to have increased productivity by the means of adopting a culture of transparency. To understand this practice of Alibaba, it is essential to understand that to follow such cultural aspects, there is increased level of interactions among the employees and the higher authorities of the group. There is an open discussion centre where people present their issues and they are sorted with the help if the open discussion. When there is high level of integrity, the team work and the unity on the employees get strengthened and so the success of the organisation (Wei, Samiee and Lee, 2014).

Conclusion

The paper stated that there is an essential need of a sound enterprise culture in order to have a sustainable and profitable enterprise. It is also necessary that the culture is followed in an adequate manner. The performance of the employees and the productivity of the organisation are also considerably depended upon the enterprise culture. By the case analysis, it is concluded that Alibaba possess sound enterprise culture and have gained worldwide success. Thus, it can be concluded that for the achievement of higher revenues, improved customer base and long-term sustainability, it is necessary of the enterprises to develop and follow strong enterprise culture.

Aier, S., 2014. The role of organizational culture for grounding, management, guidance and effectiveness of enterprise architecture principles. Information Systems and e-Business Management, 12(1), pp.43-70.

Alibabagroup, 2018.Culture and Values.Accessed on: 16^th March, 2018. Accessed from:https://www.alibabagroup.com/en/about/culture

Barczyk, C., Falk, G., Feldman, L. and Rarick, C., 2011. Alibaba: Changing the way business is conducted in the information economy. Journal of the International Academy for Case Studies, 17(7), p.127.

Burns, P., 2016. Entrepreneurship and small business. Palgrave Macmillan Limited.

Fan, J. and Liu, S., 2015, November. An Analysis of a New Business Model: A Case of Alibaba-Ecosystem. In INTERNATIONAL INTERDISCIPLINARY BUSINESS-ECONOMICS ADVANCEMENT CONFERENCE (p. 170).

Ferraro, G.P. and Briody, E.K., 2017. The cultural dimension of global business. Taylor & Francis.

Hartlieb, E., Leber, M., Tuppinger, J. and Willfort, R., 2007. The analysis of organizational culture and structure as a basis for the implementation of knowledge management. Innovation Service Network: Austria.

Kim, S., Zhang, X.A. and Zhang, B.W., 2016. Self-mocking crisis strategy on social media: Focusing on Alibaba chairman Jack Ma in China. Public Relations Review, 42(5), pp.903-912.

Kumar, V., Loonam, J., Allen, J.P. and Sawyer, S., 2016. Exploring enterprise social systems & organisational change: implementation in a digital age.

MacDonald, R. and Coffield, F., 2015. Risky business?: Youth and the enterprise culture. Routledge.

Matous, F., 2015.Alibaba Company Culture Case Study: East meets West. Accessed on: 16^th March, 2018. Accessed from:https://enviableworkplace.com/alibaba-company-culture-case-study/

Putthiwanit, C., 2015. Exploring the impact of organizational culture on employees in multinational enterprise: A qualitative approach. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 207, pp.483-491.

Statista, 2018. Annual revenue of Alibaba Group from 2010 to 2017 (in million yuan). Accessed on: 16^th March, 2018. Accessed from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/225614/net-revenue-of-alibaba/ 

Tian, M., Deng, P., Zhang, Y. and Salmador, M.P., 2018. How does culture influence innovation? A systematic literature review. Management Decision.

Turner, P., Kane, R. and Jackson, C., 2015. Implementing performance improvement through the enterprise culture. British Journal of Healthcare Management, 21(11), pp.523-527.

Ujang, K., Hashim, R. and Lokman, N., 2017, April. Enterprise Culture: Impact on Malay Entrepreneurs. In ICIE 2017-Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (p. 227). Academic Conferences and publishing limited.

Warner, M., 2014. Culture and management in Asia. Routledge.

Wei, Y.S., Samiee, S. and Lee, R.P., 2014. The influence of organic organizational cultures, market responsiveness, and product strategy on firm performance in an emerging market. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 42(1), pp.49-70.

Woodside, A.G., Bernal, P.M. and Coduras, A., 2016. The general theory of culture, entrepreneurship, innovation, and quality-of-life: Comparing nurturing versus thwarting enterprise start-ups in BRIC, Denmark, Germany, and the United States. Industrial Marketing Management, 53, pp.136-159.