Enterprise can be understood as a business organisation which offers a number of services or goods to the people. It is formed in order to offer profits to the entrepreneurs, creating employment, contributing to the national income of the country and providing sustainable development. In short, the enterprise can be known as the business venture. To run an enterprise, there is a need of an entrepreneur. Entrepreneur is a person who forms and runs an enterprise. The overall process of forming an enterprise, comprising difficulties, skills, abilities and originality is recognized as entrepreneurship (Bridge and O’Neill, 2012).The key concept in the present scenario is business enterprise. It can be explained as exchange of services or good in between the two-parties in order to attain mutual profit or benefit. There are conducted profits seeking activities which are managed in a particular way that they transform the various factors of production in the valuable services or goods (Teece, 2014). The paper will present the concept of enterprise, its role in the businesses and the various principles of developing an enterprise culture through a means of case study of Alibaba.
Enterprise is a referent to the business which has been established, run and managed by the individuals. There are people who establish and manage these enterprises are in the language of businesses they are considered as the entrepreneurs. Several authors have explained entrepreneur, enterprise and entrepreneurship in their own languages but with a common sense (MacDonald and Coffield, 2015).In respect with the referent enterprise, there is an enterprise culture which is there in every organisation or business enterprise. There are several key factors which play an important role in building and enterprise and its culture such ass access to labour, to competence, to knowledge, to technology and to skills (Aier, 2014).
In present scenario, the culture of an enterprise is a key factor that determines the growth and success of the enterprises in terms of performance of the employee and the organisation, particularly from the perspective of the improvement in the motivation level of the employees (Chong, 2012).There are a number of theorists and researchers that demonstrates the enterprise culture as the cultural values of the organisation which is highly vital for fostering the business ethics. And in a similar way the enterprise culture is linked to the success and growth of the business organisations. as per the author, enterprise culture can be better understand as the mind’s collective programming which helps in making a difference between the individuals of a single enterprise with the individuals of other enterprise (Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), 2012). And this collective programming can be possible if it is regarded as one of the most common assumption that individuals in any business enterprise possess as well as share in respect with the business enterprise.All those assumptions are inferred in their respective values, beliefs, feelings and also embodied in the forms, processes and the symbols as well as few other features of the group behaviour. there are authors which have also stated that there is a difference in between the individual personality, nature of all humans and the enterprise culture (Dong, 2013).
By considering a theoretical framework as well as according to various researches conducted by several theorists and authors, it can be demonstrated that the enterprise culture with high norms and values is highly necessary for assuring a long term growth of the business enterprise.
The culture of an enterprise is defined as comprising of the assumptions, beliefs and values in managing the behaviour of an enterprise as well as its stakeholders, specially the internal one. This reflects the enterprise behaviour both from an internal and an external context. Without having a certain change or transformation in the culture of any enterprise, kits development is certainly not possible (Belak and Milfelner, 2012). On the other hand, then change in the enterprise culture is a tough, long-lasting and demanding process as the culture of an enterprise is usually complex in nature. The relation between enterprise, entrepreneurship and enterprise culture with the success of the enterprise can be understood through a model called MER Model of Integral Management. This model develops a link between the growth and development of an enterprise with that of its culture (Belak and Milfelner, 2012).It explains that the success is depended upon universal credibility, functioning techniques of enterprise which are friendly in nature and the credible handling of the various stakeholders of the organisation. Therefore, as per this theoretical model, the enterprise culture is one of the success factors for any enterprise (Dong, 2013).
There are a number of faces or expressions of the enterprise culture as per the diverse views of carious researchers. Some of the theorists consider as the behaviour regularities while there is an interaction among the people. In view point of some of the authors it is considered as the norms which evolve in the working groups of the enterprises (Belak and Milfelner, 2012).In the notion of some other researchers, it is regarded as the philosophy which has an influence upon the organisational policy and lastly some theorists demonstrate it as the rules which are there for effective understanding in any enterprise. In recent few studies, the enterprise culture is more correctly defined as theinherence of the values, knowledge, goals and beliefs which are shared by all the members of the organisation (Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), 2012).
In present scenario, it is believed that the culture of an enterprise offers the framework for the effective operationalizing as well as implementation of the numerous business strategies. Thus, it is required by the managers to be highly concern in respect with the culture of the enterprise in which they are embedded as well as have necessary strategic changes whenever required (Aier, 2014). However, the business organisations considered as the enterprise systems are recognized for their reluctance towards change, there specifically remains an aspect getting associated with the view point of congruency among the various observed values and internalized (Belak and Milfelner, 2012). The functioning of an enterprise is directly associated with the lack of cultural similarity which ultimately have an impact upon the job satisfaction of the employees, job commitment and employee turnover (MacDonald and Coffield, 2015).
Today, there are detailed explanations of the various culture typologies. There are enterprises which have varied sizes and dynamic nature so a di verse enterprise cultures exists. There are various classifications of enterprise culture on the basis of these diverse enterprises (Belak and Milfelner, 2012). But the most common out of all these is classified as by comparing the biasness between feminist and masculinity, tendency in respect with the uncertainty avoidance, the power distance metric and the degree of collectivism versus individualism (Bridge and O’Neill, 2012).
The model explains that success of the enterprise depends upon the culture; this can be explained as if the culture is customer-centric, which means if the organisation has a culture that focuses on its customers, their satisfaction and their benefit as its key aspect. Such kind of organisational culture is considered s one of the best approach but these kind of cultural factors are particularly in the non-profit organisations and charitable enterprises. Such enterprises always have a well-known brand image in the market (Belak and Milfelner, 2012). There are few enterprises which possess market culture. Market culture can be better understood as marketing culture in the organisation as the key factor of the enterprise culture which has a direct relation to the beliefs and the values which support the employees and the management for understanding the marketing function. If there is adopted a market or marketing culture, then there is high focus upon the brand image of the company and its recognition in the consumer market. Such culture offers higher customer base and global recognition to the enterprise (Teece, 2014).The third culture adopted by the organisations is the enterprise culture. in this type of organisation, there is a customer oriented culture and also a competitive culture where high value is given to the existingcustomers and also the organisation try to attain a number of competitive benefits, thus, such corporate culture also helps in up surging the revenues as well as worldwide publicity. One of the most preferred and significant culture types is employee-oriented culture (Dong, 2013).In such enterprise culture, the key focus of the company is on its employees, their satisfaction, growth and development. In the era of corporate special responsibility, it is essential to consider the social implications of the culture in respect with the employees (Belak and Milfelner, 2012).If the enterprise always keep focus on the needs of the employees an offer them adequate facilities, then ether results incased employee retention which ultimately play a major role in the success of the company(Belak and Milfelner, 2012).
Alibaba Group is one of the leading e-commerce systems across the world which has numerous branches. The key objective of the company is to offers services to extended customer base and develops a strong commercial enterprise. Other than the business operations, the company also possesses a strong enterprise culture which it follows in all its business activities (Barczyk, Falk, Feldman and Rarick, 2011). The company is known for its strong and determined culture which offers key benefits to the company.
The enterprise culture of Alibaba is regarded as one of the best cultures of the organisations across the world. The company believes that its success, growth and development is completely built upon the essence of innovation and entrepreneurship as well as by keeping a firm emphasis on satisfying the customers’ needs. Alibaba works upon sharing values which help the company in maintaining a common organisational culture irrespective of its size.
Following are the aspects which depict that at what extent Alibaba exhibits an entrepreneurial culture within its business:
Commitment
The company maintains a culture of rewarding its employees for their excellence and perseverance. There is an aspect which always emphasizes the individuals to have a serious living and happy working. One of the examples of the commitment of Alibaba towards its employees is the cultural aspect of or the practice of the company to perform Alibaba’s Annual Mass Wedding. In this practice, there is conducted a ceremony of mass wedding for its employees every May. Thus practice many a times leads to negative gross profit for the company but them also the company continues with its practices. There are various other cultural aspects that show the commitment of Alibaba for its employees (UBC, 2014).
Integrity and Teamwork
Teamwork and Integrity are another two major aspects of the enterprise culture of Alibaba. Thecompany expects from its employees to have high level of integrity and teamwork by having standards of honesty and transparency as well as much focus is paid upon the unity aspect also. It can be better explained with the cultural practice adopted by the company. Alibaba maintains a culture of transparency where all the employees of the company irrespective of their positions can speak up on the problematic situations on Aliway, which is an internal communication platform. The employees have an open discussion for couple of hours so that there can be communicate every single thing to the management. This develops higher level of teamwork also as there exits high level of transparency as well as integrity (Shao, 2014).
Customer First
The next key aspect of the entrepreneurial culture of Alibaba is its characteristic of keeping the customers always as its first priority. The company keeps the interest of the customers as their first most responsibility to be fulfilled. There are huge efforts laid down by Alibaba in order to maintain this culture. As per the Alibaba’s cultural norms, the company is required to be highly customer-centric then only it can achieve huge success in its venture (Matous, 2015). Alibaba offers 24*7 open platforms for its customers where they can share their reviews ask questions and also raise issues. The company respond back with a friendly approach by maintain a strong relation with its customers (Bates and Hawkins-Scott, 2016).
Conclusion
The study concludes that every successful enterprise needs an effective and sound enterprise culture which is the success factor for the business. From the case study of Alibaba and by analyzing its cultural aspects, it is more evident that the company exhibits a strong entrepreneurial culture which is the key reason behind its growth and immense success. So, it can be concluded that for attaining long term sustainability and higher growth, it is essential that the enterprises must follow strong enterprise culture.
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