Recoupling Corporate Culture with New Political Discourse in China’s Platform Economy: The Case of Alibaba

Abstract

Previous research on the corporate culture construction in China primarily highlights how Chinese firms draw on its traditional culture and socialist heritages as two crucial intellectual resources. The highly marketised high-tech sector with declining employment security and changing political environment renders a new context and dual process for the ‘engineering’ of corporate culture in China’s platform economy. An ethnographic study of Alibaba unveils the resources the management draws on to construct its culture, including not only the founder’s entrepreneurial stories but also the economic and social changes allegedly brought by Alibaba’s platforms and technologies. This article theorises a new tripartite state–employer–employee relationship manifested through corporate culture by showcasing how the discourses of market meritocracy in China’s reform era and national renaissance based on technological progressivism have both fuelled the corporate culture construction, delineating its simultaneous yet paradoxical decoupling from and recoupling with the national political discourse in China’s high-tech industries.

Motivations Influencing Alipay Users to Participate in the Ant Forest Campaign: An Empirical Study

“…This suggests that Ant Forest’s two main game design strategies—the concept of environmental protection and the popularization of green carbon finance knowledge—do not seem to have a real effect, that is to say, to generate positive environmental engagement among users to demonstrate their motivation and satisfaction to participate in online public welfare projects [ 17 , 78 ]. In addition, among Ant Forest users, the qualitative results show that some users realize the importance of environmental protection and the sense of honor brought by Ant Forest, and, due to the expression of their value, are more motivated to use it, which is consistent with the findings of some previous studies [ 79 , 80 ]. The results show that the motivation of Ant Forest users had a significant positive impact on their satisfaction.…”

Searching for desirable bodies: How recruiters value physically exertive extracurricular activities for graduate hiring at elite professional firms in China

“…The informants suggested that EPFs commonly promoted a corporate culture and management system, perpetuating the anxiety over career security and development and prioritising the corporate objectives and control (Tse & Li, 2022; Yan, 2021). The tasks and competition faced by graduates were usually described as ‘challenging the limit’ (Jorge, Senior asset manager), ‘harsh and cruel’ (Larry, Investment banker) and ‘energy‐consuming’ (George, Consulting manager).…”

“…Recent studies have revealed that professional firms in China have increasingly adopted a market‐oriented corporate culture and managerial system, which incites market competition and meritocracy (Tse & Li, 2022), promotes the discourse of ‘self as an enterprise’ (Yan, 2021) and enhances ‘meticulous management’ over professionals (Zhuang & Han, 2021). Combining with other conventional features of the Chinese workplace, such as the emphasis on hierarchy and conformity (Wang, 2020), this heightened control over the professional labour process has intensified daily workload, performance assessment and peer competition, thereby undermining the sense of job security and autonomy (Yan, 2021; Zhuang & Han, 2021).…”

Work Faster, Harder, Cheaper? Global, Local and Sectoral Co-Configurations of Job Insecurities Among Hong Kong Creative Workers

“…Yet, why and how these workers have actively built the link between their internal psychological factors and the wider external structures have not yet been fully considered and categorised empirically. These external structures include the environmental context (namely global competition, marketisation and digitisation; Hassard and Morris, 2018; McDonald, 2018); institutional and organisational characteristics (such as management efficiency, permeable hierarchies and organisational culture; Alberti et al, 2018; Tse and Li, 2022); modes of creative production and consumption (Campbell et al, 2019); sociocultural factors (Alacovska and Gill, 2019); employment relationships and the roles and impacts of multiple actors (Tomlinson et al, 2018) within specific sectors. Taking these ideas to their logical conclusion would also imply that each site of investigation represents both universal etic behaviours and culture-and-context-dependent emic features.…”