Narrow Results

China is the largest e-commerce market, contributing to a quarter of the global market share with some of the leading e-commerce companies headquartered here. As these businesses continue working round the clock — all year, expanding their operations across domains, regions and countries, innovation in Human Resource Management (HRM), then becomes a key enabler in ensuring that the workforce integrates and evolves along with the firm, and in parallel with the consistent changes in the industry. In retrospect, HRM practices in China have been maturing over the years as well with their increasing participation in global business networks.

Alibaba, the world’s largest retailer and e-commerce company, employs over 117,600 people across multiple geographical locations. A Chinese homegrown company, Alibaba has not only captured the local market share but has also consolidated its position in the top ranks of the global race. Its company culture is arguably one of the most peculiar as it seamlessly blends the best of Chinese culture and the Silicon Valley spirit. This case study aims to explore such innovations and more in HRM practices at Alibaba, along with highlighting and identifying crucial challenges faced by the company in this domain and how they tackled it as they kept scaling and expanding their operations.

The present study intends to create knowledge about complex organizational structures in Chinese businesses to further add on to the overall management knowledge base. It will also contribute toward the growing foundation, on which further research can be based.