Contrary to a person, who can exercise their responsibilities directly, companies are inanimate bodies without such capabilities. However, the stakeholders of a company are able and supposed to undertake the corporate social responsibilities, which is vital to the sustainability of a company. According to Steve (20), a company has the responsibility of delivering quality products to its customers and protects the welfare of the society while complying with the laws and regulations of the government in which it operates. The ability of a corporation to adhere to its corporate responsibility significantly determines its level of achievement (Steve 133). It is vital that a company develops a sound social responsibility strategy to remain viable in the eyes of the consumers, the law, and the communities in which they operate. This is essential for the sustainability of a company such as Alibaba, which runs, in a highly competitive industry. The organization’s corporate social responsibility is based on the theme “a legacy of giving and service”. As such, the organization focuses on wellness, sustainability, responsible sourcing, education, civic activity, diversity and inclusion, volunteerism, safety, safety and preparedness.
New Changes in Alibaba’s Corporate Citizenship
The primary business at Alibaba is making the business activities of its clients simpler and sustainable, which has helped the company, rise as among the most reputable company in the online transition marketplace globally. According to the company's senior vice president, Jin Jiankang, the company's core goals is the provision of an open and reliable e-commerce platform for its global customers. Traditionally, the company has focused on the main areas of corporate social responsibility that is the acting as an agent for the customers, employees, shareholders, government, and the environment. In this model of the company's CSR, the core goal is the creation of an efficient and transparent e-commerce platform for its customers, while acting in the best interest of the employees and shareholders.
According to Fried Milton (179), the ability of a corporation to accomplish these agency responsibilities is vital to its long-term sustainability. Although Alibaba's corporate citizenship is arguably the best in the industry, there are still some changes that could be made in the model to make it better, given the evolving needs in the needs of the primary stakeholders. For example, the company has launched new strategies in the CSR model, including globalization and rural outreach programs. Concerning globalization, the company aims at helping companies all over the world conduct business in the most efficient manner. Emphasis is laid on the small businesses as a measure to help in their growth. One of the ways the company has done this helps small businesses sell their products/services around the world. In the Chinese marketplace, Alibaba has helped bridge the large gap between t6he rural and urban e-commerce activities. According to the company's CSR report (2014-2015), the company aims at investing around RBM 10 billion to foster the development of online business between the rural and urban dwellers. This move will help lower the cost of production for farmers who incur massive cost in marketing and transporting their produce to the cities in China.
Proposed Changes in the Company's CSR Model
Apart from these changes, there are other areas that the firm's management could focus on to improve and or enhance its corporate citizenship in China and around the world. Since the consumers are the most important stakeholders for Alibaba and any company for that matter, focusing new strategies to improve their quality of life would help the company enhance its corporate citizenship, enhancing its sustainability. Over the last few years, the safety of the foods sold in China has become an issue of concern. There have been several cases of food poisoning either due to the presence of heavy metals in foods or contamination of food additives. Although the source of these contaminations of a wide variety of foods is diverse, it is the role of the national health bureau to enforce stringent food testing policies to ensure contaminated foods do not enter the market. In this light, Alibaba could offer a great deal of help to the Chinese people by raising awareness of the issue and campaigning for government intervention.
Additionally, the company could use its good reputation among the Chinese public to address challenges of food production in the country by employing the same virtue of protecting the interest of their consumers rather than following their profit goals. This would also help increase the trust between the consumers and producers of various food commodities, which is vital in boosting trade in the region that could be curtailed by the rising cases of food poisoning. Through such an approach, the company would demonstrate its concern about the public, especially in protecting the health of the people that have been affected from occasion to occasion due to food poisoning. This move would be vital to enhancing the CRS model of the company and thus even further improve the sustainability of Alibaba.
Apart from this, the company should help address the need to employ ‘green' methods of production to protect the environment. Currently, China is faced with a catastrophe as many companies use methods of production that damage the environment. Apart from this, the unsafe production methods have also led to the endangering of some animal and plant species. For example, the use of coal (a cheap energy source) has led to substantial emissions of carbon and sulfurous gasses, which have polluted the breathing air in many Chinese urban areas. Therefore, it would, be in the best interest of the people that Alibaba help campaign for the need to use environmentally friendly production methods to conserve the Chinese natural resources and prevent the destruction of certain gifts of nature such as breathing air.
Introduction to the Corporation
Traditionally, corporate citizenship has been a core business of the organization. As such, the initial formation of the company;' business plan integrated a diversity of corporate responsibilities in which the company has enforced to date. The focus has been the provision of transparent, efficient, and cost-effective e-commerce services to help consumers and business people in China and around the world. Moreover, the company has been engaged in various environmental protection activities by adopting a ‘green movement'. The latter challenges other enterprises in the region to employ environmentally friendly operations to help conserve the climate and natural resources.
Additionally, the company has been involved in vast charitable activities around China. These include activities in promoting a better environment, better, and quality health care to improve the quality of life in China, which is affected by the capitalistic nature of most industries. These activities have helped increase the support of the company from its vital stakeholders. In doing this, Alibaba has gained popularity among a wide number of people in China, becoming the largest e-commerce service provider. In providing support in times of natural disasters, the company has gained the support of Chinese nationals and the international community. This is vital in ensuring the sustainability of the business as it makes it easy to implement various strategies, including raising new capital or penetrating new markets. A good example in this case is the Sichuan poster disaster support, where the company supported the victims of the Sichuan province earthquake (Annual Report 38). The company helped the affected rebuild their lives as well as their home, which shows its major focus on the community well-being.
Apart from this, Alibaba has helped support education in regions around China; therefore help win the trust and support of the Nationals. For instance, Alibaba donates computers to schools in various provinces around China to help improve the standard of education. Apart from this, its employees, through the ‘Happy Orange' volunteer campaign. The latter has helped motivate the youth to peruse education. Education is a major aspect of the modern society and organizations that invest in education illustrates their focus on sustainable development of the community. The organization support for education is a big step towards empowering the community, especially with the increased development in information technology.
Lastly, the company has shown extemporary corporate citizenship in the past by helping people develop business in various Chinese regions. For example, Alibaba has helped small business relying on the internet to market or operate their business. Being a leader in the industry, the organization is well situated to support businesses dealing with online transactions. It has achieved this through offering training sessions for small business owners around the country. The company has also continued to help small business owners rebuild their business, such as the victims of the Sichuan province earthquake disaster. The entrepreneurs play an imperative role in enhancing community development because they provide employment and enhance the well-being of the community.
Corporate Citizenship of Alibaba
As mentioned above, Alibaba has risen to become a global leader in the e-commerce service provision, and the success can be attributed to the effectiveness of the company's management to integrate its objectives with corporate social responsibility. According to Milton (179), the primary social responsibility of a company is increasing its profit, which suits the shareholders' value maximization needs. Due to the increase in competition among companies in various industries locally and globally operating companies have been challenged to undertake a wide allay of CSR activities to ensure their sustainability or growth (Lockheed Martin Sustainability Report, 2015). According to this report, the underlying factor in a company's sustainability is its ability to contribute to the economic, social, and environmental among other emerging needs in their immediate environments. According to Steve (133), the famous Aristotle sought to compare corporate citizenship with the known individual citizenship. According to Socrates theory, as a person's behavior towards others can be classified as virtuous, an entity's behavior can be equated either ethical. In line with this, the company requires seeing itself as a person and should perform virtuous deeds to its vital stakeholders, with the aim of increasing the support from this group.
According to Milton (179), a business should not be solely concerned with its profit-making objectives, but further consider its role in making the surroundings societies better economically, environmentally as well as helping improve the quality of lives for the people. One of the most efficient ways of doing this is providing employment opportunities for people. This provides them with income helping them alleviate their living standards as well as their beneficiaries. Alibaba has proven it's worth concerning this duty in corporate citizenship by helping provide employment opportunities for a large number of people, which is about 36000 according to the company's 2014-2015 annual report.
Additionally, the company has proven to be a good corporate citizen by engaging in various charitable activities around China. These include helping people affected by disaster rebuild their lives. Apart from this, the company has laid plans to increase the amount of help to help local business people develop their business activities using various technological inventions, notably by taking advantage of the internet. Additionally, the company has engaged in various programs to promote the health the Chinese national across China. According to Milton, social responsibility lies with the employees and the management of a company (Milton 173). Alibaba's employees and top management have proven useful in developing a culture of effective corporate citizenship, which is an important strategy in ensuring the company's sustainability.
Even with the tremendous success that the company has achieved in its corporate citizenship, there is always room for improvements, in a road to enhance its sustainability. As an individual makes errors in their strive to act in agreement with their responsibility to the society and the government at large, so does a company does. It is the role of the management to ensure that their CRS model is up to date and at the same time ensure that the company rebuilds their image when critiques, to ensure continued support from its stakeholders.
Practical ideas for improving Alibaba's CSR
As such, it is imperative that the strategic management continues scanning for new ways in which the company could increase the level of corporate citizenship, to ensure its future sustainability. One of the most recent problems facing the Chinese community in most regions, especially the urban areas is the safety of foods. Since the company has made it among its core responsibilities to alleviate suffering of the people in its surrounding environment, it would be prudent that the company develops strategies to aid in addressing the problem. As mentioned above, the company could start a campaign to call on the national food safety bureau to implement stringent food tests, which would go a long way in inhibiting the entry of unsafe foods in the market. This approach would benefit the company in some ways, including enhancing the support of the local and international customers. Additionally, this would help increase the trust level in the Chinese society, specifically in the trade of food commodities, which would in turn increase trade in the commodities (Milton 189). Moreover, helping campaign for better food testing policies by the Bureau, Alibaba would help promote good health in the society, which has been one of the company's primary social responsibility.
Another idea that the company could use in the road to enhancing its future sustainability is raising awareness for the need of environmental conservation in the rising challenge of environmental pollution in China. The country has been faced with the worst level of industrial pollution over the recent past, which has led to the vast destruction of the air and water, especially in the highly industrialized regions. The company could farther the intention of its green movement to incorporate stronger campaign for the government to implement more active policies concerning industrial pollution. As such, this would go a long way in reducing the current level of pollution in most cities in China (Milton 179). Apart from this, the company would enjoy a better support from the international community who have been for the idea that the Chinese government should provide an immediate solution to the growing environmental pollution problem.
A Critique of the Company's Corporate Citizenship
In spite of the company's vast social responsibility activities, it has been faced with critique in some areas where their stakeholders feel the company should act better as their agents. One of these has been the issue of the legitimacy of some of the suppliers who use the Alibaba's online platform to sell substandard products. In other instances, customers have reported of false contact information posted by some suppliers, which have in turn affected communication between consumers and suppliers. Consumers usually go ahead to transact with this group of unscrupulous suppliers under the assumption that Alibaba ensures the legitimacy of the online traders. Although it is hard to determine the legitimacy of every supplier posting products on its platform, the organization can establish further measures aimed restraining unscrupulous traders from accessing their platform. Protecting the customers should be among the top priority corporate citizenship strategies because it does not only affect the lives of the customers, but also the reputation of the firm. With the increasing issues associated with cybercrimes, the organization need to develop stringent measures to protect all parties using their platform.
In the current modern society characterized by increasing demands from the society, organizations have been forced to rethink their strategies, to ensure they are in line with the needs of the society. Most of the organizations have integrated these needs in their corporate social responsibilities. In the light of this problem, there is an urgent need for Alibaba to review its CSR policy and formulates a strategy to ensure the legitimacy of the online traders. This would go a long way in enhancing the trust the consumer's place on the company to protect their online trading. Ensuring the safety of the consumers would help the company achieve a future sustainability that is vital for continued success in the future. The risk managers at the company should address this problem by ensuring the legitimacy of the suppliers and business people who register with the company. One of the best ways of doing this is undertaking a background check on the suppliers to check for their past activities. While the company cannot control who meet on their sites for various online transactions, it can help provide caution about the unfaithful or illegitimate supplier using their sites. In doing this, the company would ensure the safety all consumers and the trust in the company, which is a major step in achieving sustainability.
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Works Cited
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Keneth E. Goodpaster and John B. Mathews Jr. "Can a Corporation Have a Conscience? | Integrity Consulting." Leadership Consulting & Training Services | Integrity Consulting. Harvard College, 15 Feb. 1982. Web. 3 Aug. 2016.
Milton Friedman. "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits, by Milton Friedman." Home | University of Colorado Boulder. New York Times Magazine, 13 Sept. 1970. Web. 3 Aug. 2016.
Steve Mackey. "Virtue Ethics, CSR and “corporate Citizenship”: Journal of Communication Management: Vol 18, No 2." Emerald Insight. Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 12 July 2014. Web. 3 Aug. 2016.
