Liu Qiangdong said that if you don't fight, you are not a brother: why did Ali and Jingdong operate on the "big company disease"?

Southern Weekly

2024-05-27 02:00Posted on the official account of Guangdong Southern Weekly

On May 24, 2024, Liu Qiangdong said at the senior management meeting: "Anyone who has poor long-term performance and never works hard is not my brother." This remark, especially the latest "brother theory" and JD.com's initiatives, has attracted attention.

In 2018, Liu Qiangdong clarified the rumors of layoffs at JD.com, saying: "If artificial intelligence technology is used on a large scale, half of our employees will not need it." In the future, we still have 10 to 20 times the room to grow, we need a lot of people, and we will never fire any of our brothers. ”

In 2019, a JD.com executive revealed that at the group's morning meeting, Liu Qiangdong announced a policy: in the future, as long as JD.com's employees suffer misfortune during their tenure, the company will be responsible for the study and living expenses of all their children until the age of 22 (that is, the age of college graduation). And Liu Qiangdong's original words are: "Most of our employees are first-line brothers, are the pillars of the family, once the accident will destroy the whole family, we hope that all the brothers are good, but life is impermanent, the company should become everyone's last reliance." ”

In all fairness, Liu Qiangdong is quite affectionate to JD employees. Moreover, it has paid real money to cover the children of employees who have suffered misfortunes, which is beyond the duty of ordinary companies, in order to fulfill the promise of "Jingdong is the backing of all employees" and create an atmosphere of "Jingdong is a big family". Such an act should not be questioned.

As soon as Liu Qiangdong's latest "brother theory" came out, Jingdong Retail also began to strictly check attendance and adjusted the lunch break rules. The new regulations require that the number of people at work stations be counted at 9 a.m. every day, and if the shuttle bus is delayed, a certificate must be submitted; The lunch break is shortened to 1 hour, from 12:00 to 13:00, and the lights are not allowed to be turned off during the lunch break. The company strictly prohibits the behavior of punching in on behalf of the company, and will seriously deal with the relevant personnel once found. In order to assess employee work saturation, employees who leave work at 6 p.m. are subject to work saturation consideration; All non-working WeChat groups are dissolved, and all communication is carried out.

This may be because Liu Qiangdong and JD.com's management admit that there is a "big enterprise disease" in the JD Group system, especially in the struggle of great slackness. Obviously, it is precisely under this cognition that Liu Qiangdong put forward the latest "brotherhood theory", which detonated public opinion.

Coincidentally, on the evening of May 23, Alibaba released its 2024 fiscal year annual report, and at the same time, Tsai Chongxin and Wu Yongming, as the chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group, issued the first jointly signed letter to shareholders, which said: In the past 25 years, Alibaba has experienced continuous growth, and there have also been some "large company diseases". In the next 10 years, we will see ourselves as a start-up again......

Ali and JD.com, one after the other, almost at the same time said that they have a "big company disease" and "big enterprise disease", to solve this problem, it is a coincidence, is it just a coincidence? The "big company disease" is certainly not new now, why is it suddenly taken so seriously now?

First of all, it goes without saying that the "big company disease" may be inevitable for large companies to some extent. When the company is bigger, there are more management levels, and the chain of command is longer, the efficiency of doing things will decrease, the number of people fishing in troubled waters will increase, and bureaucracy and formalism will prevail. As far as Internet companies are concerned, some managers do a beautiful PPT, full of "closed-loop", "empowerment" and "underlying logic", and are good at "upper management".

The founders of leading Internet companies such as Alibaba and JD.com, Ma Yun and Liu Qiangdong, are full of "entrepreneurial spirit", dare to open up, grasp the trend of the times, achieve great achievements, and create and eat the economic rent of the Internet industry (manifested as high profits). In order to maintain this economic rent, it is necessary to deal with a thousand complicated affairs, and many people have to be used. It's just that some of the people used are the producers of the reputation of these large companies to maintain this economic rent or open up new Internet fields and create new economic rents; Others are sharing this economic rent, essentially consumers of the reputation of these large corporations.

Whether a large company is thriving or not making progress depends on whether the former or the latter person dominates the company's decision-making and operations. Powerful entrepreneurs and managers can not only discover market opportunities and create economic rents, but also maintain the vitality of the company by using more people and less people using the latter people, so as to maintain and create new economic rents.

Back to why Ali and JD.com are now dealing with their own "big company disease". In fact, their financial performance is still good.

Alibaba, revenue in fiscal year 2024 (April 2023 to the end of March 2024) was 941.17 billion yuan, an increase of 8% year-on-year; Non-GAAP net profit was RMB157.479 billion, up 11% year-on-year. However, in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024 (first quarter of 2024), revenue was 221.87 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.6%; The adjusted net profit was 24.42 billion yuan, down 11% year-on-year, and the increase in revenue and the decline in profit are cause for concern.

JD.com Group achieved a total revenue of 260 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2024, a year-on-year increase of 7.0%, and a net profit of 8.9 billion yuan under non-US GAAP, a year-on-year increase of 17.2%.

The words they didn't say were the most important, three words: "Pinduoduo". On May 22, Pinduoduo released its financial report for the first quarter of 2024, with its operating income of 86.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 131%; net profit was 27.998 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 246%. As the performance far exceeded market expectations, after the release of the earnings report, Pinduoduo's U.S. stock rose more than 13% pre-market to close at $158.46 per share. With the release of the financial report, the market value of Pinduoduo once again surpassed Alibaba.

The strong rise of Pinduoduo has changed the pattern of China's Internet and e-commerce, and it is normal for Alibaba and JD.com to feel pressure. Last year, JD.com and Ali learned Pinduoduo's "refund only"; Now, they are benchmarking against Pinduoduo's internal management, and they are determined to cure their own "big company disease", but in the final analysis, they are all forced out. This also shows that the competition in the Internet industry is very fierce, and no one can sleep on the credit book of the past, and a new business force will rise after a little nap, which also reflects the vitality of China's Internet from one side. Let's see who can have the last laugh.

Chen Bin

Editor-in-charge: Xin Provincial Chronicles