2015

Cardiff Metropolitan University

Mira Abou Khzam

[LEADERSHIP AND CHANGE

MANAGEMENT]
Table of Contents
1. Introduction.......................................................................................................................................... 3

2. Jack Ma’s Biography ........................................................................................................................... 3

3. Application of Generic Approaches to Leadership ............................................................................. 3

a. Jack Ma’s traits and behaviours ....................................................................................................... 3

b. The behaviour of Jack Ma in different cases .................................................................................... 4

c. Leader influence on followers ........................................................................................................... 4

4. Other Aspects of Leadership ................................................................................................................ 5

a. The Success of Jack Ma .................................................................................................................... 5

b. The strength and the weaknesses of the leader ................................................................................. 5

c. Organizational Values ...................................................................................................................... 6

5. Change Management ........................................................................................................................... 6

a. The Concept ...................................................................................................................................... 6

b. Jack Ma’s and change management ................................................................................................. 6

c. Jack Ma implements change management ........................................................................................ 7

d. Barriers to Change ........................................................................................................................... 7

6. Applying creativity learning and innovation ....................................................................................... 8

7. Conclusion............................................................................................................................................ 8

References ................................................................................................................................................... 10
1. Introduction
In this research we are going to discuss the aspects of leadership and change management
by taking the case of the Chinese leader Jack Ma who established Alibaba group in 1999
which is the first website that helps small businesses to leverage innovation by the strategy
of business-to-business online. The company became one of the most important global
leaders in online and mobile commerce led by a very successful business leader Jack Ma.
Jack Ma retired in 2013 from being the CEO of Alibaba Group leaving behind him lessons
that can be taught to young entrepreneurs (Alibabagroup.com, 2015). But who is Jack Ma
and what makes him a Leader?

2. Jack Ma’s Biography

Ma was born in the 15th of October 1964 in Hangzhou in south China. He grew in an area
that wasn’t related in any aspect to the west. He wasn’t rich in adverse he was kind of poor.
He wasn’t good at school and used to have fights with his classmates. When he was a
teenager he used to offer visitors of China tours in the city because he was good at English
and one of the tourists nicknamed him “Jack”. He graduated in 1988 and applied to so many
jobs but he ended up teaching English in a school where he build good teacher-students
relations. Ma had no experience in programming and coding and he found out about the
internet in his trip to the USA in 1995. He stated that he learned how to use the internet in
1998 one year before starting his online business after the convention of seventeen of his
friends to invest. And today Jack Ma is the richest men in the China with a fortune
equivalent to $25 billion (Stone & D’onfro, 2014)

3. Application of Generic Approaches to Leadership

a. Jack Ma’s traits and behaviours
He was extraversion. He inspired many with his energy and optimism but he had over self-
confidence on his ability to change the world so he was a little bit unrealistic (Anderlini,
2013). He has high conscientiousness in his job; with high integrity he respects the
confidence of his subordinate. He is open-minded and creative. He was agreeable by being
responsive and never disappointing anyone, flexible with his employees and friendly with
his employees because he was highly confidence about them (Chowdhury, n.d.).
 Jack Ma’s behavior was relation-oriented and he was a participative leader who used to get
his employees involved in the decision making and take their opinion into consideration. He
used to meet with every new employee in the organization, and always make staff meeting
and the most significant thing that he made a BBS intranet system to be able to
communicate with his staff by allowing them to share their thoughts and interact with them
casually (Ft.com, n.d.).
b. The behaviour of Jack Ma in different cases
To motivate his employees he used to make annual entertaining ceremonies such as the
Talent Show party to which he participate with his employee and enjoy (Stone & D’onfro,
2014).
Another situation is in 2003 when china was suffering from the SARS, Alibaba group
continue to operate normally and employees continue doing their work but from their
houses in order to protect his employees from the disease (Alibabagroup.com, 2015). In
analysing the behaviour of Jack Ma in this situation we can see that as much as Jack Ma was
ready to take risk, he wasn’t ready to risk the health of any of his employees but at the same
time where every business was suffering from reductions in the revenues Alibaba was
operating normally and gaining money like normal days.
c. Leader influence on followers
Jack Ma was a charismatic leader that influences his follows; they used to find his a credible
source of information so they trust every word he says. They were inspired by his ideas
behaviour and way of managing his business. He was an achievement oriented leader who
motivates his employees by giving them challenges to achieve, and inspirational leaders by
inspiring them to follow their dreams and grow. And that what his employees claimed.
Based on a PDF document uploaded on www.ft.com about Alibaba.com (no date), that
shows different discussion and interviews with Alibaba employees we can conclude how
Jack Ma was influencing on them. They stated that Ma was a charismatic leader with
credibility that draws people into the company and pumps them with credible dreams. Tang
Zhenrong, an international website engineering department, and one year with the company
(Undated), stated that when he first spoke to Jack Ma he was impressed with his vision and
business model that was one of the best that he ever saw. Lili Li from the sales research
department said that from the first day at Alibaba they were led to have a dream. And other
 employees mentioned that Jack Ma had a passion toward the culture of the organization, he
makes them enjoy challenges and give them inspiration to grow (Alibaba.com: A Smiling
Community with a Dream, n.d.).

4. Other Aspects of Leadership

a. The Success of Jack Ma
Several reasons were behind the success of Jack Ma. His transformational leadership that he
built it in the organization that went beyond ordinary expectations which was presented by
his behavior and led him to a great success. He appreciated attitude and passion and gave it
an important value considering it much important than the theoretical skills, he united his
people under a unique goal understanding that it is hard to convince the whole company to
follow and believe one person so he tried to make them have the same goal. Jack ma has a
strong foresight and he takes time in developing creative thinking skills to forecast the risks
and be ready to adapt to any change. In addition Ma’s success was also based on hiring
people with superior skills. He considers a failure is someone who gives up. He was
tenacious and has a clear vision. He didn’t make enemies and the most important thing is
that he loves life and tries to enjoy it (Kux, n.d.).
b. The strength and the weaknesses of the leader
Of course like any person on earth Jack Ma have strength and weaknesses. Concerning
strength, he have empowering nature he used to always motivate his employees in the
organization, has have great communication skills as he was an English teacher he was very
good in English and he knows how to represent his ideas in an effective manner and this
held him also to be a man of learning nature and be a teacher more than a CEO in his
organization. But he also had weaknesses; he was too friendly and emotional which can be
negative sometimes in terms of being strict and take strict decisions, and he was over
confidence about his employees which is also not good sometimes (Chowdhury, n.d.). From
a personal perspective and analysis, behaving highly in a relation-oriented way might affect
the leader’s influence on followers and it will also reduce the respect of the rules and the
procedures that’s why an effective leader as much as he has to be transformational he should
not break his charisma with his performance within the organization and keep good rate of
power-distance between him and his followers.
c. Organizational Values
Jack Ma was a risk taker. Risk is a scary term for different managers, but was an enjoyable
challenge for Ma. And more then that he used to teach his employees how to deal with risk
and challenge it instead of giving up which he considered it failing. He was committed to
quality; he had a good quality management strategy because he didn’t care about how many
services he provides during one day what he cared about was how efficient his service is and
how high the quality of the service is. He was flexible, acceptable for new ideas and has the
ability to change of course without losing the real meaning of the initial goal. He was
creative, time respecting person, and shows creativity in thinking about the future of his
organization and china in general. He said in one of his public speech to learn from
competitor but not benchmark, instead people should try to create new ideas and creative
way of thinking (Chowdhury, n.d.).

5. Change Management
a. The Concept
Change management is any type of modifications done in the organization due to external or
internal forces. Change can be reactive for certain circumstances or planned to achieve a
desirable goal (Griffin, 2013). There are many theorists that discussed this subject and came
up with different models of change. But how does change management relate to our case
here?
b. Jack Ma’s and change management
Jack Ma stated his business by a step into a change in the procedures of the creation of a new
business when he stated in his last public speech at Stanford University on May 14th 2013,
before retiring from being the CEO at Alibaba group Jack Ma stated that he considers that if
someone wrote a business plan in 1996 he either was lying to others or to himself, because
nobody have any idea of what could happen. So he decided not to write a plan and life is a
plan that is slowly unfolding so he stated: “Embrace Change, Change is the best Plan”.
So creating Alibaba platform was a step into a change that Ma considers it an opportunity that
leads to success: “Any change is an opportunity for young people because if things do not
change nobody has a chance” (Ma, 2013). He was a leader that embraces “change” and deals
with it as a new opportunity not a threat.
But how did he implement change inside his organization or during his company’s lifecycle?
c. Jack Ma implements change management
In implementing change, Alibaba started as a small B to C online trade but Jack Ma knew that
they did not have the DNA to become a consumer company because the world is changing so
fast and it is getting harder to catch customers’ needs. Small businesses know more about the
needs of their customers. So they decided that such change needs new ways of empowering
their power sellers and their SMEs to support their customers and they should use technology
to help small businesses grow (Ma, 2013). They became a business to business company
without giving up on their business to consumer or even consumer to consumer, but they
recognized the need of the B to B to attain the sustainable growth of their company.
Another situation is when people had problem in trusting e-commerce, and getting refund if
any financial problem occurs while shopping online, when Alibaba created something new
which is the AliPay. In the Asian investment conference 2013 mentioned that when he first
mentioned the idea of AliPay many people warned him about stepping into the financial
market because it might be illegal and lead him to jail, employees were worried about the new
system and its relation to the government legacy and other considered it as a “stupid” way of
changing, but Ma took the risk and started Alipay.com the payment solution that consumers
can benefit from it if they do not get the thing they want they will get a full refund,
considering that if it is stupid let it be as long as it is solving a problem; “Let’s make stupid
things smart” Ma stated.
After many years of technological changes around the world and the fast running technology
Jack Ma captured the need of a Research and development (R&D) department in the
organization so he decided to open this department in 2008 (Chinese-champions.com, 2013).
d. Barriers to Change
Any implementation of type of change Alibaba group will face several barriers. One of the
situations where Jack Ma and his group faced problems is when Alibaba group decided to
expand to the United stated. Alibaba USA faced a lot of cultural barriers, lack of trust from
the American people to Chinese Internet Company. In addition Alibaba has a broad of huge
competitors such as Amazon and EBay (Thomson, 2014). New strategies of cultural and
organizational changes should be planned in aim for Alibaba to succeed in the US. These
changes should fit the US organizational culture that do not resemble to the Chinese
 organizational values and structure. Culture plays a major role in new business success
where leaders should adapt to the new change aspects by organizational strategies that fit the
new market and eras’ culture.

6. Applying creativity learning and innovation

When we say innovation we mean going beyond traditional situations and step into a creative
change which must be an application of new ideas. And that what Alibaba group did.

The creativity about Alibaba group is that it is not and e-commerce Company, it helps other
to do e-commerce. It is a company running a platform they are running ecosystem. From his
point of view Jack Ma stated in the Asian Investment Conference (2013) that in the future the
traditional B to C businesses will face a huge challenge because in the future companies will
make money because of “value created” not because of skills, people will not make money
by how many thing they sell but by how many different thing they sell at one time. And in
the future companies will not make money by the good services they provide they will make
money by the efficiency of their services and Alibaba have 25 different business units and
they are almost everywhere and they control their head comes by the efficiency they have.

In a public speech at Stanford University Ma said that today’s market is huge, china was
countless small businesses and so does the United States and Africa... but for Alibaba group
places that have small businesses represent opportunities for them. In the industrial age they
depended on economy of scale, in the information age they rely on innovation and
customization because Ma considers that big Data will gradually drive large companies to
become smaller ones and this will maker smaller business agile and interesting and this is the
era of customization. He also said: “Spread Innovative ideas throughout the world.” Ma
(2013) believes that the world changed and today we don’t need to use weapons instead we
can use economic development and innovation to impact and influence people.

7. Conclusion
Jack Ma is a transformational leader that changed the reality of china and disclaimed Ruyard
Kipling’s quotes that says: “East is east and West is west, and never the twain shall meet”.
He was the first to enter the e-commerce world in 1999 and succeed to enter china in the
global e-market. He has a great influencing power, creative innovative ideas, have a change
nature and able to accept challenges. Now Jack Ma retired leaving behind him lessons for
young CEO, innovative thoughts and quotes, great business model and strategies to apply in
business. Jack Ma retired but he still has this influencing power.
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