Can The Dragon Be Taming By Ethics Essay

Can the Dragon be Tamed By Ethics? : Alibaba Listing on NYSE

Alibaba has been making headlines recently with it entering the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) with the world's biggest IPO. It all started when the founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma, saw a growing opportunity in China when the US was starting to outsource more and more of their manufacturing to China in the mid 1990's.

Ma, who originally made money building American websites for Chinese businesses, decided to venture off the beaten path and create a service that would allow American merchants and retailers to easily and effortlessly connect overseas to Chinese manufactures through an online website, similar to how Amazon and eBay function today.

His vision and company grew to now

Currently, Alibaba is the world's 5th most valuable technological company. The list goes as follows: Apple ($614 billion), Google ($387 billion), Microsoft ($382 billion), and China Mobile ($259 billion).

The Chinese share of the world's market has since increased about 10% from 30 years ago - back when US based companies accounted for the vast majority of the world's market. Based on these trends, the world is expected to see more and more Chinese based companies take over the market and less American companies being able to hold their ground for the world's share. This is mainly because it is easier for the Chinese to break into a US market than it is for an American to break into the Chinese market.

American companies who are interested in touching China's soil often encounter unexpected problems early on that simply do not occur within the US. Problems that the US market has been able to prevent through its strict and, often times, very clear laws. The very straight-forward American approach does not go over too well with the locals, who will not help an outsider unless there is a Chinese

What an American defines as income versus what the Chinese define as income are two very separate animals, which can lead Americans, who are not familiar with Chinese culture or tradition, falling into devastating loss of profits early on in the business.

Another question that remains is ethics. American culture vs Chinese culture also works on a different definition of ethics. When Alibaba filed for the IPO, it listed about 38 pages to potential investors on the possible risks they could be undertaking. A majority of these risks were fairly standard concerns, however they also outline certain sections about the Chinese government, threat of a natural disaster, and a slightly different set of governance standards than their American