苏宁：以零售为中心的同心多圆战略与人力资源管理（A）

This case describes the business development, strategic adjustment and organizational and human resources management system changes of Suning after entering the “smart retail” age. The company was founded in 1990 and started from selling electrical appliance. After more than 20 years' development, Suning has established the development strategy featuring "concentric circles". The company revolves around the core of “retail” and is engaged in the eight industries – Suning.com, logistics, property, finance, technology, cultural creation, sports and investment. In order to support the eight business sectors with different industry features in different development stages, Suning converts business units into companies, so that each small team can be close to the markets. All small teams are defined as profit centers. In order not to deviate from the core of "retail," Suning always emphasizes the strength of the headquarters and its vertical control over functional lines and risk control. Through organization structure adjustment, Suning has dismantled the "trains" during the retail period and built a "united fleet" led by its headquarters. The company also adjusted its human resource management system accordingly. Based on the "three pillars" model for human resources management, Suning set up four tier-1 expert centers (COEs) and two shared centers (SSCs) under the holding group. The COEs ensure that the policies of Suning Group do not come from sources; while SSCs improve the implementation efficiency of corresponding functions. Considering business uniqueness, Suning not only extends the COEs to tier 3, but also builds a strong business partner (BP) system in vertical control of the headquarters. As the president's business partners, the BP system plays the roles of "guider", butler and nurse to ensure that Group instructions are implemented. It also frees the president from daily matters and helps the onboarding of new employees. In recent years, Suning has also set up the "Fourth Pillar" - Organizational Dept., which is responsible for leaders training and management as well as talent supply chain. When designing the operation mechanism for human resource management, Suning takes into account the different situations of different organizations and sets different appraisal indicators for organizations at different levels of maturity. Suning also weighs on the range of power delegation according to different stages of business development and different characteristics of industry. Through cooperation with BP, COE improves the adaptability of the Group's policies. While the policies are implemented as normal, business units can fine-tune within certain principles and standards. However, as the business continues to change, new departments and new business units join in one after another, how should the company combine professional operation and unified leadership of the Group at the organization design level? The extending COE and BP fully takes into account the business features, but at the same time they may result in organizational redundancy. How should the company maintain its vitality and efficiency at the same time? Suning Group’s Chief HR Officer (CHRO) Meng Xiangsheng believes that the "concentric circles" strategy addresses the "balance between uniqueness and unity".