While most of China internet’s attention gravitated towards Alibaba’s annual Singles’ Day shopping fest, Tencent, the nemesis of Alibaba, didn’t feel like to be left out of the focus of the limelight.
The social media and gaming giant announced today the third iteration of its corporate values in celebration of its 21st anniversary, with the updated mission, vision, and values.
The combined new mission and vision, explained in an internal email from its founder Pony Ma, and Martin Lau the president, is being defined as “Value for Users, Tech for Good”. Whilst the new corporate values now settle on “Integrity, Proactivity, Collaboration, Creativity.”
The company’s previous mission was to “improve the quality of life through internet value-added services”, which had been used for the last 14 years.
Tencent says on its official website that guided by this new set of corporate philosophy it strives to incorporate social responsibility into the products and services and develop frontier technology for the good of mankind.
The culture and values upgrade comes after Tencent’s restructure of its business groups last year, the third time in its history. Through the restructure it created a platform and content group (PCG) by combining the mobile internet group, social network group, and online media group.
Founded in 1998, Hong Kong-listed Tencent is one of China’s most valuable internet companies with a market cap of around USD 400 billion. But there is no lack of ever-rising local rivalry and challenges.
The restructure move was thought to be one of the company’s reforms to fend off the competition from the newly emerged competitors such as ByteDance and to weather through China’s tightening grip over the mobile gaming sector, one of the biggest revenue sources for Tencent.
This is not the first time Tencent making statements on its ethics. The phrase “Tech for Good” was first unveiled by Tencent co-founder and former CTO Tony Zhang in early 2018, but it has garnered little public attention until Pony Ma mentioned it earlier this year in a post to his WeChat Moment feed.
Tencent Corporate Culture Version 3.0
Mission & Vision: Value for Users, Tech for Good
User value is our guiding principle, we strive to incorporate social responsibility into our products and services
Promote technology innovation and cultural vitality; help industries digitally upgrade; collaborate for the sustainable development of society
Values: Integrity, Proactivity, Collaboration, Creativity
Integrity: Uphold principles, ethics, openness and fairness
- Abide by relevant laws and organizational standards, comply at all times with the company’s code of conduct
- Act with integrity, uphold the principles of fairness, honesty and credibility
- Use positive energy to constructively shape our surroundings
Proactivity: Pursue positive contributions, volunteer for responsibility and push for breakthroughs
- Relentlessly strive to accomplish our mission
- Be prepared for adversity, keep learning, and strive for excellence
- Be accountable, proactively take on new initiatives and challenges
Collaboration: Be inclusive and collaborative, strive to progress and evolve
- Openly share expertise and experience to grow collectively
- Think big picture, work effectively across teams to achieve our common goals
- Be true to our mission, strive for the continuing evolution of the company
Creativity: Push for breakthrough innovations, explore the possibilities of the future
- Relentlessly challenge existing thinking and ways of doing things
- Commit our energies and resources to explore new frontiers
- Nurture creativity as the source of value