Ethos as Dwelling

202 Pages·2016·14.4 MB·English

Ethos as Dwelling: The Construction of Corporate Ethos in an IPO

A Dissertation
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
BY

Shuwen Li

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Dr. Donald Ross, Advisor

August 2016
©Shuwen Li 2016
Acknowledgements

My interest in ethos began more than a decade ago when I started teaching at a Chinese
university after my college graduation. Working with students made me wonder what empowered
students in education. Particularly, after observing the four-years changes of the first group of
undergraduates I taught, I wondered what we should care about more: a person’s appearance or
something behind it. This cognitive dissonance motivated me to pursue advanced studies in
rhetoric. Serendipitously, I was introduced to the study of IPO prospectus in Dr. Donald Ross’s
Audience and Argumentation seminar in Spring 2013 at University of Minnesota. From there I
conducted a pilot study about the signalled ethos of the Chinese Internet company, Baidu, in its
2005 IPO in the U.S. While I was taking my preliminary exam in 2014, Alibaba launched its U.S.
IPO. Then, I switched my research focus to Alibaba’s IPO.

This case study project went through a recursive process. My personal attachment to this
project made the completion of it beyond the initial expectation of my dissertation committee. I
would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Donald Ross, for his inspiring remarks on this project, his
continuous help with my writing, and his personal advice on pushing me to move forward.
Thanks for reading and editing more than one hundred pages of writing from me that were not
used in the final dissertation. I would like to thank Dr. James Zappen, from Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, for his early direction of this project, his continuous support of my research,
and his generous help with my writing. My equal, sincere thanks go to Dr. Laura Gurak, for her
guidance of ethos studies in my preliminary exam and this research project, for her advice on
pursuing the theme of trust in future research, and for introducing me to Dr. Zappen at the 2014
RSA; to Dr. Ann Hill Duin, for her open and rigorous remarks at my dissertation prospectus
meeting, for her suggestion of using connectedness and personal networking in my future
research, and for her generous offering of Google Glass in my pedagogical application of ethos,
the “performative eportfolio” project.

On the personal side, I am grateful to have people supporting me in a very difficult period
of time during the dissertation. Thanks to Kit Hansen, a former ESL specialist at University of
Minnesota, who helped me with my writing and mentored me in the past five years, and to her
husband Steven Greenfield. Thanks to Dr. Amy Cummins, a professor whom I met in my first
MA program and maintained contact with me through e-mails in the past ten years. Thanks to Dr.
Matt Hanson, the psychologist at University of Minnesota, for talking me through difficult times
in the past five years in the doctoral program. Thanks to Drs. Amy Lokensgard and Kelsey
Carignan for effectively rescuing me from a trauma. Thanks to Nan Nelson for her administrative
assistance and her personal care. Thanks to Yang Chong for encouraging me and visiting with
me. Thanks to Olga Menagarishvili, for talking me through the doctoral program and
accompanying me to watch belugas in Atlanta. Thanks to students I taught at University of
Minnesota for inspiring and caring about me. Thanks to people who doubted my language and
writing abilities when I entered the doctoral program. The pain made me to pursue my own ethos.

Thanks, my parents, Kejuan Li and Shiqin Ge, for your generous waiting. Thanks, my
high school friend, Li Li, for visiting with my parents when I was far away from home and for
believing that I could grow stronger.

Thanks, my grandma, for waiting me to fulfill my promised visit during my preliminary
exam. I miss you.

i
Dedication

To those who value ethos.

ii
Abstract

This qualitative case study investigates how trust was operationalized in the
Chinese e-commerce company, Alibaba, in its U.S. Initial Public Offering (IPO) in 2014.
Rhetorically speaking, gaining trust is a result of a successful construction of ethos.
Tracing the classical and contemporary conceptualizations of ethos, I drew a conclusion
supporting ethos as dwelling and proposed to investigate this conceptualization in new
contexts, such as IPOs. Using Robert Stake’s (1994) case-study methodology, I analyzed
two artifacts in the Alibaba IPO: (1) the online tertiary audience reactions, which include
English and Chinese online business news media reactions and high status actors; (2)
Alibaba’s IPO prospectus, constituting a total of eight versions. “Thick description” and
rhetorical interpretations were applied to data analysis. In addition to the main analytical
tool, rhetorical ethos, I used theories from regional rhetorics, visual rhetorics, and
technical communication to facilitate my data analysis. Findings from the analysis of the
online tertiary audience reactions indicate how ecologies, consisted of material
experiences and public feelings influence the construction of ethos. Outcomes from
examining the IPO prospectus reveal the dialectic relationship between discourse and
materiality in ethos construction. Results from the two artifacts overlap in the importance
of materiality and the role of emotion in ethos construction. Though this study aims for
naturalistic generalization, results can still contribute to refining existing theories of
ethos, especially in a cross-cultural context and in professional communication.

iii
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. i
Dedication ........................................................................................................................... ii
Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii
Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iv
List of Tables ....................................................................................................................... v
List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... vi
Chapter 1 Introduction: Alibaba’s U.S. IPO .................................................................. 1
The Case ............................................................................................................ 1
Trust in Different Cultures ................................................................................ 6
Chapter Overview .............................................................................................. 9
Chapter 2 Literature Review: Ethos and IPO .............................................................. 11
Enigmatic Ethos ............................................................................................... 11
IPO in the U.S. ................................................................................................. 23
Intersection between Rhetorical Ethos and Business Communication ........... 27
Chapter 3 Research Design: Case-Study Methodology ............................................... 49
Introduction ..................................................................................................... 49
Justification of Case Study .............................................................................. 50
Type of Case Study ......................................................................................... 52
Epistemology of Case Study ........................................................................... 54
Pros and Cons of Case Study ........................................................................... 58
Methods for Data Collection and Selection ..................................................... 59
Methods for Data Analysis .............................................................................. 65
Chapter 4 Dwelling Ecologically: The Online Tertiary Audience Reactions ............ 70
Introduction ..................................................................................................... 70
Research Issues ................................................................................................ 73
Flows of Online Tertiary Audience Reactions ................................................ 73
Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 111
Chapter 5 Dwelling Discursively: The IPO Prospectus ............................................. 118
Introduction ................................................................................................... 118
Research Issues .............................................................................................. 120
Features of Alibaba’s IPO Prospectus ........................................................... 122
Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 164
Chapter 6 Conclusion: Dwelling Materially ............................................................... 168
Summary, Conclusion, and Future Direction ................................................ 168
Industrial and Pedagogical Implications ....................................................... 172
Postscript: Reflection on Case-Study Methodology ................................................... 182
References ...................................................................................................................... 185
iv
List of Tables

Table 3.1: Data Resources ................................................................................................. 61
Table 3.2: Data Selection of Online Tertiary Audience Reactions (Stage One) ............... 64
Table 3.3: Data Selection of Online Tertiary Audience Reactions (Stage Two) .............. 64
Table 3.4: Snapshot of Ultimate Data Set (Stage Three) .................................................. 65

v
List of Figures

Figure 4.1: T-shirt distributed at Alibaba’s IPO .............................................................. 109
Figure 4.2: The Chinese graphic novel (cid:12)(cid:7)(cid:8)(cid:3)(cid:6)(cid:5)(cid:1)(cid:14)(cid:13)(cid:2)(cid:10)(cid:9)(cid:4)(cid:11) ................... 110
Figure 5.1: Mobile monetization from Alibaba’s June 16 IPO prospectus (2014) ......... 133
Figure 5.2: Mobile monetization from Alibaba’s August 27 IPO prospectus (2014) ..... 133
Figure 5.3: Introductory visual from Facebook’s IPO prospectus (2012) ....................... 144
Figure 5.4: Introductory visual from Twitter’s IPO prospectus (2013) .......................... 144
Figure 5.5: Introductory visual from Alibaba’s IPO prospectus (2014) ......................... 146
Figure 5.6: Image of Taobao Marketplace homepage in Alibaba’s IPO prospectus
(September 15, 2014) ...................................................................................................... 148
Figure 5.7: Visual about Mobile Taobao in Alibaba’s IPO prospectus (September 15,
2014) ................................................................................................................................ 149
Figure 5.8: Photo of Alibaba’s post-founding meeting in the IPO prospectus (September
5, 2014) ............................................................................................................................ 151
Figure 5.9: Photo of founding Taobao in the IPO prospectus (September 5, 2014) ....... 151
Figure 5.10: Photos of founding Alimama and Alipay in the IPO prospectus (September
5, 2014) ............................................................................................................................ 152
Figure 5.11: Photo of Jack Ma’s Lakeside apartment in the IPO prospectus (September 5,
2014) ................................................................................................................................ 153
Figure 5.12: Photos of launching Alibaba.com and Singles Day 2013 in the IPO
prospectus (September 5, 2014) ...................................................................................... 154

vi
Chapter 1 Introduction: Alibaba’s U.S. IPO
A real story about trust, “the leap of faith”

The Case
Initial public offering (IPO) is a sale of a company’s stocks to the public for the
first time. Through this process, a private company raises capital and transforms into a
public one. On September 19, 2014, the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba went
public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). As a result, Alibaba raised $25 billion
in the world’s largest IPO. Nevertheless, Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, told CNBC
after Alibaba’s IPO trading day: “Today what we got is not money. What we got is the
trust from the people.”
Rhetorically speaking, gaining trust results from a successful construction of
ethos. In the case of Alibaba’s U.S. IPO, ethos was constructed by a Chinese company to
convince potential mainly American investors to buy the Chinese company’s stock
shares. A possible question we might ask is: Did the two parties finally dwell together?
Hours before Alibaba’s IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, Jack Ma was
interviewed by CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla, Jim Cramer, and David Faber. This interview
includes a brief exchange about “trust”:
QUINTANILLA: WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO AN AMERICAN INVESTOR WHO IS
REALLY INTERESTED IN YOUR COMPANY AND THE GROWTH OPPORTUNITY, BUT
WORRIES ABOUT INTERFERENCE FROM THE GOVERNMENT, TRANSPARENCY,
BOOKS, REGULATORS WE DON'T UNDERSTAND? HOW DO WE GET AROUND ALL OF
THAT?
MA: TRUST. TRUST US, TRUST THE MARKET, AND TRUST THE YOUNG PEOPLE.
TRUST THE NEW TECHNOLOGY. THE WORLD IS GETTING MORE TRANSPARENT.
1
EVERYTHING YOU WORRY ABOUT, I'VE BEEN WORRYING ABOUT IN THE PAST 15
YEARS. EVERYTHING YOU WORRY ABOUT, I'VE BEEN GOING THROUGH THIS
TOUGH 15 YEARS. THAT'S NOT EASY. AND WE ARE READY TO WORK FOR
ANOTHER 87 YEARS. I WANT TO TELL THE INVESTORS, WE TAKE CARE OF THEM.
FABER: TRUST HAS TO BE EARNED, OF COURSE.
MA: BECAUSE WHEN YOU TRUST, EVERYTHING IS SIMPLE. IF YOU DON'T TRUST,
THINGS
GET COMPLICATED. 1
Hours after the interview, Alibaba closed at $93.89 per share, 38% higher than the $68
offering price—that’s how we heard Jack Ma’s exclamation of gaining “trust from the
people.” Nevertheless, Alibaba’s four-and-half months IPO journey in the U.S. was not
smooth.
On May 6, 2014, Alibaba filed its initial registration statement (also called IPO
prospectus; available online to the public) at the SEC. A few minutes before the first
filing, Jack Ma sent an email to Alibaba employees, 2 instead of potential investors. In
this email, Ma reviewed Alibaba’s history, envisioned the opportunities and challenges as
a result of the IPO, and stressed the importance of adhering to their mission (“making it
easy to do business anywhere”), their value system (“customer first, employee second,
shareholder third”), their faith in the future, and their belief that ordinary people can do
extraordinary things. On the same day, The New York Times published an article online,
reviewing the Variable Interest Entity (VIE)3 structure that Alibaba uses and alerting

1 Transcript retrieved from http://www.cnbc.com/id/102016827.
2 English translation of Jack Ma’s letter can be retrieved at
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/05/07/unparalleled-ruthlessness-awaits-jack-mas-letter-to-
alibaba-employees/.
3 Investorpedia defines Variable Interest Entities as “an entity (investee) in which the investor has
obtained less than a majority-owned interest, according to the United States Financial Accounting
Standards Board.” The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission considers VIE as “a
highly risk mechanism” used by Chinese private Internet companies to bypass the Chinese
2