Ikea Business Ethics

Introduction of IKEA

IKEA is a Swedish company producing home furnishing products at low prices to make them affordable to people. The company was founded in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad and kept growing tremendously from 2 stores in 1964 to 114 stores in 1994 to 285 stores in 2008 in 36 countries with an additional 26 stores to be opened in 2009 welcoming a total of 522 million visitors. IKEA's success story is the result of its founders opening store in 1951 to allow customers to inspect products before buying them, using a catalog to tempt people to visit an exhibition. Its key feature of providing self-assembled furniture starting from 1953 significantly cut transport and storage costs. In 1956, IKEA began testing the concept of flat pack to reduce costs through lowered storage space requirements, reduced transportation expenses, decreased transportation damage and reductions in labor costs.

IKEA and its mission

IKEA's mission is to offer a wide range of home furnishing items of good design and function, excellent quality and durability, at prices so low that the majority of people can afford to buy them. The company targets the customer who is looking for value and is willing to do a little bit of work serving themselves, transporting the items home and assembling the furniture for a better price. The typical IKEA customer is young, low to middle income family.

Ethical Issues Related to IKEA's Position on Child Labor

Besides its success stories, in regard to social issues, the company confronted the child labor problem, which this paper mainly discusses about. In 1994, a Swedish television showed a documentary film about children working in Pakistan, targeting IKEA. In India, IKEA faced criticism about child labor from various international organizations. In the spring of 1995, another film is threaten to be shown on German television about children working at looms at Rangan Exports, a company used by IKEA and the producer then invited IKEA to send someone to take part in a live discussion during the airing of the program. These events urged the company to consider environmental and social issues more seriously.

Social Issues

As a company whose operations are international, IKEA needs to get the cheapest supplies and therefore go to countries that offer cheap labor. However, these developing countries such as India, Pakistan and Nepal are facing a lot of social issues about human rights. When IKEA set its foot in these countries, it could not avoid these problems. For example in India, estimates of child labor in India vary from the government's 1991 census figure of 11.3 million children under 15 working to Human Rights Watch's estimate of between 60 million and 115 millions child laborers and about 200,000 were employed in the carpet industry. Its corporate strategy style partly exacerbates, instead of helps the situation. The fact that IKEA does not have its own manufacturing facilities; instead it uses subcontracted manufacturers all over the world for supplies makes it more complex and difficult to keep track of the company's suppliers and sub-suppliers. It is even more difficult to keep track of children working in homes where whole families worked on looms from the sub-suppliers' level. However, on the positive side, this corporate strategy gives IKEA's the advantage of being able to change its suppliers without much cost.

IKEA realizes the challenge and questions itself how deeply the company wants to engage and to help eliminate local social issues of child labor. At the initial period, the way that IKEA dealt with Formaldehyde and forestry issues showed its engagement in social responsibility still remained at the reactive step but not yet at the proactive step or interactive step. This inadequate engagement explains why the company keeps undergoing social and environmental issues pushed by the public. IKEA is outstanding at new ideas for marketing but the company is still passive in social responsibility action. To fix this weakness, IKEA needs to be more aware of social responsibility and potential upcoming social issues.

The way out

First we take a look at how the company responded to environmental and social issues when they first emerged. According to the case document that referring to the child labor problem raised by a Swedish television documentary that showed children in Pakistan working at weaving loom, we first look at how IKEA addressed the event according to the case document. It "sent a legal team to Geneva to seek input and advice from the International Labor Organization (ILO) on how to deal with the problem. It turned out that India, Pakistan, and Nepal were not signatories to the convention" . The fact that India, Pakistan, and Nepal were not signatories to the convention implies it is unreasonable to accuse IKEA of violating the law of child labor. Still, this fact did not help IKEA much as child labor is an ethical issue. IKEA therefore "added a clause to all supply contracts, stating simply that if the supplier employed children under legalworking age, the contract would be cancelled". The third step was to appoint a third-party agent to monitor child labor practices at its suppliers in India and Pakistan. This third step helped the company in publicity and media, and made things seem fairer from the public's view. The business manager Barner did some more research about the child labor issue by contacting concerned organizations, such as Swedish Save the Children, UNICEF, and the ILO to get advice. After acquiring some knowledge about the issue, Barner and her direct manager traveled to India, Nepal and Pakistan to investigate the real situation, this action reflects the company's culture and management style as "management by running around". On the trip, Barner learned more about Rugmark Foundation, "organized by the Indo-German Export Promotion, Indian carpet manufacturers, and exporters, and some Indian NGOs, to develop a label certifying that the carpets to which it was attached were made without the use of child labor" . Barner then returned to Sweden and met frequently with the Swedish Save the Children's expert on child labor. This helped Barner internalize the importance of child labor action that shaped up IKEA's new attitude and stand. So what Barner initially did is compatible with the situation until the child labor issue called for more specific actions in the next event. In the spring of 1995, a well-known German documentary maker "notified the company that a film he had made was about to be broadcast on German television