Ikea Case

IKEA is a furniture retailer company which core business is directly tied to interior's design. In the past few years this company has been largely recognized for being one of the best companies to work for. The focus on this case-study is on the innovative human resources management practices and work culture that IKEA adopted, gathering flexibility, welfare and employee development in the same pot. These benefits are worldwide recognized as being a successful implementation from this company which comes significantly aligned with the ultimate goal of overall business performance. In fact, this implementation was done transversely throughout every part of the company and markets where IKEA is present.

This approach of having the focus on employee development enhanced the empowerment of workers commitment towards the company. In order to achieve this, IKEA work culture encourages their employees to collaborate actively with top management, suggesting new ideas and more efficient methods to do things. Indeed, this approach came up from the early history of this company. Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA in 1943, assisted to an exponential growing of the business results when one of the employees came up at that time with a new idea that allowed the company to introduce in 1955 its most successful innovation - furniture that could be easily dismantled and transported. From that moment onwards IKEA furniture started to incorporate a flat design that turned storage and transport easier and ultimately lead to the overall reduction of the furniture's cost. This turned to be the main competitive advantage of IKEA towards its competitors in the retailing industry - the cost leadership on the basis of all company's decisions. Since that moment and over the years the company started to incorporate in their products ideas that were coming from employees, who are considered to be coworkers and encouraged to operate with independence and creativity. So not only the furniture assumes a flat design, but also the organization structure, meaning that the positive human resources approach comes also materialized in the organization design that assumes no visible hierarchical distinctions and promotes close communication processes between employees and top management, who support each other and express their ideas and beliefs in an open atmosphere towards the same goal.

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