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IKEA : Managing Cultural Diversity

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IKEA: Managing Cultural Diversity

1) To what extent does Kampred’s Leadership style and IKEA’s culture, structure, management style, and business philosophy reflect Sweden’s national culture?

To many people around the world, IKEA represents the epitome of Swedish culture. Surrounded by the blue and yellow of the Swedish flag, advertisements in Swedish accents, and even Swedish meatballs, the company proudly displays its Swedish roots. Often characterized by egalitarianism, paternalism, and self-reliance, the Swedish mentality is also very welcoming and open to different cultures. IKEA’s is directly linked to this Scandinavian culture and values simplicity and informality, down-to-earth thinking, humbleness, frugality, creativity, and responsibility.

Using Hofstede’s 5-Dimension cultural model, we will describe to what extent IKEA’s culture, management style, and business philosophy reflect Sweden’s national culture. In the first dimension, Power Distance, Sweden’s score is 31. This reflects a more egalitarian and less hierarchical environment and where superiors are accessible and casual. Leadership is pretty laissez-faire, and managers are more democratic and consulting, often inviting suggestions from subordinates and allowing them to make decisions.

IKEA echoes these characteristics. Employees and managers are referred to as co-workers, managers do not have titles on their business cards, and are even called by their first names. There are only 3 levels of responsibility in a store (co-workers, managers, store manager), hierarchy is not emphasized, and the workplace is casual with jeans and no ties. Managers do not have offices, and are extremely accessible to their workers, encouraged to share information and knowledge with co-workers.

For the Individualism dimension Sweden has a score of 71, showing a medium-high “I” conscious culture where people fulfill individual obligations and are