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Diversity In The Workplace: IKEA And Sweden

1777 Words8 Pages

Introduction The purpose of this report is to critically discuss key changes happening in the workplace in a country of choice, discussing the potential impact of these changes in a global company of choice whilst deliberating the challenges managers face in managing diversity. The chosen company and country is IKEA and Sweden. Sweden Background Sweden is known to be the fourth largest country in Europe. The country is richly diverse with roughly 15% of its population having a foreign background. Sweden is continuously working to improve the workplace for workers with regards to labour legislations, gender equality, worker representation, bullying in the workplace and many others. Sweden is also striving to better manage diversity within their …show more content…

In 1998, IKEA established the IKEA Way on purchasing home furnishing products to guarantee high legal, social, employment and environmental standards and responsibilities within IKEA and amongst business partners and suppliers.3IWAY obliges suppliers to not use bonded or forced child labour or wood from intact natural forests and high conservation forests. They suggest that suppliers must provide a healthy and safe working environment, pay legal minimum wages or local industry standards and pay overtime to employees. They also say that once housing is provided to employees suppliers must ensure reasonable privacy and personal hygiene. IKEA pledges to to care for the environment by supporting material and energy saving techniques to clarify desired working conditions ,provide clear and mutually agreed commercial terms and respect cultural differnces.To ensure compliance with vendors IKEA and its contracted auditors monitor and inspect regular …show more content…

IKEA has to transition to adapt the culture locally of the different countries of operation. The Swedish culture and customers tastes were different to the tastes of other countries. In America the size and diversity of customer tastes varies. IKEA learnt that its dining room tables were too small for Thanksgiving and also the beds that they sold were sold in centimetres dimensions rather that “Full”, “Queen” etc. This was very unfamiliar to the Americans and their Swedish style bath towels were too small and thin by American Standards.IKEA made changes to their products to accommodate the Americans. ( Elsner & Hanappi

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