Ikea’s approach to sustainability
In recent years Ikea has been working on introducing many initiatives that would make their company more sustainable. Already from a customer perspective one could notice that Ikea is going green - we started noticing more environmentally friendly materials, Ikea was encouraging recycling, promoting their initiatives to make their suppliers more environmentally friendly and raising wind turbines by their stores. Even from that limited perspective like a company that treats sustainability seriously. In one of their documents on the subject, The IKEA Group approach to sustainability authors describe an approach that goes across all the organization chain, analyzing and describing the use of every resource and …show more content…
As the biggest company in the sector, IKEA is being closely monitored by the NGO’s working for environmental issues. It needs to make sure to avoid publicity scandals like the one related to exploitation of ancient forests in Russia by IKEA’s subsidiary Swedwood. Operating with ideas of sustainability is necessary in order to build a transparent picture of the company in the eyes of the public and in order to be able to cooperate with multiple regulators and groups of interest that monitor IKEA’s activities. Apart from the stakeholders, the company needs to adjust other elements of the environment. One of such elements would be managing resources, both in order to control the costs but also to manage the scarcity of resources. In IKEA’s CSR Report, the authors reveal the concerns they have in relation to both raw materials and energy they need to operate. We can see there that IKEA is using 1% of the global wood yearly. With such an impact on natural resources, a sustainable approach is necessary in order to secure resources for production and to prosper in the future. We would argue that sustainability is actually a tool for long-term contingency and not only a result of marketing ambitions. We can also see that the company is concerned with their energy consumption and has an ambition to be fully independent and produce 100% of the energy they are using. We could describe it as …show more content…
An obvious element here would be the company’s PR and marketing departments, attempting to show the company as a more attractive, environmentally friendly company in order to improve the company’s image but also to support sales. Another group driving the changes would be high level management establishing strategies for future development. There is however another element that allows for a company to create their sustainability approach – IKEA’s company culture. What are the values that the employees share, that could encourage and embrace changes?
In order to try and find out if such elements function in IKEA, we had a look at the values the company declares as core to their culture. IKEA’s materials mention the following set of values: • Humbleness and
In recent years Ikea has been working on introducing many initiatives that would make their company more sustainable. Already from a customer perspective one could notice that Ikea is going green - we started noticing more environmentally friendly materials, Ikea was encouraging recycling, promoting their initiatives to make their suppliers more environmentally friendly and raising wind turbines by their stores. Even from that limited perspective like a company that treats sustainability seriously. In one of their documents on the subject, The IKEA Group approach to sustainability authors describe an approach that goes across all the organization chain, analyzing and describing the use of every resource and …show more content…
As the biggest company in the sector, IKEA is being closely monitored by the NGO’s working for environmental issues. It needs to make sure to avoid publicity scandals like the one related to exploitation of ancient forests in Russia by IKEA’s subsidiary Swedwood. Operating with ideas of sustainability is necessary in order to build a transparent picture of the company in the eyes of the public and in order to be able to cooperate with multiple regulators and groups of interest that monitor IKEA’s activities. Apart from the stakeholders, the company needs to adjust other elements of the environment. One of such elements would be managing resources, both in order to control the costs but also to manage the scarcity of resources. In IKEA’s CSR Report, the authors reveal the concerns they have in relation to both raw materials and energy they need to operate. We can see there that IKEA is using 1% of the global wood yearly. With such an impact on natural resources, a sustainable approach is necessary in order to secure resources for production and to prosper in the future. We would argue that sustainability is actually a tool for long-term contingency and not only a result of marketing ambitions. We can also see that the company is concerned with their energy consumption and has an ambition to be fully independent and produce 100% of the energy they are using. We could describe it as …show more content…
An obvious element here would be the company’s PR and marketing departments, attempting to show the company as a more attractive, environmentally friendly company in order to improve the company’s image but also to support sales. Another group driving the changes would be high level management establishing strategies for future development. There is however another element that allows for a company to create their sustainability approach – IKEA’s company culture. What are the values that the employees share, that could encourage and embrace changes?
In order to try and find out if such elements function in IKEA, we had a look at the values the company declares as core to their culture. IKEA’s materials mention the following set of values: • Humbleness and