Ethics And Social Responsibility At Ikea

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Ethics and Social Responsibility at IKEA IKEA is a great place to go buy affordable furniture with great design. It is a multinational corporation with stores situated across the world. It operates 11 locations in Canada, throughout 4 provinces. North America and Europe are its main markets comprising 94% of its sales of approximately 22 billion in 2009 (Inter IKEA Systems, 2010). IKEA is known for its affordable furniture and products that are invaluable to people on a budget. However, in the context of international business it is assumed that major corporations providing low cost goods do it through the exploitation of people. There have been numerous cases that have been well documented including Wal-Mart, Nike and even Disney (Hansen, 2005). So in most cases it is just the human cost of doing business in order to have a cost leadership strategy when selling products. However, IKEA defies this logic and this paper will show how IKEA is very concerned with social corporate responsibility to make a profit while still maintaining excellent ethical standards that go above and beyond the legal requirements. IKEA as a corporation seems to believe in the triple-E bottom line. The triple-E bottom is an evaluation of a corporation’s economic, ethical and environmental value that corporation brings to the global marketplace (Sexty, 2008). IKEA does this through its annual sustainability reports, as well as the strategic way it designs its business practices through a structured supply chain. IKEA is an example of integrated corporate social responsibility this is an impressive feat as IKEA is a privately held company. IKEAs sustainability report details several ways it deals with social and environmental issues most importantly perhaps it has signed the United Nation’s Global Compact and acknowledges the ten core principles in areas such as anti-corruption,

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