Ikea’s Global Sourcing Challenge: Indian Rugs and Child Labor

Tanglewood is a retail store known all over the regions and over seas. Each region enjoys its own culture and values, which distinguishes from others. The pattern and the process of Tanglewood has to be similar, however, internal department methods will run depending on the regions culture. On page 12 of the Tanglewood case book its states that “ If you tell someone exactly what to do, you’re only getting half an employee. If your given someone the space to make their own decisions, your getting a whole person”. I encourage this philosophy to be spread and worked with among all the regions. Tanglewood like other stores has the same tools, clothing, equipment, electronics and much more. These retailers have to be engage in both over seas out sourcing and off shoring by hiring high tech and talented, sufficient employees to deal with this globally and locally that will help Tanglewood reach and exceed competitive levels among others.

Today’s world is facing strong influence of globalization in each and every aspect of our lives. It is expressed through: free trade agreements, foreign direct investments, international trade, facilitated movement of labour, capital and resources, as well as a strong competition that eventually gives more power to customers. In addition, it resulted in the economic boom of the developing countries, with substantial dominance of China that mainly benefit from their massive labour force, its low cost and high comparative efficiency. This phenomenon has impacted all industries around the world. In particular, furniture production is going through a trend of moving to China that “in 2002

In May 1995, Marianne Barner faced a tough decision. After just two years with IKEA, the world’s largest furniture retailer, and less than a year into her job as business area manager for carpets, she was faced with the decision of cutting off one of the company’s major suppliers of Indian rugs. While such a move would disrupt supply and affect sales, she found the reasons to do so quite compelling. A German TV station had just broadcast an investigative report naming the supplier as one that used child labor in the production of rugs made for IKEA. What frustrated Barner was that,

IKEA is the world’s largest furniture store that offers well-designed, functional home furnishing products at low prices. The store offers home furnishings to meet the needs of everyone. The company vision is to create a better everyday life for the many people. Ikea is able to back their vision with their products and prices.

IKEA is considered to be a low cost, high quality producer in the furniture industry, therefore it is important to

In terms of bargaining power of suppliers, through this analysis can be set as low due to several factors. China, for many years it has been dubbed the world's factory because of its low production costs and labor. This culture has led to a crowd of several providers available to foreign companies such as IKEA. Because of this IKEA is not limited to a single provider, which may require high quality at a low price, and if it is not accepted by a provider,

Even early on in 1942, Herman Miller was producing new furniture that people had not seen before. The fact that it kept hiring new designers and experimenting with different designs shows its innovation.

In IKEA, the Unsolicited Proposal came from many directions. Firstly, in 1952 the boycott by Swedish retailers to IKEA, obliged to IKEA to seek new sources of furniture. Second, the Swedish furniture market demand fall by the early 1970s. Third, IKEA had identified as we said before two big markets to

This assignment had to be written for the class of Management and Organizations at Stenden University, course IBMS, first year. We had a group of 6 and had to work it out together. We were enjoying getting into the world of IKEA, the world’s most furniture store on the market.

Founded on this and Kamprads own views Ikea has grown exponentially and sits as a world leader in management. Scandinavian management were equality, communication, cooperation, trust and consensual decision making are vital elements in the concept. Managers are focused on their employees and feel that they need to satisfy them in order to motivate them. This motivation has proven to lead to better productivity and performance of the organization. Swedish managers are indeed focused on human resources and are practicing Scandinavian management. Scandinavian management is necessary on the Swedish market as it increases the chances for having a productive company with satisfied employees and customers.

4) For those recommending that IKEA continue to source carpets in India, would you suggest

IKEA understands the value of its employee and is always focuses on developing the strategy to create satisfied and committed workforce who in return contributes to the wellbeing and future success of company. The two main factors, in this case for IKEA, for leading in management would be Leadership and Motivation.

Apparel and shoe manufacturers continued to offload the more costly yet easily replicated part so their business models to concentrate on brand building, marketing, sales and attaining greater distribution channels globally. These are the pressures all apparel and shoe manufacturers face, and it is particularly challenging in the athletic show industry (Kynge, 2009). Adidas, Converse, Nike and Reebok have been outsourcing production of their shoes for in some cases nearly three decades. Nike was one of the leaders in this strategy, seeing to create a more efficient supply chain and also drop the labor and union costs of manufacturing in the U.S. (Boje, Khan, 2009). Adidas, Converse and Reebok have all followed Nike's lead, with Adidas benefitting from the fall-out generated when investigate reports showed Nike using child labor throughout Pakistan and Vietnam (Boje, Khan, 2009). All four of these companies share a common prioritization of manufacturing operations, yet none of them with the exception of Nike has a comprehensive Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program in place to ensure ethical compliance to global standards of outsourcing in their industry (Nike Investor Relations, 2012). The intent of this analysis is to compare and contrast the four companies mentioned and their outsourcing practices. Their reasons for choosing to outsource are very much the same; the industry is shrinking

Global sourcing is a technique of strategic sourcing in the global strategy, which is an effective approach as a part of organization’s procurement section. The objective of global sourcing is to develop global efficiencies in the delivery of a product or service for the firms achieving a sustainable competitive advantage and this is an important weapon have been focused in the 21st Century. The well-known organization, Hennes and Mauritz (H&M) is one of the largest international fashion retail and production house with the great deal of businesses all over the world. In the today’s competitive market and

The services and products offered by IKEA provide value to its customers in various ways. For one, the products and services are very affordable. The products and services are not priced highly and therefore, the average customer can enjoy them. At the same time, the products are of high quality. From IKEA’s slogan “low prices but not at any price”, it is clear that the company prices its products lowly but that does not mean that the quality is compromised. IKEA satisfying its customer’s needs through providing them value for their money as they provide quality products that will last for a long time, and at affordable costs. The fact that the company has set the minimum acceptable standards for its wood, implies that it is also keen on quality and on the environmental impact of its action of making furniture ( Edvardsson, Enquist & Hay, 2006).