Ikea and the Natural Step
World Resources Institute
Sustainable Enterprise Program
A program of the World Resources Institute
IKEA AND THE NATURAL STEP
Teaching Note Synopsis and Objectives
For more than a decade, WRI's Sustainable Enterprise Program (SEP) has harnessed the power of business to create profitable solutions to environment and development challenges. BELL, a project of SEP, is focused on working with managers and academics to make companies more competitive by approaching social and environmental challenges as unmet market needs that provide business growth opportunities through entrepreneurship, innovation, and organizational change. Permission to reprint this case is available at the BELL case store. Additional information on the Case Series, BELL, and WRI is available at: www.BELLinnovation.org.
In the fall of 1995, Jan Kjellman formally took over the reins of IKEA’s North American operations from Gorän Carstedt, who had been promoted to take responsibility for IKEA’s worldwide marketing and all European retail stores. Kjellman inherited a partially implemented strategy to incorporate the parent organization’s environmental policy into all operations and extend it into the firm’s network of suppliers. The case describes the company’s growth, entrepreneurial culture, and the upcoming challenge to the furniture-retailing industry’s practices. IKEA is the world’s leading furniture retailer and has set new standards for competitiveness in household furnishings. The company has achieved this position by redefining the roles and interactions between the firm and its customers and suppliers. Since 1991, corporate policies about the company’s impact on the natural environment have been integrated into the parent organization. Carstedt extended this strategy into the North American subsidiary. Concepts guiding this strategy had their origins in an alliance IKEA formed with an environmental educational foundation in Stockholm, Sweden, called The Natural Step.
This
Sustainable Enterprise Program
A program of the World Resources Institute
IKEA AND THE NATURAL STEP
Teaching Note Synopsis and Objectives
For more than a decade, WRI's Sustainable Enterprise Program (SEP) has harnessed the power of business to create profitable solutions to environment and development challenges. BELL, a project of SEP, is focused on working with managers and academics to make companies more competitive by approaching social and environmental challenges as unmet market needs that provide business growth opportunities through entrepreneurship, innovation, and organizational change. Permission to reprint this case is available at the BELL case store. Additional information on the Case Series, BELL, and WRI is available at: www.BELLinnovation.org.
In the fall of 1995, Jan Kjellman formally took over the reins of IKEA’s North American operations from Gorän Carstedt, who had been promoted to take responsibility for IKEA’s worldwide marketing and all European retail stores. Kjellman inherited a partially implemented strategy to incorporate the parent organization’s environmental policy into all operations and extend it into the firm’s network of suppliers. The case describes the company’s growth, entrepreneurial culture, and the upcoming challenge to the furniture-retailing industry’s practices. IKEA is the world’s leading furniture retailer and has set new standards for competitiveness in household furnishings. The company has achieved this position by redefining the roles and interactions between the firm and its customers and suppliers. Since 1991, corporate policies about the company’s impact on the natural environment have been integrated into the parent organization. Carstedt extended this strategy into the North American subsidiary. Concepts guiding this strategy had their origins in an alliance IKEA formed with an environmental educational foundation in Stockholm, Sweden, called The Natural Step.
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