Ikea’s Global Sourcing Challenge Essay

1) IKEA is a successful global furniture company, which was founded as a mail order business earlier. The vision of IKEA was to create a better life for the many people, besides offering qualitative products with affordable prices, IKEA was trying to be environmental friendly and social responsible. Nevertheless, the flourish of IKEA also brought some problems, and IKEA was currently seeking a better way to deal with the child labor issues of its suppliers. 2) IKEA was facing a harsh issue due to the secretly using of child labors by IKEA’s supplier, thus, IKEA had to find a way to deal with the problem and give a appropriate answer to public and its consumers. 3) Marianne Barner: business area manager for carpets at IKEA. She had to solve the issues about child labor of IKEA’s suppliers. Ingvar Kamprad: the founder of IKEA Rangan Exports: one of IKEA’s suppliers that was using child labors. 4) IKEA had sent a legal team to Geneva to seek input and advice from International Labor Organization on how to deal with the problem. Also, they hired a third party agent to monitor child labor practices at its suppliers. Furthermore, they had all their suppliers sign a legal document claiming that if a supplier hired children under legal working age that the contract would be terminated. 5) I think IKEA should not just cut off its relation with the supplier. Also, IKEA should participate in the program. The program would be a chance for IKEA to explain themselves and their concerns toward their suppliers. Through a lot of years, IEAK had already earned good images and respects from customers, public, business areas and government. Therefore, to show IKEA’s responsibility and clear the intention would help with developing a positive image, and strengthen IKEA’s business power.