Leadership

https://wjong7.wixsite.com/ikeacasestudies/lead
ership
Leadership is the process of influencing others in order to achieve group and
organisational goals.（Mc Williams and Williams, 2014, p231). IKEA is a retail
business that supplies for private households, which was founded by Ingvar
Kamprad in 1943. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Now, IKEA’s CEO is Peter Agnefjall.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
One of the key reasons why IKEA can efficiently enable its business to make
a lot of money is leadership. Leadership is an important aspect that has been
devoted by the IKEA Management. Actually, international statistics reveal that
IKEA is among the twenty best companies in terms of leadership. According to
Testervn, 2011, IKEA was founded as a pure family business. Until now, its
value is based on the concept of family business. Indeed, Ingvar Kamprad, the
founder of IKEA, is one of the most successful leaders in the last century.
IKEA’s effective leadership is one of the factors that led to the company’s
success while talent is the prosperity of the enterprise and also is the
enterprise’s greatest wealth.
 
In IKEA, each function has its own co-workers that report back to the
managing director of that function. 
 
1) Autocracy
This means that work is assigned by the task manager. The staff must obey
and implement the work assigned to them so that the goal set by the manager
is consistent in the department’s image. On the other hand, this method may
cause employees to be reluctant because it limits the freedom of employees
since the higher sales the better for employees.
 
2) Democracy
IKEA’s managers always encourage staffs to give advice in work. Managers
consider their suggestions and make a final decision. Managers must also be
able to understand the how employees think which would make employees be
more efficient in work.
 
3) Laissez-Faire
Laissez-Faire means staff could relax since sometimes the tense work could
lead to a fall in production. Another style is consultative, which is similar to
democracy, but the target of the consultation changes to the people. This
approach to management can create high levels of motivation with efficient
quality output and results. 
 
4) Paternalistic 
Paternalistic management focused more on employees' needs and feelings.
The style is closely linked with the social needs of Maslow’s Hierarchy theory
which is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943
paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in Psychological Review. Maslow
subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate
curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental
psychology, some of which focuses on describing the stages of growth in
humans.（Mc Williams and Williams, 2014, p214). 
 
Ingvar Kamprad is the perfect example of a visionary leader who shows both
charismatic and transformational leadership. For charismatic leadership,
Kamprad has a strong entrepreneurial character since he sets the company’s
objectives and operational strategies and wants to be in control over most of
all the business areas. Besides, Kamprad has based his leadership style on
setting an example by encouraging hard work mixed with strict business
ethics. As he has publicly stated,” if there is such a thing as good leadership, it
is to give a good example, I have to do so for all the IKEA employees”. For
transformational leadership, Kamprad gets employees to see beyond their
own needs and self-interests for the good of the group which makes
employees feel that they are a vital part of the organisation and help them see
how their job fits the organisation’s vision.
 
All these aspects equate to the ideology that IKEA's leadership is based on
the concept of shared values.