Organizational culture persistence versus change at IKEA. How it is expressed and experienced over time in a company with a cultural focus

Master's Thesis from the year 2017 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,7, Linneaus University, language: English, abstract: The Research question of this thesis is: How is organizational culture expressed and experienced over time in a company with a cultural focus? The purpose is to describe how a multinational company with a strong focus on the management of culture and values re-interprets their core cultural values in the face of modernization and internationalization. At the same time, the preservation of the cultural core is investigated by looking at how culture is expressed at the case company. The research design of this study is a qualitative case study with the collection of empirical data through interviews, observations, and organizational documents. Abductive reasoning was employed to serve the exploratory layout of the study. A constructivist ontological and interpretivist epistemological position was taken. Quality criteria, relevant for qualitative research studies were considered.
Organizational culture is one of the most prominent topics in academia and has gained its status due to the transferability from academia into managerial practice. Today, organizational culture has become an institutionalized topic and scholars call for a need to revive the topic. Inconsistency with organizational culture and organizational vision, external market pressure and a changing composition of the workforce ask to adapt organizational culture to current times.