Retail Organizational Change and Leadership in ICA Maxi and IKEA

Abstract: Background: Leadership can be understood from the perspective of corporate leaders and employees in two retail organizations such as ICA Maxi and IKEA in Sweden. Research to date has tended to pay little attention to the study of leadership and its related issues in retail organizations. Hence this study attempted to fill the gap by exploring the specified aims and objectives. Aims and Objectives: The aim and objective of this study are to offer new and profound insights into how corporate leaders engage employees when leading organizational change, and the rest. Additionally, to provide a deeper understanding with respect to the key challenges facing corporate leaders when leading organizational change in ICA Maxi and how they address these challenges. Method: By employing qualitative modes of inquiry and by using a case study approach, this paper sought to help illuminate the research questions and objectives in detail. This research was exploratory, interpretative, and inductive in nature and the empirical data were collected through a semi-structured and face-to-face interview from six corporate leaders/managers and six employees in ICA Maxi and IKEA in Sweden.      Findings: In addition to several other findings, this empirical research found that corporate leaders engage the employees by creating question and answer time in a way that demonstrates leadership in action. Furthermore, the corporate leaders not only engage the employees in a way that enables them to mobilize the support of the employees; but also, the corporate leaders engage the employees by voluntarily relinquishing leadership to them for the short-term. This research paper also found that corporate leaders who align themselves with vertical leadership tend to support vertical-participatory leadership in practice and both vertical-participatory leadership and participatory leadership can be problematic when leading organizational change. The corporate leaders in the retail organizations, ICA Maxi and IKEA could face challenges of adaption, a barrage of why questions from the employees, and a situation where the employees can become afraid of taking responsibility for wrongdoing. Finally, this study found that corporate leaders tend to address the challenges they face when leading organizational change by means of providing the right information and by joint consultation with the employees. Contributions: Theoretically, this research has contributed to filling the gap in the literature by adding to the growing body of research with respect to the phenomenon of leadership in retail organizations such as ICA Maxi and IKEA. Practically, this qualitative study has contributed to our understanding of how daily routines could be improved between the corporate leaders and employees in these retail organizations, ICA Maxi and IKEA. In terms of managerial contribution, this exploratory study has contributed to reminding the corporate leaders about the need to accelerate their leadership roles by implementing important policies with respect to selling products that are environmentally sound. As regards societal contribution, this thesis has contributed in creating awareness by highlighting different ways that corporate leaders could engage the employees appropriately and inappropriately.