In October 2012, Swedish furniture company IKEA was criticized on the BBC World Service radio for airbrushing women out of IKEA’s catalogs distributed in Saudi Arabia. Some women’s rights activists throughout Europe and in other parts of the West were outraged. They threatened to boycott IKEA stores in Europe, especially in Sweden. IKEA felt pressured to issue an apology, stating that the marketing catalog was inconsistent with its organizational culture and did not reflect its approach to equality of women in society. In its own words: We should have reacted and realized that excluding women from the Saudi Arabian version of the catalogue is in conflict with the IKEA Group values.

What went wrong? From the perspective of a marketing manager of the IKEA store in Saudi Arabia, the decision seemed straightforward. To distribute a catalog, it needed to comply with the law of the land. Any picture of women who were not totally covered would be illegal by Saudi Arabia censorship rules. IKEA had operated in Saudi Arabia for 30 years. It possessed significant knowledge about the do’s and don’ts in the local institutional framework.

A particularly “offensive” picture that circulated throughout the world media had a man helping two children in the bathroom. Nothing wrong, you may think. Except in the original version provided by IKEA headquarters, there was a woman standing in the middle, helping one of the kids. When the two versions were viewed side by side, it appears that the woman had been erased (or Photoshopped out). This act was fingered as condoning what many Europeans considered the suppression of women in Saudi society.
One basic point in international business is the need to adapt products, services, and marketing strategies to local institutional contexts. Given that Saudi Arabia’s censorship rules dictated that using the original Swedish pictures would not be an option, editing the pictures became inevitable.
Around the world, most pictures in advertising are heavily Photoshopped anyway. One side of the debate argues: What is wrong?
Another side of the debate claims that what the Saudi marketing manager overlooked—and what IKEA as a multinational organization overlooked—was an ethical challenge for the interconnected world. Local practices must also be acceptable to stakeholders back home—even though they may not understand the local institutional context.
Conceptually, this debate boils down to ethical relativism versus ethical imperialism. How would you participate in this debate?

CASE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 

1. The Saudi Arabia IKEA store’s practice can be viewed as ethical relativism. What are its pros and cons?

2. The attitude of women’s rights activists throughout Europe and in other parts of the West can be viewed as ethical imperialism. What are its pros and cons?

3. As a would-be manager who is likely to operate outside your home country, what are the lessons you can draw from IKEA’s experience in Saudi Arabia?