This study aims to examine how meaning and value is created in IKEA’s internal and external means of communication. I want to see if the values expressed in the internal and external communication tangent. I will additionally inspect how IKEA present themselves depending on whether the recipients are internal coworkers or external customers. The last thing to be inspected is the internal and external “ideal reader”, which is translated from the Swedish term “modelläsare” (Björkvall 2003). Furthermore, the objective of the study is to contribute to the field of linguistic research. This is done by exposing how values are used to shape different versions of the identity of organizations internally and externally.

The internal documents consist of a vision and a “värdegrund”, in English called “fundamental values”, and the external communication entails three images from the advertising campaign “Where life happens”. I analyzed the material through the ideational metafunction belonging to the theory of systemic functional grammar and through a sociosemiotic multimodal analysis. The result reveals that nearly all of the expressed values occur both internally and externally. An example of prominent values is togetherness, inclusiveness and openness. However, the way in which IKEA present themselves towards internal and external target audiences varies markedly, as does the constructed ideal reader. The internal ideational representation of IKEA marks the coworker as part of the organization. At the same time multiple demands describing how the coworker should act and think greatly constricts and controls the internal audience. The external recipients, however, are free to be of a varying kind. IKEA expresses how the external target audience includes everyone. As a result, there are no expectations of who the external ideal reader should be, with one exception. The internal and external ideal readers are both part of a community, as contrasting to being portrayed as solitary.