Evaluate Change For Improving Organizational Development In Nokia Report

Executive Summary

Change is often seen as a key component in the survival and prosperity of organisations.  The aim of the report is to evaluate change as a method for improving organisational development in Nokia. Nokia was one of the world’s largest companies of mobile devices until it saw a decline in its position resulting in a loss of its market dominance, and unable to implement innovative methods or changes to create its leadership in the smartphone world, and also unable to compete with Apple and Samsung to regain its top position. A lot of factors have attributed to the restructuring process. Among them are the ability to gain worldwide reach, the participation of workers, the promotion of co-creation and community involvement. There are two proposed frameworks or models, i.e. a strategic alignment model and a scenario planning model, that could help Nokia to adopt this changing and growing business world dynamic. In addition, the change adopted by Nokia must be in line with the trend in technology. In order to produce a good degree of efficiency, the organization should also track steps for the effective implementation of change. Nokia faces significant challenges in a drastically transformed market for mobile phones. In order to thrive, it will have to fundamentally change its business strategy and offerings. At this intersection, it is not clear whether Nokia will ever be able to again be a dominant force in the mobile computing business, but we are only hoping for the best for its revival in the market.

1. Introduction

Change is an inevitable mechanism or a process (Vlados, Deniozos & Chatzinikolaou, 2018). An organizational change can only be accomplished by making behavioral changes to the organization’s people (Islam, Furuoka & Idris, 2020). It is not possible to achieve a transformation in the organization by making changes to the community, departments or business. Organizational change can only be done if individual changes are made (Bartunek & Jones, 2017). In order to transform its strategic objectives, purpose, mission and goals into simple and precise new strategies as per the today’s market specifications or competition, Nokia must experience dramatic organizational restructuring (Khan, Raza & George, 2017). Nokia has lost its business throne to its rivals Samsung and Apple in past years because Nokia refused to embrace the new mobile technologies, which made it impossible for the company to recover its profit and regain its top market spot again. This report emphasizes on how Nokia has taken substantial strategic organizational change and also put forwarded my recommendation for further implementation of the transformations happened in the organization as being an external change agent.

2. Background behind organizational change

Nokia is an information and communications technology company from Finland. The company was established in 1865, is headquartered in Espoo and employs over 98,000 staff (Kharel, 2019). Nokia has penetrated into numerous markets over the years. In the initial periods of the mobile and smartphone age, Nokia grown into a global pioneer in the mobile industry. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the firm also served a significant role in the growth of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) (Doz & Wilson, 2017). Nokia has been the world’s leading mobile phone provider since the beginning of 2012. Nokia began losing its market dominant position to competitors such as Samsung and Apple due to its slow adaptation to modern smartphone technology and its mobile company started to lose money. In 2013, the mobile business was sold to Microsoft by Nokia (Lamberg, Lubinaitė, Ojala &Tikkanen, 2019). Just after sale of its mobile device business, Nokia concentrated through its division Nokia Networks on the data networking business and telecom equipment market.

In no manner was Nokia a passive follower of the current competitive environment influenced by the smartphone’s arrival. However, its significant strategic considerations towards the end of the period of evaluation exacerbated the situation and agitated the struggles of the Nokia. The past research on Nokia’s decline to acquire its mobile phone business in 2013 is a miniature of the historical causal inference issues in general (Doz & Wilson, 2017; Lamberg et al., 2019).

3. Organizational Change Models

Change management is a structured process that entails engaging with the transfer or alteration of corporate strategies, fundamental principles, procedures or innovations (Stouten, Rousseau & De Cremer, 2018). The goal of a change management program is to successfully implement change-making methods and procedures and to support people to embrace and respond to change. When systemic shifts in agile organizations arise on a regular basis, change management teams have become main success agents to most organizations. Based on the analysis conducted through different reports and case studies of the Nokia, it is indicated that Nokia needs a strategic organizational change that would allow it to continue to retain its market position. The in-depth investigation for this issue indicates that following are few causes for the need of transformation of Nokia:

• The growth of the market in the field of innovation highlights the importance of transformation for Nokia.
• Absence of adoption to the updated technologies related to smartphones development may also become reason for Nokia to go for organizational change.
• Role of incompetent leadership and responsibility for the sustainability of product life and profitability
• Designing strategic choices for the implementation of goods and services may also become cause for organizational restructuring.

These are the factors to consider that involve the organization to achieve organizational change; somehow, the company can also find these configurations difficult (Lamberg et al., 2019). Environment plays very crucial role while formulating and implementing strategies for an organization. Ultimately, this creates problems and opportunities at a same time. In addition, the issues that Nokia may confront during the implementation of organizational program are mentioned below.

§ Problem Findings

Although Machado and Neiva (2017) believed that change can trigger many challenges and complications that need to be addressed for plans to be properly implemented since change can sometimes shatter the company’s systems and cause even worse conditions for it. Below are the anticipated issues and obstacles for the organization during the change management process:

• Firstly, the company may fail to understate the issue.
• Similarly, the lack of leadership in resolving the change can also impact the company’s improvements and operations.
• In reality, the issue of change management is posed largely due to a lack of awareness of the urgency of the issue.
• There can also be a lack of knowledge between staff and supervisors during change management phases.
• There may be disparities in leadership and discrepancies in viewpoint that both agree and disagree with the shift.
• The biggest challenge which might emerge during the change management process is decision retention and team management.

§ Opportunity building

There are 2 potential types of organisational change that Nokia needs to adopt in order to assess their actions, and these changes come under the umbrella of Strategic Planning model. There are different kinds of methods and two are selected for thorough examination. The Strategic Alignment Model (SAM) and Scenario Planning Model are both models.

1. Strategic Alignment Model

Henderson and Venkatraman’s (1994) proposed strategic alignment model (SAM) is among the most highlighted strategic alignment models (Sha, Chen & Teoh, 2020). SAM is comprised of two major domains: strategic fit and functional integration. The positive correlation between internal and external spheres relates to strategic fit as shown in Fig 1. Functional integration applies to two types of industry and IT domain convergence. The first phase is called strategic integration which represents the relation between organization strategy and IT strategy. The second phase is called organizational integration and corresponds with the relation between the infrastructure and process of organization and the infrastructure and process of IT (Sha et al., 2020). SAM is a computational construct used to explain strategic coordination from the viewpoint of four elements, i.e. Business Strategy, IT Strategy, Organizational Infrastructure and IT Infrastructure, and their interdependencies. In the case of Nokia, there is a need to integrate IT and business strategy in such a way that current technological advancement can properly addressed by organization. The main thing Nokia lack is the adoption of the emerging changing technological advancements and this thing Nokia need to change.

1. Scenario planning model

Scenario planning is drawing predictions about what the future is going to be and how adjustments can improve the work environment in terms of improvement (Lang & Ramírez, 2017). More simply, scenario planning describes a particular collection of uncertainties, distinctive “aspects” of what could occur in the future of the company. In the case of Nokia, there is a need to make coordination and improve working conditions so the employees feel much satisfied and motivated towards the fulfillment of organizational goals and plans.

4. Change interventions: Problems and Opportunities

In the current ever-changing environment, organizational change and change management is known to be one of the most imperative success drivers for any company. The corporate world is constantly growing at a rapid pace: technology continues to update, consumer behavior is shifting, innovative industry procedures are now being enforced on a daily basis, and corporations have to deal with rising international emergencies, such as the pandemic of COVID-19 that continues to spread. Companies who can’t adapt and seize opportunities for development are more likely to be put out of business and even vanish by agile rivals. That is because one of the top goals for planning for change should be among the main concerns.

In addition, Nokia may face a difficult workforce environment in the long term due to the forces currently operational that will inevitably transform the way company operates. Nokia therefore needs to succeed in the international business environment only if it can maximize the participation of its human resource practices in the long term in order to be competitive. To accomplish this, Nokia will be needed to align its plans with its core business activities and to hire the requisite talents for the future workplace ‘s demands. The proposed structural models of organizational change will definitely help to achieve its aim and plans for future development and progress.

Initially, the Nokia will have to fully comprehend its clear objective and then establish human resource strategies that help the company develop a workforce capable of meeting the needs of the organization. As bbusinesses would be expected to take into consideration the changing business environment, the economic environment and human resource-specific variables in designing human resource strategies. In the case of workplace diversity, there is need of detail debates on this area but right now, it is not the main concern of this report. The reason for this is that workplace diversity gives difficulties to an organisation, varying from discrepancies in values, cultural beliefs and the way of communication.

5. Barriers towards the road of implementation of proposed interventions

In implementing the initiatives, organizations might have challenges. A number of issues in the implementation of the strategy have been reported by researchers, for example weak leadership positions in adoption, poor communication, lack of strategy engagement, lack of knowledge or inconsistency of the strategy, unrepresented organizational structures and resources, poor teamwork and coordination of duties, insufficient expertise, contrasting activities, and unpredictable environmental factors (Andrews, Beynon & Genc, 2017). Nokia was known to be the leading company in telecommunication industry at one time in past but due to lack of visionary leadership and management and their inability to predict and judge the changing dynamics of the business world.

In strategic and organizational analysis, strategy implementation has gained far less attention than strategic management or strategy formulation. For this, Amoo, Hiddlestone‐Mumford, Ruzibuka & Akwei (2019) clearly indicates numerous rationales: implementation of strategy is far less stylish than formulation of strategy, people ignore this because of a presumption that anybody can do it, people are not sure exactly what it involves and where it starts and ends. In addition, there are just a small number of conceptual frameworks for implementing the strategy. So, both the proposed frameworks i.e. strategic alignment model and scenario planning model, can proofed to be an effective option based on their uniqueness and adaptability

6. Ethical considerations

Nokia cultural diversity of prominence has contributed to an environment of mutual fear that has affected the relationship between employees. The human factor has indeed been associated with the economic and structural factors and so they have developed a “temporary myopia” situation that has impeded the potential of Nokia to innovate. Employees claimed that Nokia’s ethical principles of Integrity, Challenge, Accomplishment and Restoration were no longer practiced by top managers and executives.

The proposed frameworks are based on strategic modelling that is become very necessary part for an organization in today’s growing world. Every business might face some kind of ethical considerations but with proper planning and sharp approach, organizations can tackle these considerable unethical conditions.

References

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