Organizational Change and Development: A Critical Analysis of Nokia's Change Strategy

Student’s Last Name 1
Organization Change and Development
By (Name)
Course
Professor
University
Date

Student’s Last Name 2
Table of Contents
Introduction...............................................................................................2
Organization challenges and opportunities...............................................3
Change Interventions................................................................................6
Barriers to change.....................................................................................8
Employees’ resistance...............................................................................................8
Market resistance.......................................................................................................9
Ethical issues.............................................................................................9
Conclusion..............................................................................................11
Bibliography...........................................................................................12

Student’s Last Name 3
Introduction
Nokia was in 1945 as a single paper mill operation. The company continued to grow over
the years in different industrial sectors including paper products, cable, tires, mobile phones, and
televisions. In 1990s Nokia transformed and focused on telecommunication. The first GMS was
call was made in 1991 with the Nokia equipment. In 1998, the company experienced massive
success and was branded the best-selling phones in the world. The company introduced its first
camera phone in 2011 to cope with the high competition from IOS and other Android operating
systems. Later on, the company partnered with Microsoft. In 2014, the company sold its mobile
gadgets division to Microsoft. The development of Nokia networks due to its buy-out of joint
venture Siemens in the year 2013 transformed Nokia to a network software and hardware
provider. The challenges of Nokia started when Competitors started attacking the incumbent.
Nokia was the world leader in mobile phones circa 2008. The smartphone of those times was
dominated by the Symbian consortium and Nokia was a dominant player in that ecosystem. The
Symbian roadmap was being driven by Nokia and Samsung, LG and others were desperately
trying to get out of Nokia's shadow in the Symbian ecosystem. They started to divulge from the
Symbian consortium and eventually, Nokia acquired Symbian. This effectively tied Nokia to that
platform as they had already invested heavily in it. Meanwhile, the competitors were looking for
an alternative operating system. This report will critically discuss the organizational change of
Nokia, its development, barriers, and ethical issues that result from the intervention that will
address the opportunities and problems of relevant change strategies.

Student’s Last Name 4
Organization Challenges and Opportunities
In less than a decade, Nokia came up to lead the mobile revolution. Nokia grew to be one
of the most famous and valuable brands in the globe. The company experienced a global market
share of over 40% in the mobile phones industry. Despite its swift growth, Nokia experienced a
tremendous decline in sales in 2013 (Wallace and Sheldon, 2015, pp.269). Most blames was put
on companies such as Apple, Samsung, and google but according to research, Nokia’s fall began
long before the three companies entered into the mobile communications market. Nokia
experienced an early success which was basically the result of courageous as well as visionary
management decisions that grasped the corporation’s innovative technologies as deregulation
and digitalization (Worley and Mohrman, 2015, pp.218). The near collapse of Nokia’s supply
chain in the mid-1990s affected its success and the disciplined system was put in place and
strategies were devised which assisted the company to become efficient again and scale its sales.
In 1996-200, Nokia’s headcount raised to 150% while revenues increased to 503%.
The drastic growth had its disadvantages. The managers at the company’s major
development centers found themselves under the ever raising short-term performance stress and
were not able to dedicate resources and time to innovation. In the 2000s the company posted
some of its finical results although the company was struggling to find a changing atmosphere
(Ciesielska, 2018, pp.219). The software was taking superiority over hardware as an important
competitive element in the industry. Similar, the significance of the application of ecosystems
was becoming evident. Nokia Company lacked skills and the propensity to participate in the new
ways of working. By 2010, the Symbian limitations had become obvious and it was certain that
Nokia Company had failed to shift towards applications developed by companies such as Apple