Organizational Change and Development: A Case Study of Nokia

This report presents a case study analysis of Nokia's organizational change and development, examining the company's transformation from a telecommunications leader to its challenges in the smartphone era. It delves into the problems and opportunities Nokia faced, including market competition and technological shifts. The report utilizes the Kolb and Frohman model and Kurt Lewin's change model to diagnose the situation and propose change interventions. It explores barriers to change, such as employee and market resistance, and suggests strategies to overcome these obstacles. The report highlights the ethical issues that emerged and provides recommendations for improving Nokia's change management processes. The analysis underscores the importance of strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, and proactive adaptation to maintain competitiveness in a dynamic business environment. The report concludes with a discussion of the need for effective communication, appropriate change models, and cultural understanding to ensure the success of organizational change interventions.

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Organization Change and Development
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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

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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.

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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

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and Samsung (Eesley, 2016, pp.1294). The strategic option of Nokia was limited and the
company had become a resting duck to developing competitive forces and drastic market
changes. Kolb and Frohman’s model explains Nokia’s change strategy. The model comprises of
seven major steps.
Kolb and Frohman Model
Scouting: in this phase, a feasibility study to change is performed. After the change is
considered attainable, a point of change is determined by bargaining the stakeholders’
expectations. Nokia did not carry an early to plan for the change effectively.
Entry: The Nokia Company should have carried out a stakeholder mapping and analysis
(Georgalis, Samaratunge, Kimberley and Lu, 2015, pp.93). The stakeholders were shocked and
angered about the change of Nokia’s acquisition by Microsoft and leaving the Symbian platform
since they were not expecting such a change.
Diagnosis: this stage is where the cause of change and the pressures against and are
identified. For Nokia’s case, it failed to diagnose the change, its goals and pressures, including
resources which led to a chaotic situation in the company.
Scouting Entry Diagnosis
Planning Action Evaluation
Termination

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Action: Nokia memo and change strategy was handled and announced in a rush which
made employees and stakeholders resist and lose confidence in the company. Some of the
investors sold their shares leading to a significant drop in Nokia’s share price. Some of the top
managers left the company (Kolk, 2016, pp.27). This impacted effective operation in the
organization.
Evaluation: the mismanagement impacted greatly to the company which led to prolonged
anger among employees, depression, and bargaining. Nokia should have evaluated its change
management procedure and point out the areas that it went wrong and suggest the best methods
of fixing the issues.
Termination: once the company has identified how key problems should be managed,
frameworks, formal processes, policies, and reward system should be defined so that they can be
institutionalized within the company.
There are opportunities that are relevant to the change strategy of Nokia. The first one is
its partnering with Microsoft and remained determined to the Windows Phone platform.
Symbian will fade away while Nokia will be fully devoted to the Microsoft Windows phone
ecosystem. The platform will offer Nokia a distinctive competitive advantage by ensuring that it
has a maturing ecosystem as well as strong business abilities (Petrou, Demerouti and Schaufeli,
2018, pp.1766). Another opportunity for Nokia is the knocking out of Symbian. After Elop
announced the end of support from Symbian will come to an end in 2016, Nokia arranged to
launch multiple Symbian products at selected markets. Moreover, the MeeGo for future
disruption was another opportunity for Nokia. The MeeGo focus had been diverted to the market
niche by Nokia and Nokia planned to release a MeeGo gadget in 2011 (Andreasen and

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Gammelgaard, 2018, pp.161). Although Nokia was giving on the mall the investments they had
done with MeeGo and Symbian, the MeeGo device was a great opportunity for the company to
increase its sales and remarket itself.
Change Interventions
For an organization to effectively manage change. It must come up with several change
interventions to the problems affecting its operation and strategies to make the opportunities
functional. This incorporates connecting every one of the partners of the organization in the basic
leadership process (Majanoja, Linko and Leppänen, 2017, pp.42). Nokia additionally needs to
update its administration model to authorize a gradual change in all divisions. There is a
requirement for the organization to look out for new ability and change its association to
incorporate advancement in its way of life (Ziaee, Baines, Bustinza and Guang, 2017, pp.27).
Nokia needs to scrap off the top-down specialized technique and worker transformative initiative
which will join the representatives in key basic leadership. This will increase fulfillment among
the laborers as they will feel vital in the association. Change in management is crucial in any
association to meet the dynamic changing condition of the business (Wang and Calvano, 2015,
pp.596). There is a need to incorporate appropriate change models. The most fitting change
model to establish in Nokia is Kurt Lewin model.

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Kurt Lewin model
The model represents a simple three-step of understanding the charging process. This
model will also assist Nokia in handling the opportunities presented to it. The first step is
unfreezing. The Nokia Company should create an awareness of how the present status quo is
hindering the effectiveness of the organization. The organization should critically examine the
old process, organizational structure, and ways of thinking (Bresnen, 2016, pp.331). In addition,
the organization should carefully tell the employees the importance of change and prepare in
advance in order to avoid resistance. In this stage, Nokia should ensure that it communicates the
logic behind the change and how it will benefit each employee. Nokia’s change was done in a
hurry and the employees were not well prepared (Vuori and Huy, 2016, pp.48). The second stage
is changing. This stage is marked by the implementation of change. At this stage, the company
should assist employees and the management to learn new behaviors, ways of thinking, and
processes. For Nokia to effectively implement or manage change, it should offer maximum
support, ensure there is effective communication, and constantly remind employees the reasons
for the change. The third stage is refreezing (Lozano, Ceulemans and Seatter, 2015, pp.208).
This refers to solidifying and stabilizing the change. Nokia can apply this stage to assist
employees and the management to back to their old ways before the implementation of change
Unfreeze Change Refreeze

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but the company must put in efforts to guarantee that the change is not lost. Nokia can then
cement then change into organizations culture and award the positive efforts that have been used
to reinforce the change.
Barriers to Change
Barriers to change refer to resisting forces that hinder the successful implementation of
organizational change. There are various reasons that organizations face barriers to change.
Nokia faced several barriers which ranged from employees, market, and software developers
resistance.
Employees’ Resistance
The Nokia employees moved out of their offices immediately after Elop’s announced the
acquisition of Nokia by Microsoft. The cause of employee’s resistance may result from fear of
job loss, anger, and they were not well prepared for the change. Example, the Nokia employee’s
disagreement with the CEO also led to resistance. The CEO could not provide the employees
with enough information when asked about the decisions of doing away with the MeeGo
platform (Pollack and Pollack, 2015, pp.63). Some of the notable leadership members opted to
leave the company and some were asked to leave. I can address this problem by engaging all the
stakeholders in then change the development process by explaining in details the types of change
and how it will affect them and the organization in general.
Another barrier to the resistance that I may encounter is cultural differences. As per the
Hofstede model of cultural dimensions, Finland is a famine nation with high uncertainty
avoidance. Finland people value cooperation, like to enjoy the quality of life, and are caring. On

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the other hand, they are never comfortable when uncertainties come along. They try to avoid
uncertainties. The Canadian expect every individual to take care of themselves, strive for better
attainments, and be more assertive all the time. This may create a culture clash. I can address this
issue by teaching the employees to embrace diversity and also the importance of diversity in the
organization.
Market Resistance
Furthermore, resistance from its market is another barrier that I may face in implementing
the intervention. Looking at Nokia case, after the Elop’s announcement, the supporters of Nokia
and Symbian were shocked and angered. The supporters were eagerly expecting the company’s
new innovation. The abrupt abandonment of MeeGo and Symbian in favor of Microsoft which
was an outside platform to them angered (Blanco-Portela, Benayas, Pertierra and Lozano, 2017,
pp.569). Nokia may not struggle to alleviate the resistance from customers apart from trying to
convince them that its partnership with Microsoft will do much better. Furthermore, the low
involvement from the management ay leads to resistance. Management is an important body in
an organization. Nokia has had cases of lack of involving all the stakeholders and making rash
decisions. This may lead to poor decision making and lack of support from the top management.
To address this issue I would ensure the involvement of all stakeholders in the decisions making
process and the market is aware of the change that the company is about to make.
Ethical Issues
Ethical behavior and social responsibility are important to an organization. Ethics in
business attract customers to the company’s products which boost its profits and sales. On the

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other hand, ethics reduces employees’ turnover hence decreasing the cost of recruitment.
According to my intervention, there are several ethical interventions that may develop
(Cummings, Bridgman and Brown, 2016, pp.39). Therefore, formulate appropriate ways to
address ethical issues. According to the change intervention that I developed, one of the ethical
issues that may come up is corporate social responsibility issues (Domingues, Lozano,
Ceulemans and Ramos, 2017, pp.298). CSR affects all sources of a business but the major aspect
relates to the supply chain. CSR aims at total responsibility approach where all employee is
involved. Nokia may be affected by diversity issues since employees’ come from a different
ethnic background.
Moreover, the company failed before to income all employees in decisions making and
made rash decisions to adopt changes which later led to its downfall. This led to conflict among
the employees hence affecting the overall operation so the Company. The company should,
therefore, ensure that it values the diversity in its organization and involve all the employees in
the decision-making process to avoid resistance to change (Burnes, 2015, pp.1192). Diversity
brings a complexity of culture and this may impact employee relations. To address diversity, I
will ensure equal opportunities for all employees and emphasize values to maximize the potential
of every employee.
Another ethical issue that may come up is creating a sustainable working environment for
the employees with chances of communication and feedback. The company may face issues such
as career facts, corporate values, work balance, and competence development. The company has
a challenge investing in employees, career development planning, and performance conversation
because of low profits (Lozano, Nummert and Ceulemans, 2016, pp.175). However, the
company may handle this issue this initializing internal channels and communications. This will

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assist employees to understand the goals of the company and work towards achieving the goals.
This reduces the expenses of workshop training.
Conclusion
As an organization transforms from one stage to another, it encounters challenges and
opportunities which forces it to come up with change strategies. Nokia is one of the
organizations that faced many challenges after its formation. Around 2008 there was a shift in
the smartphone market. Two new and promising alternatives were introduced to the market
backed by companies with deep pockets, namely iOS and Android. Apps and Ads started to
dominate the revenues. Both Apple and Google emphasized on creating a developer community
to encourage people to adopt their new platform. This resulted in more apps being created for
those platforms and with the respective market places, it became easier to monetize the apps.
This started the ball rolling. Nokia, on the other hand, had a fragmented developer community.
Symbian was cumbersome to develop apps on. It was unwieldy, heavy and not developer
friendly. Moreover, there was no marketplace where developers can showcase their apps. It is
fair to say that Nokia made a blunder in not recognizing that Apps and Ads rule the world. This
made Nokia form a partnership with Microsoft. However, the change faced resistance from the
market, employees, and management since the change was made in rush without effectively
considering the opinions of the stakeholder.

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