Essay Sample on Nokias Change Issues

Introduction

I am writing this memo to explain to you the significant change issues that your company, Nokia needs to pay attention to so that it becomes successful in its mission to embrace the latest Nokia mobile phones. Nokia Company is a global leader in the mobile communication industry. Nokia ensures people are connected and also to the information they value. This connection is made possible through your innovative products including media, devices, mobile phones, games, imaging solutions among many others that are easy to use (Doz & Wilson, 2017).

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Your company has had to change so that it regains its title as a world leader in mobile communications. When it began, it started as a lumber company that made supplies and equipment used in cutting down forests in Finland. It later transitioned into paper, then into IT and later into Mobile phones. Presently, your company is leading in the transformation and the development of the internet and the industries in communication (Holtzblatt, 2005).

Your company comes up with varieties of mobile phones that have software and services that make it possible for people to encounter with videos, music, navigation, imaging, mobility in business among many other things offered by the internet. Your company mainly dwells in the development and growth of internet services to your customers, and solutions (Holtzblatt, 2005). Yearly, your company experiences organizational changes and changes in its leaders. It also has plans of changing its sales and marketing personnel meaning a considerable number of employees will be affected.

The reasons behind these changes include sharpening the focus of your Research Center that majors in research activities on a long-term basis, as a means of affecting its plan to relocate to a better place. It is also to adjust the workforce in its global operations and finally to reorganize them so that your consumer interfaces becomes strong, and resources become well allocated to serve the company and minimize the layers of the organizations (Spector, 2010).

The factors that triggered these changes include the smartphone industries that changed the position of the Nokia Company and its reputation. The launching of Apple's I phone in 2007 led to the downfall of your company. Nokia was not able to reach the level set by Apple in the market since the consumers suddenly changed their behavior and few preferred the products of Nokia globally. The situation worsened when similar smartphones such as Android and iOS entered the market meaning that there were changes in the development of application software in mobile phones that were not being used by Nokia. Countries like Germany, Russia among others where Nokia was highly preferred changed their brands to the smartphones (Myers, Hulks, & Wiggins, 2012)

These factors led to internal changes in your company so that a state of equilibrium exists in the market. Nokia had to embrace and maintain good leaders and therefore needed to change. Nokia had to change so that it develops its market into the innovative side (Myers et al., 2012). It had to revolve into shipping in of smartphones, manage the poor leadership and their accountability and finally develop compelling products that have a life.

Issues Related to Change

However, with these changes there can arise many problems and challenges that need to be handled and dealt with so that the changes lead to the success of your company. I feel it is crucial that you get to know these issues because they may hinder the execution of your strategies and the cooperation of the employees towards performance. Some of the problems include the failure of the organization to understate the challenge facing the company at the moment (Lorenzi & Riley, 2000).

Along with this line, the absence of management during explanations of change can affect the whole process in the company and also the replacement. Another issue is that if the employees and everyone fails to understand the extent of the situation, then they become resistant to change. Lack of understanding between the seniors and employees is another issue in change management, differences in opinions and leadership can lead to disagreements over the change in an organization (Cummings et al., 2014). When all these misunderstandings occur, the employees and the management, in general, can resist change. Therefore, theoretical approaches leading to change can help mitigate such issues.

Theoretical Approaches Leading to Change

The theoretical approaches to leading the change include ensuring cultural excellence, the Japanese approach to management and organizational learning. Having a corporate culture is critical for your company to reach a status of superiority. Building on a corporate culture of excellence will ensure that your company has enough capacity; a structure that involves your employees has focus and empowers others. In building this culture, I will propose a three-phase approach that includes, developing a mindset for excellence (Cushman et al., 2011). Cultural superiority means working on a corporate culture that will encourage a high performing company by aligning all employees with your values, vision, and mission and let them have a shared drive of excellence. It will give them the energy to move forward with creativity, innovation, and tolerance despite the challenges, distractions and the changes.

Secondly, you have to come up with strategies for excellence. Now that the employees will have their mind set on excellence (Cushman et.at, 2011), they will be very ready to put their efforts in attaining the set goals for excellence. The third phase involves you developing leadership that is strong that will make sure the newly developed mindset and the new skills acquired for performance are sustained and become the new adopted ways of production in Nokia company. The phase will ensure that your employees adapt to the latest technologies involved in coming up with Nokia smartphones and not go back to their old mobile phone productions.

The next model is that of organizational learning. It refers to a process where people share knowledge, actions, and thoughts in a corporate setting which includes social, technical, behavioral and cognitive elements (Levitt & March 1988). With the increasing competition of other smartphones emerging in the market, organization learning becomes very important for building an edge in leadership over your competitors. Organizational learning will make your company innovative and have an improvement in both the top and bottom line profits. Embracing organizational learning marks a shift from a stage of no teaching to that of complete knowledge. The no learning stage involves lack of sensitivities to approaches, lack of sharing experiences, being rigid to a learning stage characterized by openness, adapting to changing experiences and flexibility.

For you to encourage organizational learning, you have to promote experimentation and flexibility in this company. Flexibility enables you to address your problems by seeking new solutions. Testing involves trying out new methods of making better and latest mobile phones to gain an advantage in the face of competition and become more profitable. The experiment can be done through organizing seminars and workshops to update your employees on the changes in the market (Masalin, 2013). Periodic performance reviews can be done and also meetings held often to share the goals and outcomes from the experiments among many others.

Building teams is also a form of organizational learning where employees share new ideas and approaches to innovation within and outside the organization. Building competencies and coming up of temporary systems in terms of workforces to complete change goals is also a form of organizational learning, and through these, the issues brought about by chance that your company is experiencing will be solved (Masalin, 2003).

The third theoretical approach is the Japanese approach leading to change that involves the combination of the personnel policies with the practices in business and work system. It serves as an excellent example of a method leading to change. In essence, it tries to depict the importance of combining the hard practices and the soft practices to deal with the issues brought about by the change. The methods that your employees were used to initially in the production of old phones have to change so that they align to the best work systems and business practices that you will need to compete in the market where smartphones prevail. According to Drucker, (1971), this approach is meant to promote a sense of security in the employees, cooperation, commitments, self-development, gratitude, loyalty, hard work and improvements among many others. It ensures timelines in developing Nokia's new products correctly and on time and also having them in the best qualities and also ensuring that the continuous developments be of class too.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is in my interest that you address these issues concerning change within the frameworks that I have explained in this memo. By ensuring that you build on a culture of excellence, embracing the Japanese approach and encouraging organizational change, those issues related to change can become manageable, and your company stands better chances to recover its status quo as the leading mobile phone industry. Many consumers now prefer smartphones that your company is struggling to accomplish. Nokia has to change and embrace the application software that companies like Android and Apple are using. With time, your efforts will bear fruits.

References

Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C. G. (2014). Organization development and change. Cengage learning. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=IuXKAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=issues+brought+by+change+in+organizations&ots=WMPBgNBlog&sig=HbLGLNOdYH5UR8Umya5Z90oMqLc&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=issues%20brought%20by%20change%20in%20organizations&f=false

Cushman, D. P., & King, S. S. (Eds.). (2001). Excellence in communicating organizational strategy. SUNY Press. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=5lmB-5S64fcC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=cultural+excellence+in+organizations&ots=ANWEAeawU5&sig=CUJhJjVzLB1s8z9bMl7vkxE-EBk&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=cultural%20excellence%20in%20organizations&f=false

Doz, Y., & Wilson, K. (2017). Ringtone: Exploring the Rise and Fall of Nokia in Mobile Phones. Oxford University Press. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Apg4DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&ots=nJ22hPApQg&sig=NgbyYXz0Q4j5BZHiodNXAbxyVNg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Drucker, P. F. (1971). What we can learn from Japanese management. Retrieved from https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=8771485681541462617&hl=en&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5

Holtzblatt, K. (2005). Introduction. Communications of the ACM, 48(7), 32-35. Retrieved from https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Holtzblatt%2C+K.+%282005%29.+Introduction.+Communications+of+the+ACM%2C+48%287%29%2C+32-35.&btnG=

Levitt, B., & March, J. G. (1988). Organizational learning. Annual review of sociology, 14(1), 319-338. Retrieved from https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.so.14.080188.001535

Lorenzi, N. M., & Riley, R. T. (2000). Managing change: an overview. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 7(2), 116-124. Retrieved from https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=issues+brought+by+change+in+organizations&btnG=#d=gs_cit&u=%2Fscholar%3Fq%3Dinfo%3ACXH0fr2srw8J%3Ascholar.googl...