Management Issues in Nokia

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Management Issues in Nokia

IntroductionNokia is a multinational electronics company that was once leading globally in the manufacture and sale of mobile devices. The firm which had its headquarters in Espoo, Finland, was enjoying a large market share of over 40 percent of the global market (Peltonen, 2019). However, the company’s market share drastically declined forcing its owners to sell it off to Microsoft in 2013. Poor organizational culture was the main cause of the downfall of Nokia. Specifically, the prevalent culture in the company was reliance on a traditional method of management that was strictly dictatorial and not concerned with cultural diversity among its staff and employees. Nokia relied on lots of filters and censorship to control communications between top management, subordinate staff, and other employees. Subsequently, management theory and management of workplace diversity would be employed to adequately understand the problem which faced Nokia (Alexander, Havercome & Mujtaba, 2015). Accordingly, this paper will analyze the issue mentioned above and provide three recommendations that could help Nokia effectively handle the problem and remain competitive.

2.0 Management Issue DiscussionThe main issue identified in Nokia is poor organizational culture that is marked by reliance on a traditional dictatorship approach of management that does not consider and appreciate cultural diversity in the work environment. Accordingly, the organization could not remain competitive and accommodative to its employees. As a critical aspect, appropriate organizational culture has significant influence on workers of an organization since it could motivate employees, thus making them more productive and efficient (Yuso, Said & Ali, 2016). At the case of Nokia, employees were dissatisfied and demotivated by the dictatorship approach of management. Besides, the unsupportive cultural environment in Nokia discourages creativity and innovation, practices that could attract additional benefits to the firm by making its processes more efficient and effective for higher competitiveness. A suitable organizational culture would favor employees from varied cultural backgrounds, considers their requirements and contributions for better performance, and enables workers to adequately understand the vision and mission of their firm.

Consequently, the cultural issue in Nokia is related to planning since organizations should establish suitable roadmaps that stipulates necessary measures and tools for controlling and monitoring their processes and management practices to ensure that they remain favorable to every employee and facilitate smooth operations. Thus, Nokia should have planned well to ensure that its management team exhibits appropriate conduct that supports cultural diversity and considers changes in the world's dynamic business environment. Thus, this study would illuminate on participatory and contingency planning theories for adequate understanding of the management issues facing Nokia. Therefore, the company collapsed since it failed to consider the adverse effects of relying on a dictatorship and dormant leadership that does not acknowledge and appreciate cultural diversity.

3.0 Critical Discussion

3.1 Participatory Planning: Positive Aspects

Participatory planning has lots of advantages to virtually all stakeholders of a business since it encourages contributions of every interested person. When every interested individual is engaged in decision-making processes, the eventual outcome would probably be satisfying to everyone. It is imperative that participatory planning acknowledges and appreciates diversities that exist in different types of people. Subsequently, every stakeholder enjoys a sense of ownership, an aspect that draws benefits that entail motivation of employees, assumption of responsibility by all stakeholders, and encouragement of every stakeholder to contribute towards betterment of their entity. Similarly, every stakeholder strives to ensure timely and appropriate responses to varied occurrences as responsible and empowered persons with sound understanding of their firm’s goal and target objectives. Eventually, all the stakeholders would be proud owners and originators of every intervention strategy that promote positive growth and development of their organization. Also, participatory planning has high chances of providing sound decisions, promotes creativity and innovation by relying on contributions from several individuals with varying levels of understanding, expertise, experiences and values.

Besides, participatory planning promotes development of trust among involved people. Consequently, beneficial relationships would prevail in an organization that embraces such type of planning. Moreover, local communities and other engaged parties would be ready and willing to share vital information that facilitate development of apt solutions to existing gaps and barriers, thus promoting peaceful and profitable coexistence. Still, employees and other engaged parties would exhibit high performance since their contributions, concerns and opinions are respected and valued by their firm.

3.2 Participatory Planning: Negative Aspects

Participatory planning consumes lots to time and energy since it endeavors to collect and consider contributions from every stakeholder. The relatively large number of participants who are engaged in participatory planning require more time to present their opinions, suggestions and other contributions. Further, some of the engaged parties may generate remote and less useful information that does not support development of the desired decisions. Thus, a firm would spend much time which could otherwise have been used to accomplish other essential activities such as development of products and services.

Moreover, participatory planning promotes sharing of information, a practice that may result in leakage of sensitive and critical information that malicious individuals could utilize to harm an organization, its processes or employees. Some information that should be preserved for top management and other few personnel would spread to several individuals. Hence, an organization may not adequately preserve security and privacy of its sensitive information.

3.3 Contingency Planning: Positive Aspects

A contingency plan is vital for an organization since it serves as a suitable alternative and backup plan that a firm would adopt when the predetermined processes and operations fail. Accordingly, a contingency plan is a rescue strategy for a firm when anticipated risks emerge. Since a contingency plan offers all details including actions to be done and individuals who will be engaged, a firm would handle a disaster with more comfort and limited or no instances of panic and confusion. During emergencies, organizations may not have sufficient time to make sound decisions, thus, contingency plans are crucial because they are developed and tested on time to ensure they are effective in addressing a disaster. Moreover, a firm would take advantage of new opportunities by developing and embracing an appropriate contingency plan that ensures allocation of adequate resources for embracing new and better business strategies that may arise. Subsequently, a contingency plan is well-developed and actionable, rendering highly-applicable during instances of crises. Besides, a firm has high chances of emerging successful by embracing an appropriate contingency plan since it (contingency plan) offers detailed procedures of implementing applicable processes. As a result, an organization minimizes damages and avoids bad public image and reputation by establishing a contingency plan that strives to ensure that its operations continue smoothly with the least or no interference from an emergency. Also, virtually all stakeholders of a business are reassured of safety and positive progress of their project despite looming risks.

3.4 Contingency Planning: Negative Aspects

A contingency plan is only applicable when an organization is preparing to handle identified risks only. Since the plan is not suitable for unknown risks, a firm is vulnerable to unforeseen perils. Moreover, contingency planning does not prevent a risk from occurring, but rather endeavors to reduce its (risk’s) impact. Still, contingency planning consumes lots of time, funds and energy which could otherwise be used to accomplish other vital processes. A firm would use lots of its resources in planning, training its employees and doing other preparatory activities for an event that my never happen. Further, a firm would spend extra resources and time for constantly updating its contingency plan as the dynamic business environment presents new challenges and threats. Hence, a contingency plan may not prove beneficial since it strives to elaborate and explain how an organization can deal with an anticipated disaster instead of establishing strategies of avoiding such unwanted occurrences.

4.0 Recommendations

As discussed above, Nokia could adequately address the issues facing its management by employing either participatory or contingency plan. Nokia lags behind in development and collapses because it embraces an unsuitable form of management that does not acknowledge and appreciate cultural diversities among its staff members. Consequently, the organization relies on an unmotivated and dissatisfied workforce due to its (Nokia’s) unsupportive culture that uses commands to accomplish its operations without considering needs of its employees and changes in the industry. Conversely, the organization could utilize participatory planning to address the undesired culture. Precisely, the firm should encourage all of its stakeholders, including employees, to contribute towards resolving prevailing and anticipated issues by offering their opinions, suggestions and perceptions according to the participatory theory. Thus, Nokia could engage its workforce and other stakeholders in developing appropriate solutions for addressing the current crisis while preparing to avoid similar situation in future.

On the other hand, Nokia could utilize the contingency planning approach to develop and execute an appropriate strategy for addressing the prevailing management issues. Since the organization failed to establish a suitable contingency plan, it has no strategy for resolving the current management issues. The firm does not have sufficient time to develop and test a contingency plan before using it to handle the crisis that has occurred. However, the firm could develop suitable strategies for handling similar or other management issues in future. Therefore, it is advisable for Nokia to adopt a participatory planning strategy to ensure that it effectively address the current issue while developing suitable strategies for preventing similar situations in future.

5.0 Conclusion

This report concludes that Nokia could adequately address its current management issues by adopting a participatory planning strategy that encourages contributions from all stakeholders, including its employees. Moreover, the participatory planning is useful in preventing recurrence of such and related issues because it facilitates development of informed decisions that favor all the engaged parties.

Reference ListAlexander, V., Havercome, C., & Mujtaba, B. G. (2015). Effectively managing employees to get results in a diverse workplace such as American Express. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 7(1), 13. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/openview/a9cd7938231dc194c962119b2e89615a/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1056382

Peltonen, T. (2019). Case Study 4: The Collapse of Nokia’s Mobile Phone Business. In Towards Wise Management (pp. 163-188). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Yusof, H. S. M., Said, N. S. M., & Ali, S. R. O. (2016). A study of organizational culture and employee motivation in private sector company. Journal of Applied Environment and Biology Sciences, 6(3S), 50-54.