Change Management

The only constant reality of life is change, which is not only in personal life but even professional too. No one is perfect in this world with respect to anything that can even be a change. Considering time, energy and efforts as the major factors to manage a change, there are several individuals around the globe defining and redefining the models and structures to manage a change. Change management has various models that have been practiced by business and industries real-time to attain the objectives of a company. In this essay majorly going to discuss about Nokia, a company which has undergone many changes to sustain its products in the market and resulted a failure due to improper ways and methods of dealing with a change.

Applying the Change in a business or project may lead to changing the requirements and even the objectives of the company. The areas of finance, operations, marketing and functioning in a company may be involved with a change so at to gain the chances of attaining it goals. Change management has structural methods and pre-programmed frameworks to move the business from present state to expected result. During the change management it requires to involve the management staff as well as whole company even based on that change. Chances of staff getting affected due to change are also possible. Before implementing or planning for a change the company has to be focused on why a change is required and what is the desired result expected after a change and it is beneficial to the company.

According to (Jabri.M, 2012) there are two contrasting modes of approach to change as follows:

The objective mode:

There exists a pre defined and action of plan to be implemented which is an external factor. Stratagy, structure and systems are consdiered as external objects away from the company. It is been controlled and maintained by externational factors and influcned by the employees. It increases the communication gap between the company and employees. There are chances of resistance to be high when considering the objective mode.

The social construction (relational) mode:

The change is not a preprogrammed; rather it is been constructed and developed by the people for the people in a company. It is constructed on day to day conversations and ongoing talk between people. The efforts are collaborative and considered to be benefitted for all. Relational mode is designed or obtained only when everyone considered having sense of ownership. There won’t be any communication gap between the management and employee in an organization because the change is been considered from everyone’s perspectives and obtained a better decisions towards a change.

Nokia Corporation was founded by Fredrik Idestam in 1865 under telecommunication Industry. It is a multinational communication corporation which focused on wired and wireless communication devices established in Finland. Nokia produced network equipment’s and mobile devices from Espoo a neighboring city of Finland. It has many sales presentations sites, R&D and manufacturing from various countries. Nokia’s share in 2004 for Finland’s Gross Domestic Product was 3.5 percent. It even exceeded the state budget level of economic for the first time in Finland. Most of them even refer Finland as “Nokialand” due to its reputation and production brand. The subcontractors under Nokia even rose economically high during the period Nokia was in lead. In 1980 Nokia came in to the market with its first Mobile phone and brought a revolution to the telecommunication industry.

Ultimately after several products failures, delay of launching products and drop down of Nokia shares price, the board of directors came up with a conclusion of replacing Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo with new CEO Stephen Elop from Microsoft (Nokia Corporation September 10, 2010).

Change of Stratagy:

An internal memo has been relaesed to the employyes of Nokia in Feb 2011, that’s soo after he turned to be power in Nokia. The memo has been addressed with a balme on employyes towards there attitude and desribed their behaviour towards the downfall of Nokia. Symbian is an software which is used on Nokia mobiles, even he critised them for not proving there applications worth in the market. This memo has been released to the media and got comments based on his approach towards the staff (The Wall Street Journal Feb 9, 2011). The released report didn’t show any of the strategies for change but rather shown criticize on employees. Rumors started spreading more on talk that Microsoft and Nokia had discussions and going to collaborate since Stephen Elop is from Microsoft (Ziegler February 8, 2011).

As to the talk and media it is been clear with the strategy came up by CEO Nokia that it is going to be merged with Microsoft. The CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer and Stephen Elop, on 11th Feb 2011 in press conference, announced the new strategy of Nokia (Nokia Corporation February11, 2011ba).

Implementation of Strategy Change:

According to the blueprint released on 11th Feb 2011 in press conference about the change strategy Nokia started implemented. Below are the key points that Nokia has to deal during Change.

1. Outsourcing Symbian to Accenture: As a part of cost saving measure by Nokia it decided to outsourcing the Symbian to Accenture. 2800 employees all over the world has moved to Accenture as a part of deal made (Nokia Corporation June 22, 2011). Finally only one tenth of the employees are able to sustain in the Accenture by Mid 2012 (Thomson Reuters May 9, 2012).

2. Termination of MeeGo and Meltemi development team: The left employees are in a dynamo of existing job and survival, few are transferred to Microsoft and others couldn’t make them self-comfortable with the shift and decided to leave (Fried June 14, 2012).

3. Restructuring of Sales team and layoffs: The R&D units and production lines were shutdown in Finland and other places due to the economic crises in Nokia (TechEye Network April 13, 2011, BBC News June 14, 2012, Mozur July 13, 2012).

Effects due to Change:

Employees: Soon after the announcement is made on 11 Feb 2011, thousands of Employees came out to perform a protest against the company announcement. They were shocked and scared of losing their jobs and worried about the future (Helsingin Sanomat International Edition February 11, 2011). The top officials of Nokia even gave their resignations and some were forced to give due to change in strategy. They included the chairman and sub ordinates team (BBC News June 14, 2012).

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