Company’s Background
Nokia Corporation is an international communications company. The corporation’s headquarters are in Keilaniemi, Espoo in Finland. The company specializes primarily in mobile phones devices (Steinbock, 2010). The company provides other services such as, internet services in which it works in conjunction with internet providers to offer services that relate to mobile phones internet infrastructures. Last, the company involves in discovering new ventures that are to support other services that it provides (Aluya, 2009).
The company continues to dominate the communication industry in the whole world. This dominance is from useful mobile phones products that make life comfortable for they are safe to use. This gives the company good sales at the market place. Through innovations consistent systems, and setting of new standards the company is expanding from year to year. For example, the company’ staff in 1993 was 25,000, and recently in 2008 there was an increase to 44,000 (Aluya, 2009).
Review of Nokia’s Mission and Objectives
This company’s mission states that: “We help communications, service providers, and build more valuable customer relationships”. This statement appears in the organization’s vision, which is “The Individual Communications Experience” (Merriden, 2001). The company has specific objectives that are to help go for the vision that it reflects in the mission. The objectives are important to help the company establish itself in the market niche, and provide specific needs to the clients (Steinbock, 2001).
The current mission and objectives of Nokia Corporation are appropriate in line with the strategic approach it prefers in the market operations. The objectives are to ensure that there is a constant review, and refinery of the innovation of the firm’s products. This is to help the firm remain competitive in the highly changing technological world (Steinbock, 2001). In this regard, there is no evident need to change the firm’s mission and objectives because they appropriately capture the corporate culture of the firm.
They are also potentially transformational if they work together with innovative strategic operations to help implement them. However, this does not mean that the firm has to relax in innovation and product optimization quest. The firm has to continue with the innovation process because there is intense competition in the market which demands constant review and assessment of the company’s strategic operations (Häikiö, 2002).
Recommended Strategy
Nokia Company continues to enjoy the opportunity of the leading world’s mobile phones vendor. Unfortunately, as a result of technological innovations such as the use of smart phones, this trend has been changing over the last five years. This is especially the case with Apple iPhone, and other telecommunication devices that are run on Google’s Android Operating System (Häikiö, 2002).
The firm’s share prices have appreciably fallen from USD 40 in 2007 to under USD 3 in 2012. This necessitates the company to review the’ strategies, and approaches of remaining afloat in the market. In one of the changes, the company partners with other companies and organizations. They are to help it in differentiating, and establishing of products with specific needs of the clients (Lattanzi, Korhonen & Gopalakrishnan, 2006).
Referring to these changes, it is recommendable for Nokia Corporation to concentrate on changing of operational and functional strategies. This is to aim at redeeming the company’s apparently dwindling business dominance in mobile phones market.
The recommendation of changing the strategy would also aim at endearing the firm into more partnerships, and cooperation with other firms that show competence in the world communications market. For example, the partnership that the firm had with Microsoft to incorporate smart phones with Windows Phone Operating System to replace the Symbian system is a best move (Lindholm, Keinonen & Kiljander, 2003).
Considering that the firm has a global outlook in the industry, another operational strategy recommendation is to consider engaging in mergers and acquisitions as a way of increasing market share and dominance in the market. Given that statistics indicate that the firm has a strong market share (22.5%) strategic acquisition and mergers are ideal for the firm.
Most companies would desire to trade closely with it to enjoy dominance in the world market. Greater interaction, and business cooperation with other firms either under mergers of acquisitions would give the firm higher chances of becoming a formidable force in the industry (Merriden, 2001). These recommendations require that the firm has to review policies on business operations, and organizational structure. This is ideal to the need of incorporating other firms’ operational structures and policies in the event of merging.
Proper implementation and monitoring of these policies in working schedules and timelines will help the company realize the benefits of new policies, and changes. Though there will not be a great change in the firm’s core and distinctive business competences, there will be a high capacity to further increase in production channels, and unique opportunity to create more chances of product differentiation (Merriden, 2001).
Implementation
The organizational structure in a company is important in implementing new policies and changes. Nokia company structure has a structure that has to quicken execution, and implementation of new innovations. In ensuring that this idea is achievable, Nokia Company has these three business units: Mobile Solutions, Markets and Mobile Phones (Plunkett, Attner, & Allen, 2011). These units carry different functions in the company.
The mobile solutions have a responsibility of dealing with the company’s mobile internet services. Second, the market unit plays a role of marketing the company’s products. Last, the mobile phones unit has the responsibility to discover phone market futures in the mobile market (Plunkett, Attner, & Allen, 2011). After implementing these recommendations, there will be need for policy and structure change to facilitate smooth running and operation of the new strategies.
This will require organizing implementation programs to aid in the implementation process. An example of this program is a program that would be ideal for Nokia restructuring the corporation organizational structure (Steinbock, 2010). This tool is ideal for it allows the realignment and re-definition of the firm’s objectives and mission so that there is a high capacity to incorporate other firms and operations that are suitable for merging (Merriden, 2001). This program also can collaborate by the instituting TQM in order to ensure that the implementation process is not only convenient but also successful for the firm (Steinbock, 2010).
These programs are financially feasible, especially when the company address them to the extent by which they are bound to transform the firm giving it totally new outlook that gives it greater capacity to increase the market share and profitability (Steinbock, 2001). Areas that will mostly benefit from the transformation process will be those regarding the firm’s operations and therefore there will be need for new standard operating procedures. The company will have to develop and use them during the new dispensation.
Evaluation and Control
Nokia Corporation by the virtue of it possessing many personnel has an elaborate human resources management program. The distribution and management ensures that the company caters well, and asses the large workforce to ensure greater productivity and alignment to the firm’s organizational objectives.
Emphasis is usually given to the management of the firm’s worldwide personnel because human resources are the most important and critical assets that the firm has and therefore, effective management determines the success that the firm can anticipate to receive (Steinbock, 2001).
In this view therefore, there is considerable investment done by the firm’s management in training, equipping and resource allocation for these personnel to ensure that they compete and the company equips them sufficiently for better service delivery and higher profitability. As part of this elaborate human resources management strategy, the firm has elaborate performance assessment techniques. These techniques have support through reward schemes which aim at appreciating personnel and motivating them.
The firm has a widespread information system that has the capacity to necessitate sufficient feedback on implementation of different activities and their performance. What makes this system outstanding is the way the company links it to the human management strategies.
This ensures that there is a constant observation and evaluation of personnel creating a system that is self-sustaining and easy to manage (Steinbock, 2001). The system can measure different strategic factors during the implementation of the new strategies such as, the overall employee productivity which is in line with the new recommendations and the general profitability of the organization after implementation (Merriden, 2001).
There are adequate control measures in place in the firm to ensure the conformance with the new strategic plan. There are also a number of ways that can enhance these measures to ensure greater success and relevance. The specific area where this enhancement is relevant is in the use of an employee-based control measure that emanates from the employees moving up the management chain.
Such control measures would be relevant as it associates with the larger workforce that does not involve directly in the day to day running of the organization (Lattanzi, Korhonen & Gopalakrishnan, 2006). These measures have to be put in the Code of Conduct and Ethics Document used by the firm in order that all the personnel are aware of them and their operation.
It is then incumbent on the organization to train and sensitize the workforce on the way these measures will affect the implementation process to ensure that there is a better understanding of their operation (Lattanzi, Korhonen & Gopalakrishnan, 2006).
Reward and acknowledgement schemes are a very ideal approach that motivates personnel and encourage them into greater performance and higher productivity. At Nokia, there is an elaborate reward scheme on success and performance of personnel which rewards workers for their hard work and good performance.
This scheme ensures that there is constant strife by all personnel to ensure that they give their very best in everything that they do. The company recognizes their efforts and this encourages positive competition among the staff. This system is capable of rewarding and acknowledging good performance in personnel and motivates them through handsome monetary rewards, holiday trips, and promotion.
In conclusion therefore, Nokia Corporation is a reputable company that has considerable market dominance and large market share that makes the company ideal target by competitors. This then requires that the management and strategic policy formulators to be in constant operation devising better strategies and approaches that continue keeping the firm competitive in the marketplace. The new strategies in this paper are among those that when they undergo fully implementation and gets support would go a long way in ensuring that there is success, profitability, and high productivity in the firm’s operations in the market.
References
Aluya, J. (2009). Complexity of Leadership, Organizations and the Real Estate Industry: Disrupting Existing Systems. Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse.
Häikiö, M. (2002). Nokia: The Inside Story. New York: FT / Prentice Hall.
Lattanzi, M., Korhonen, A., & Gopalakrishnan, V. (2006). Work Goes Mobile: Nokia’s Lessons from the Leading Edge. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Lindholm, C., Keinonen, T., & Kiljander, H. (2003). Mobile Usability: How Nokia Changed the Face of the Mobile Phone. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies.
Merriden, T. (2001). Business The Nokia Way: Secrets of the World’s Fastest Moving Company. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Plunkett, W.R., Attner, R.F., & Allen, G.S. (2011). Management (10th ed.). New York: Cengage Learning.
Steinbock, D. (2001). The Nokia Revolution: The Story of an Extraordinary Company That Transformed an Industry. New York: AMACOM Books.
Steinbock, D. (2010). Winning Across Global Markets: How Nokia Creates Strategic Advantage in a Fast-Changing World. New York: Jossey-Bass / Wiley.