Actions Taken By Nokia To Re-Examine The Companys Values (Case Study Sample)

LEADERSHIP THEORIES
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An overview of the case study
In 2006, Nokia found itself operating in a highly competitive environment compelling the company to carry out a fabulous job of ensuring customer satisfaction. During this time mobile handsets were being commoditized thus becoming simple in the eyes of the major markets and consumers. To thrive successfully in such a situation, Nokia was obliged to initiate robust strategies to uphold its image, maintain its diversity in terms of market coverage, financial resources as well as design proficiency. At this point, the company aimed at transforming the culture for the emerging global challenges hindering business operations by lining up stakeholders’ support and synergy. The first action step of restoring Nokia values was the implementation of The World Café methodology, a concept which was meant to reform and restructure the company (Willigan, 2017). Ultimately, Nokia generated new corporate values superior and more open-minded than most of the corporations in the industry, and presently the company is at the vanguard of creating and permitting the technologies that are progressively at the heart of people's interconnected lives.("Nokia issues new shares to settle the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent shares from the Alcatel-Lucent depositary | Nokia," 2017).
Actions taken by Nokia to re-examine the company’s values
Nokia’s values had remained unchanged for a long time, and research proved them archaic, a board of directors led by the company CEO and other senior managers embarked on a re-examination exercise of the principles. At first, the leaders appointed a select team of individuals to establish the best course of actions of the process of re-examining the values. The team decided that the best methodology would be to syndicate high touch and high tech. The latter part of the process would use IBM’s overcrowding technology that could enable all employees to participate in an online conversation. The high touch part of the re-examining process, on the other hand, would be executed by application of the World Café methodology and allow them to deliberate on issues of mutual interest (Willigan, 2017).
In order generate a casual and informal dialogue amongst several individuals, members were then subdivided into groups settled together around tables to deliberate upon a particular question assigned by the facilitators. The subgroups would then disband over and over again, and participants would interchange the tables, and so ideologies could be distributed, nurtured, and joint together. In the course of the conversations, facilitators could compile the emerging ideas (Willigan, 2017).
However, due to the large number of Nokians, successful implementation of the World Café methodology concept was impractical, and so the company introduced a metaphor "a trip to Mars" which was tailored to ensure that process of creating new ideas was undertaken by all and sundry. This strategy eased the work of generating new ideas since as it was hoped by the executive team, an assortment of individuals from every operational level in Nokia participated in the process and finally the company acquired new values (Willigan, 2017).
The methodology employed by Nokia leaders to bring a transformation of principles was irrefutably successful. The approach gave all affected parties a chance to exercise their power and control on the values re-examination process. By virtue of appointing a select team to facilitate the entire exercise was an indication that the leaders did not intend to monopolize authority but rather disseminate it to ensure impartiality and fair-mindedness for everybody (Willigan, 2017). Moreover, the concept of the trip to Mars ascertained that all Nokians irrespective of the level in the chain of command took part in generating new ideas to run the business.
Leadership practices demonstrated a thorough understanding of human behavior in terms of the strategies employed by the company to ensure a favorable competition in the market. Various leadership theories as described below can be used to support such arguments (Winkler, 2010). 
1. Trait Theory
This theory proposes that people emerge as leaders in various situations requiring them to demonstrate different qualities such as brainpower, adjustment, extroversion, scrupulousness, confidence, charisma, and knowledge. This theory further points out that people with such unique qualities may emerge successful leaders, but overreliance on them may not always assist them to achieve the intended goals hence the importance of appointing assistants to help them in the decision-making process. Leaders in Nokia demonstrated this management attribute by selecting a team to conduct the values re-evaluation process.
2. Hersey-Blanchard Situational Model
According to this theory, leadership style advocated by managers should match the subordinates’ prime of life. While handling new entrants to a company, a leader would be obliged to adopt a “Telling style” and instruct them precisely what to do and how to do. Simultaneously, the leader would be expected to embrace a delegating approach while dealing with people at the higher echelons. Nokia leaders observed this leadership aspect by allowing all Nokians to take part in the values generation endeavor. The top executives delegated their authority to other subsidiary individuals to assist them in communicating the mutual interests of the company.
3. Behavioral Theories
The Behavioral Theory needed to recognize the specific behaviors of leaders that contribute to their success. Leaders might exhibit task-oriented or people-orient...