Topic > Case Study on Bureaucracy - 2577

It is also a fact that Nokia was the first to develop a whole range of new smartphones in the world. However, they were too large and inefficient; so Nokia was later replaced by other companies. They later tried to reverse the decline in smartphone market share and eventually lost almost the entire smartphone market share in 2014. Many considered Nokia to be the largest company and a pioneer in mobile phone manufacturing. The company had the funds and human resources to continuously grow it. However, as mentioned above, this company became too large to be inefficient, so it was unable to immediately change its strategies and policies, not even its corporate structure and culture. Therefore, bureaucracy is one of the reasons why they were overtaken by other companies and ultimately have no chance to capture the smartphone market share. According to O'Brien (2010), bureaucracy stifles innovation and development in Nokia. In fact, Nokia prepared the prototype of the touch-screen and Internet functionality a couple of years before the iPhone was introduced by Apple. According to the New York Times (2010), Hakkarainen (former Nokia manager) indicated that Nokia did not pursue innovation, but paid more attention to research and development costs. Furthermore, he also noted that Nokia's organizational structure is extremely sophisticated and enormous. Therefore, these factors led to dilemmas on communication and cooperation with different departments. For example, when he was a manager in the Marketing department, if some employees offered him an idea or proposal, if this proposal involved an interdepartmental decision, he had no power to make a decision and could not immediately collaborate with another manager of department. The bureaucratic structure made it necessary to present this proposal to the general director, and wait