The Leadership Style in the Corporate Environment - Research Proposal Example

Research assignment Research Proposal How does the change of leadership styles and failure to manage change affect organizations? [Insert [Institutional Affiliation] Introduction The contemporary corporate environment has become very competitive thus requiring managers to understand why, when and how changes occur and how to manage the changes that otherwise threaten to engulf businesses. Consequently, to remain competitive, current managers have to create creative solutions to challenging problems. The aim of this report is to comprehensively analyze the transformational leadership that enabled Nokia Corporation to remain a market leader for decades. It has a clear purpose of indicating how beneficial transformational leadership was to the company and indicate why the change of leadership to democratic led to market failure of a once giant company. Collectively, this will illustrate that failure to manage change leads to immense failure. This report will be based on information obtained from, books, news articles, and pertinent journals, which will go a long way in reconnoitering the concept of leadership and change management. The starting point will be a comprehensive background of Nokia to understand its trajectory overtime and more particularly its leadership and significant changes that it has undergone. This shall closely be followed by a wide-ranging literature review of various sources that explicates the various leadership styles. It will then propose a methodology to be used in conducting the research and end in a brief summary. However, prior to that, we define leadership as the act of setting directions, creating and inspiring others with a vision of achieving some predetermined goals or something new. Background information on NOKIA Nokia is a mobile device manufacturer initiated in1865 by Fredrick Idestam, who was at that time a mining engineer (Nokia 2009). He did a commendable job by building a ground wood pulp mill on the Tammerkoski rapids. The mill was a paper plant to tailor made paper products to the market. Fredrick established a second mill with more hydropower resource near Nokianvirta River near Edwards’s Polon’s company groups. In the year 1871, the chief executive officer employed transformation leadership by renaming and transforming the firm into a share company hence Nokia Ab found. This was to improve quality and dominate the market. From the year 1861 to 1930, Edward Polon, the founder and chairman of Board, stepped up the transformation style leading to the development of another rubber industry in Finland. The company, consequently, build a wood and cable industry where Polon made a decision of naming it Nokia where the majority of his factories were located and where progressive branding of his products to make them appear unique in order to compete favorably with his competitors. Despite the fact that it was not legitimate for Nokia to merge with other companies, his transformation spirit led to the creation of conglomerate which changed to Nokia PLC. Finnish Rubber Works was thereafter established in the year 1898 under the leadership of Polon to manufacture galoshes. By 20th century, Finnish rubber works employed the use of the name Nokia for branding products. Finnish cable works was later found in 1912 by Arvid Wickstrom to produce telegraph, electric cables, and telephone. From the year 1912 to 2009 Bjorn Nalle Westerlund, a CEO that founded department of electronics led to a run loss of approximately a decade. He practiced a democratic leadership by encouraging teamwork to enhance production and improve the quality of the products. The main issue that has stimulated my interest into the research is the fact that Nokia products are facing stiff competition from its close competitors such as Samsung yet it is much older than them. It should be observed that Nokia, having been established earlier, should have dominated the market due to customer loyalty and high quality products that are customer-tailored, but this is not the case. This, therefore, calls for more research to be done on leadership in the company as it is also a vivacious factor that can contribute to a decline in company performance. Generally, there has been the change of leadership from transformational to democratic leadership style. The research tries to find out the impact that different leadership styles in organizations in terms of morale of employees, the relationships in the organization and the consequent effects of changing from one leadership style to another. Literature review In their article, James & Amy (2014) reiterate the sheer fact that leadership is more about the needs of the people and organization that one is leading rather than self needs. As such, leadership styles differ significantly and managers should select the style that best suits their organization’s needs or the specific challenges confronting the organization. The various leadership styles serve different needs but managers are allowed to combine several styles within their repertoire. James & Amy (2014) further recap that managers in place must be experienced and skilled to reinvigorate organizations in cases of social, political and economic challenges. From the aforementioned statements, there is need to understand why Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia’s CEO between 2006-2010, was able to effectively manage the challenges confronting Nokia during his tenure while Stephen Elop, his successor, critically tumbled. Unlike Elop, Olli-Pekka was able to identify and manage emotions in the organization creating a leadership that is inclusive, results-oriented, and with effective communication, a shared vision and highly stirring (Diefenbach, 2007). As a former Microsoft employee, Elop did not bring any intelligence required for effective management of the company and admits that he was inept to foresee fast changing industry conditions. James & Amy (2014) present various leadership styles that are continuously being used in the business environment. They describe transformational leadership as the most effective leadership style in the corporate sector. Transformational leaders are self-aware, humble, empathetic, authentic, and have a high emotional acumen. It is further indicated that transformational leadership can help an organization achieve its vision even in times of crises since the leader is not limited by their adherents perception (Diefenbach, 2007; James & Amy, 2014). However, it fails to indicate how the leader transforms the organization by redirecting their thinking and needs when it is clear that under such a system, the subjects think autonomously and the leader is still expected to act unpretentiously. Astoundingly, they overlook this imperative aspect and goes over to explicate democratic leadership as a leadership style that embraces sharing of the decision-making aptitudes with employees through promotion of their interests and the existence of social equality. Interestingly, they indicate that democratic leaders encourage creativity by intensively involving members of the organization in projects and decisions, making the employers inventive and contented thinkers, a factor that ultimately translates to job satisfaction and improved productivity for the organization. Moreover, they notice that this people-oriented style is only best for organizations in instances where quick decision-making is required. Compounding James & Amy (2014) description of transformational and democratic leadership with the Blake-Mouton Managerial Grid, the question that arises is how do leaders manage the changes brought about by the decisions from within and without their scope? An organization’s success depends on its aptitude to manage changes (Anderson & Ackerman-Anderson, 2010). How it transitions its individuals and teams determines how successful it will be in embracing the new change and transforming its poor performance to an outstanding performance. From the Prosci’s approach to change management, organizations must be well-prepared for change by defining their change management strategy and preparing a team to manage the anticipated change (Anderson & Ackerman-Anderson, 2010). Additionally, the change is introduced and plans implemented with relentless actions aimed at reinforcing the change being undertaken. However, Anderson & Ackerman-Anderson (2010) fail to mention the important fact that failure to assess the scope of the change and the readiness of the organization to undertake the change leads to failure of the organization. This describes why the change introduced in Nokia was not enough to attain a successful turnaround. The reason why the ‘people side’ of change is the main emphasis of change management should be understood. Change targets leadership at all levels of the company including line supervisors, middle managers, senior managers and executives and there must be outstanding reasons for this thought-provoking and flabbergasting fact (Anderson & Ackerman-Anderson, 2010). Revelation of these causes will help in understanding the failure brought about by the introduction of a new leadership style in Nokia Corporation. Methodology Data accuracy, time and costs are imperative aspects to be considered when selecting a research method. The current research will use primary and secondary, qualitative and quantitative research methods in collecting information. The primary methods will include; survey, interviews and observations. The methods will make it possible for us to collect recent and dependable data while providing total control of the research and streamlining the leadership styles of Nokia and trends of the company (Ghauri, 2005). Disparagingly, it is unfortunate that accessibility of the information might be hampered by the huge costs involved and the need for appropriate human resources lowering its feasibility. Secondary sources shall involve the internet, journal articles and books. Books and the internet provide extensive information that will enhance our ability to clarify the research question which seeks to understand how the change in leadership styles in Nokia led to the company’s deteriorating performance. It will further focus the research question and enable the researchers to outline the benefits and drawbacks of various leadership styles through an analysis of leadership theories and traits. It will also generate a new inside into the comprehension of the change introduced in Nokia and consumer perspectives on the subject. According to Ghauri (2005), analysis of printed materials presents a risk of ending up with information that is incomplete, out-of-date and inappropriate. A mishmash of the various methodologies will ensure that we end up with the best data that can be used in effectively answering the research question and formulation of a concrete conclusion. Research design Research methods are techniques used by researchers for collecting, verifying and recording data. It needs a systematic organization of how data shall be collected analyzed and finally evaluated. There are two main kinds of data that can be collected for research purposes; primary and secondary data respectively. Primary data are the persons or fields where researchers collect first-hand information that has never been collected before e.g. people, and films. On the other hand, secondary data are the kind of information that was collected earlier on not for specific research and unlike the primary data; it can be used later for other purposes e.g. book articles, journals, magazines and business articles. The primary data collection techniques that I will use include; Interviews: I will conduct sessions of a group or one on one where I will ask them research questions and record the information in form of notes. The individuals to be interviewed shall be customers of Nokia devices and the staff of the company. Survey: I will develop questions for a relatively larger group of people than for interviews. The answers shall be collected sheets of paper and graphs. Observation: This is a method that uses the eyes to collect the information from the field. I shall use camera and drawings to collect the data. The secondary data shall involve the use of journals and business articles. The data from these sources shall be collected and recorded in graphs and charts. After collecting the data, I shall verify compare the data collected from different methods. For example, the results of interviews are compared with survey results. Any deviation in the results calls for further collection and comparison of the data. The data shall be subjected to examination whereby regression analysis shall be done (Ghauri, 2005). After being satisfied that different methods display similar results in correlation, they shall be recorded in books or represented in form of charts and graphs. Conclusions/summary of the report The above elucidation candidly and comprehensively indicates that the leadership style used by Nokia was catalytic in its success and its recent underperformance can greatly be attributed to its move to change from transformational to democratic leadership. It was dominated by the pursuit of fast bottom-up growth. The leadership style previously employed by the company’s CEOs was instrumental in maintaining its market share, customer loyalty, creativity and innovation. Apparently, a thorough research needs to be undertaken to uncover how organizations should select their leadership styles and how they can manage changes that are unavoidable in the corporate environment. This research will make it possible to comprehend Nokia’s current trend. References Anderson, D., & Ackerman-Anderson, L. S. (2010). Beyond change management: How to achieve breakthrough results through conscious change leadership. San Francisso: Pfeiffer. Diefenbach, T. (2007). The managerialistic ideology of organisational change management. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 2(1). doi:10.1108/09534810710715324 Ghauri, P. N. (2005). Research methods in business studies: A practical guide. Pearson Education. James, M. & Amy C. (2014). Leadership Styles - Leadership Skills From MindTools.com. Retrieved from http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_84.htm Nokia. (2009, March 5). 4.A History and Development of the Company for Nokia (NOK). Retrieved from http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Nokia_(NOK)/History_Development Read More