there's more if you want itIs Nokia a mechanistic or organic organisation?
Since forming in 1865, Nokia has undergone continual change from their roots as a wood-pulp mill to a multinational communications company. An organisation that operates in a fast changing environment is suited to an organic organisation. Nokia joined such an environment in the 1990s when it started to work with telecommunications. New standards such as WAP, SMS and 3G appear quickly and Nokia’s 38 percent market share indicates that it is doing a good job of keeping up. The relatively large percentage of it’s workforce that have some involvement in product research explains how it has been able to achieve this.
Nokia produces goods from firewalls to luxury cell phones and bluetooth gaming/phone hybrids. It cannot continue to market the same mobile phones without improvement as ‘just about everyone who wants an ordinary cell phone has one’. To produce such a wide range as quickly as it generally does indicates that either the top level managers are amazingly quick at making many good decisions or that employees and divisions further down the chain of command have more responsibility than a traditional mechanistic design would allow them. Even at the bottom of the structure teams of employees are involved with the development and innovation of new products. Nokia claims decisions are ‘made as close to the frontline as possible’. A mechanistic design would use those staff to carry out the precise orders of superiors instead.
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Mon 17 Nov 2003, 15:22,
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Since forming in 1865, Nokia has undergone continual change from their roots as a wood-pulp mill to a multinational communications company. An organisation that operates in a fast changing environment is suited to an organic organisation. Nokia joined such an environment in the 1990s when it started to work with telecommunications. New standards such as WAP, SMS and 3G appear quickly and Nokia’s 38 percent market share indicates that it is doing a good job of keeping up. The relatively large percentage of it’s workforce that have some involvement in product research explains how it has been able to achieve this.
Nokia produces goods from firewalls to luxury cell phones and bluetooth gaming/phone hybrids. It cannot continue to market the same mobile phones without improvement as ‘just about everyone who wants an ordinary cell phone has one’. To produce such a wide range as quickly as it generally does indicates that either the top level managers are amazingly quick at making many good decisions or that employees and divisions further down the chain of command have more responsibility than a traditional mechanistic design would allow them. Even at the bottom of the structure teams of employees are involved with the development and innovation of new products. Nokia claims decisions are ‘made as close to the frontline as possible’. A mechanistic design would use those staff to carry out the precise orders of superiors instead.