Cessation of an era, collapse of a giant: a review of Nokia with a qualitative system dynamics approach

Saatçıoğlu Ö. Y., Özispa N., Kayıran B., Özeren E.

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT, cilt.0, sa.0, 2025 (SSCI)

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 0 Sayı: 0
  • Basım Tarihi: 2025
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1504/ejim.2021.10042263
  • Dergi Adı: EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, Aerospace Database, Communication Abstracts, INSPEC, Metadex, Civil Engineering Abstracts
  • Karadeniz Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

This study aims at understanding the demise of Nokia, a pioneering high-tech firm and leader in the mobile phone market for nearly 14 years. It investigates the main factors influencing Nokia's business and innovation performance during its collapse from the perspective of business functions, innovation types and innovation adoption. Drawing on an extensive review of the literature on Nokia via a qualitative system dynamics approach, we developed a holistic framework based on Nokia’s past failures. The key lessons learned were: the firm's strategy between 2003 and 2013 seemed confusing with ongoing internal struggles, a lack of clear strategic vision and decisions from top management, an inconsistency in organisational design choices and inadequate response to rapid technological changes and advances in the smartphone industry prevail. The paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of cause-and-effects of Nokia's failure by identifying major variables within qualitative system dynamics model.