Global Leadership and Managment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Global Leadership and Managment - Essay Example Keywords: global, Nokia, corporate social responsibility, stakeholders. Global Leadership and Management Nokia has always been one of the leaders of the global telecommunications industry. Nokia’s mobile gadgets are used and loved by millions of consumers around the world. The quality and efficiency of Nokia’s strategies cannot be overestimated. However, the company is not always sensitive to the needs and concerns of its employees and stakeholders. At the heart of this discussion is Nokia’s decision to move its production facilities from Germany to Romania. Of the biggest concern is the fact that German facilities have been extremely profitable, and Nokia’s striving to cut its costs by all possible means subjects thousands of employees to the risks of unemployment and poverty. The goal of this paper is to review the strategies used by Nokia in its movement to the top of the business hierarchy and to analyze the pros and cons of Nokia’s approaches t o global expansion and growth. Until 2008, Nokia had been the biggest global manufacturer of cell phones (Jain, 2009). Based in Finland, Nokia gradually turned into the leading provider of cell phone devices and applications in the global telecommunications industry. ... A decision was made to close the plant in Germany and move production facilities to Romania (Jain, 2009). Nokia believed that cost reductions was a necessity and would help the company to retain its profitable position in the global telecommunications industry (Jain, 2009). Reasons why Nokia decided to move its production facilities from Germany to Romania were simple and obvious: employees in Germany were paid ten times as much as employees in Romania would need to fulfill the same amount of work (Jain, 2009). Moreover, the creation of a new plant in Romania was part of Nokia’s low-cost strategy (Jain, 2009). At that time, the company ran a number of manufacturing facilities in Europe (namely, Hungary, Finland and Germany), a manufacturing plant in Britain, as well as in Africa and the Middle East (Jain, 2009). The plant in Germany added to the burden of costs carried by Nokia in Europe, and the company management felt that moving to Romania was the best way to stay competiti ve in the long run. The decision to move the production facilities from Germany to Romania stirred mass protests, and the wave of backlash resulting from employee opposition soon expanded to cover European consumers of Nokia (Jain, 2009). Employees disagreed with Nokia’s decision to move the plant to Romania, mainly because Nokia’s presence in Germany had been extremely profitable for the entire business (Jain, 2009). Labor unions in Germany called Nokia’s strategic plans unacceptable and inhuman (Jain, 2009). In the meantime, Nokia believed that the German plant would reduce the company’s global competitiveness (Jain, 2009). The plant accounted for more than