The Finnish media has lapped up a recent paper on Nokia's decline by Timo O. Vuori and Quy N. Huy at Cornell University. The paper found significant failings in the company's management culture, and pins a lot of the blame on Jorma Ollila, who was CEO from 1992 to 2006 and then became the company's chairman.
Ollila is a big name in Finnish business and society, so of course Talaoussanomat, Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti picked up the study and ran with it. The key quote from the original paper is here:
When conducting our interviews, we were struck by how often informants referred to the aggressive behavior of Nokia’s chairman, who was also the CEO from 1992 to 2006. He was described as ‘‘extremely temperamental’’ (UMM#6) and shouting at people ‘‘at the top of his lungs’’ (top-level strategy consultant) ‘‘so hard that [the target’s] balls shrank . . . in front of 15 other VPs and SVPs’’ (MM#5, software). Thus ‘‘it was very difficult to tell him things he didn’t want to hear’’.
The problem got so bad, filtering through to other senior managers at the company and creating a climate of fear akin to North Korea, according to one interviewee. Several others said that managers lied to their superiors and the senior managers had no real software competence so were unable to understand what they were being told.
Finns unfussed over VW emissions
Helsingin Sanomat has been out and about gauging Finnish motorists' reactions to the ongoing crisis at Volkswagen. Revelations that VW installed 'defeat devices' on its so-called 'clean diesels' to get around stringent US emissions tests have forced the CEO to resign and prompted fears of massive fines, mass recalls and even a new recession in the EU.
In Finland, however, VW customers are staying loyal. Dealers and drivers alike said that the main factor in car purchases is reliability, not emissions.
"It's rock-solid, with French cars you get faults," said one loyal VW fan in eastern Helsinki.
HJK in 'crisis'
Finnish football has had a fairly predictable pattern for the last six years. To paraphrase Gary Lineker, 12 teams kick the ball around for six months and then in October, HJK win the title. This year they're going for their seventh consecutive championship, but there have been some pretty major hiccups along the way.
On Sunday they lost at home to title rivals RoPS, and yesterday they went down 3-0 away to SJK, the other team with a chance of winning the league. They're now six points behind SJK, who are top, and have it all to do if they're to win the trophy.
HBL reckons they need a 'miracle', and could even miss out on the European places. Helsingin Sanomat says they're a 'shadow of their former selves', and points out that coach Mika Lehkosuo has failed in the season when he had time with the squad to prepare and even had input into recruitment decisions.
Iltalehti, meanwhile, sees a possible shift in Finnish football's power balance. SJK, which was formed in 2007 after a merger and is backed by local real estate mogul Raimo Sarajärvi, could now become the country's leading footballing force. That would represent quite a shift from the predictable victories HJK have enjoyed for more than half a decade.