Reference no: EM132247601

"The rise and downfall of Motorola is a great example to the evolution of management. Before Motorola changed its name to its current moniker in 1930, the company that was founded by Paul and Joseph Galvin started repairing battery eliminators for Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in 1928 (Klimarev, 2015). This product became obsolete subsequently and they began developing the home radio business until the Great Depression hit in 1929 where the Galvins changed their course to focus on the automobile radio business (Hattwick, 1965). This proved to be rewarding over a period of time leading to the coining of the name Motorola and diversifying its products and its stakeholders as evidenced by the many firsts it produced in the telecommunications industry. Galvin Manufacturing Corporation started with a U-form organizational design where as a new business organization started by five people with its founders and three engineers, it was focused on achieving economies of scale (Miles, Snow, Fjeldstad, Miles & Lettl, 2010) by focusing on producing and marketing its home radios for which they achieved tremendous success by 1929 (Hattwick, 1965). The three engineers under Paul and Joseph received instruction in a very direct manner, thus substantiating to a U-form kind of organizational design. As a response to the effects of the Great Depression that also caused their home radio business to falter, they switched the focus to automobile radios in 1930s and by the 1940s, they started product diversification with the development of two-way radios for the United States Army. This was the beginning of the transition to the M-form type of traditional organizational design wherein activities done were part of a “response to differentiated customer demand” with a goal to “achieve economies of scope” (Miles et al., 2010). This diversification gave birth to the creation of divisions within Motorola that led to a very systematic way of developing hardware and software technology that saw the production of television, semiconductors, microprocessors and cellular phone to name a few (Klimarev, 2015). Motorola workers answered to a hierarchical philosophy where engineers, researchers and the like answered to division leaders within the organization. What Motorola failed to do in the late 1980s with advancing technologies was to primarily grow the potential between the software and hardware technology. Instead, its leaders promoted internal competition (Fishman, 2014) which led to further dichotomy within the organization hence leading to Motorola’s failure to listen to its external stakeholders –its customers – who by now has turned to be one of the most important drivers of the free market as part of the evolving changes of the 21st century (Wymbs, 2012). The software division was evidently abundant of creative workers who continued to respond to the demands of the market by continuing to innovate and create digital cellular technology that was openly embraced by competitor companies such as Qualcomm that adopted the software into its own mobile phone (Fishman, 2014) instead of Motorola’s hardware division in charge of making its own mobile phone that had become antiquated. Over time, Motorola’s eventual split into Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions was their way of adapting to survive in the harsh competitive market of the telecommunications industry in 2008. By first initially separating functionally as led by two different co-CEOs – George Brown leading Motorola Solutions and Sanjay Jha leading Motorola Mobility (Fishman, 2014), this kind of typology is akin to the third illustration in Figure 1 of Wymb’s article on Technological Forecasting and Social Change (2012) wherein the expert – Carl Icahn, designated to be the biggest investor of Motorola in its effort to save clients (Fishman, 2014) – had sought to seek “multiple resources within the firm to solve the client problem” (p. 407). Under each separated division of Motorola, the company once again utilized its own creative workers to find ways to solve the problems within each group. Subsequently, four years later, the two divisions physically split with Google buying out Motorola Mobility in 2012 mainly for its proprietary technology, and which Lenovo subsequently acquired in 2014 primarily for its brand name (Fishman, 2014). Both Google and Lenovo’s move to acquire Motorola Mobility point out to the strong name that Motorola has continued to offer, particularly with its history and reputation with being an innovator in the telecommunications industry. As Wymbs (2012) points out well in his article, today’s market has pushed for scarcity of demand with the market flooded by varying choices. There has been “greater need to design market offers that create customer value and satisfaction” (Wymbs, 2012, p. 408), and customers will increasingly lean towards “reputation and personal recommendations” for which many prior and current Motorola clients can attest to given its rich history of innovation within the industry".