Explanations of success and failure in management learning:what can we learn from Nokia's rise and fall?

Laamanen, Tomi and Lamberg, Juha-antti and Vaara, Eero (2016) Explanations of success and failure in management learning:what can we learn from Nokia's rise and fall? Academy of Management Learning and Education, 15 (1). pp. 2-25. ISSN 1537-260X

Abstract

We study the changing explanations of success and failure over the course of a firm’s history, building on a discursive approach that highlights the role of narrative attributions in making sense of corporate performance. Specifically, we analyze how the Nokia Corporation was framed first as a success and later as a failure and how these dimensions of performance were explained in various actors’ narrative accounts. In both the success and failure accounts, our analysis revealed a striking black-and-white picture that resulted in the institutionalization of Nokia’s metanarratives of success and failure. Our findings also reveal a number of discursive attributional tendencies, and thus, warn of the cognitive and politically motivated biases that are likely to characterize management literature.