Canada’s largest telecommunications company, Nortel Networks, failed because of a culture of arrogance leading to poor financial discipline, a loss of key customers through lack of technological innovation and a harsh external business environment.
In a lessons-learned study, lead researcher Jonathan Calof and his team conducted interviews with Nortel employees, including CEOs and key customers involved with the company between 1997 and 2009, when it filed for bankruptcy protection.
The researchers found the company had a structure that encouraged poor management decisions, was ill-equipped to adapt to the changing marketplace, consumer needs or the pace of technological advances.
Read more at University of Ottawa