1. INTRODUCTION The fact that the world is changing in a high pace enforces many businesses to keep abreast of relevant updates, and then integrate what may make a business more sustainable from a marketing perspective. The need to change may stem from technological breakthrough that becomes part of market requirements and customers' needs afterwards. Additionally, changes in a national and global economy may also impose some organizational adjustments or even radical changes (Bharijoo, 2005). An interesting example comes into the play is the cassette industry that became obsolete after CD and DVD technologies have been integrated in our life to a high extent. At the moment, the rapid development of web computing and cloud industry along with the same pace of development for telecommunication systems, as found in 4G, makes it high risky to keep investing in CD and DVD technologies. Instead, big companies study and set endless scenarios for the development of overlapping technologies that may affect the future of their industries, and thus they found themselves obliged to keep their infrastructures values, visions, regulations and policies updated. For that, the need for organizational change depends on the nature of industry. It becomes more necessary if it is more connected to a technology with high changing dynamics such as telecommunication systems and related services. Based on that, this study is dedicated with a view to discuss the change management process for the transformation from 3G to 4G at Ericsson in comparison with Kotter's Eight-Step Change Model (Kotter, 2012). Ericsson is a global company for technology localized in many countries around the world. The main services Ericsson delivers include providing and operating telecommunications networks, video and television systems, and other related services (Ericsson, 2013). Change management and organizational learning are two of fundamental elements of Ericsson practices. Change projects are not only applied internally in Ericsson, they also provide consulting services in that respect. One popular service they offer is called Ericsson Program & Change Management (Ericsson, 2013). Figure 1 shows many transformations that occurred in Ericsson over history. Specifically in 2008, the company became capable to provide and operate 4G systems, the fourth generation of mobile phone mobile communication technology standards. The successor standard, 3G, has been first integrated in 1999 (Ericsson, 2013). Under the pressure of their global competitors and to keep their remarkable market share, Ericsson adopts the behaviour of learning organization to keep its development progress responsive to the market demand, economic growth, new technology, and new opportunity growth. 2. Kotter's Eight-Step Change Model Kotter (2012) suggested a model for managing changes within organizations. He observed the behaviour of more than 100 companies and proposed eight steps to be followed to increase the likelihood of success of changes to be integrated. The order of the eight-step model is important to be followed. 2.1. Establishing a Sense of Urgency Kotter (2012) claims that any change needs to be taken seriously to have a good chance to succeed. One way to do that could be by making the effects of a change's absence visible as much as possible. That may include recession in competitiveness, market shares, and financial performance. There should be at least 75% of a company of whom are agreed that the current situation would not lead to a satisfactory future. By making that happens, an urgent atmosphere could be created, and thus, the complacency level becomes low and staffs get out of their comfort zones. 2.2. Forming a Powerful Guiding Coalition Change momentum are pushed using a force of effective organizational power that are agreed on making that change. Therefore, a change is more likely to be happened if it is led by a powerful guiding coalition. Power here does not only refer to organizational titles, but that also includes expertise, relationships, and reputations. Without that kind of cooperative coalition, it is quite difficult to confront resistance actors and absorb their reluctance. People seem to value changes that are led by important organizational characters more than the need to make a change. Therefore, there is a high risk for any change to be taken seriously if not led by a powerful group of people (Kotter, 2012). 2.3. Creating a Vision Having a vision for any organization plays a significant role in guiding staffs to where the organization is going to. Any plan is then built according to the need of the organizational vision. Having a vision is thus as same as having a destination, while the related plans are as same as using a compass to reach that destination. On the other hand, lacking a vision may result in irrelevant plan, and thus confused staff, which may eventually lead to incompatible projects and activities that make the organization ends up in the wrong direction (Kotter, 2012). 2.4. Communicating the Vision Kotter (2012) emphasizes that it is not enough to have understandable, simple, clear, and strongly relevant vision. Without harnessing all possible methods to share and promote that vision, it would be still comprehended at a limited organizational level. Kotter (2012) also highlights the importance of giving examples for how to achieve a vision by setting different strategies for example, which makes it quite easier to be comprehended by the staff. Under communicating the vision maybe resulted from developing a vision, but using only a single form of communication. Moreover, managers do not adopt the principle of walking the talk quite often, nor remind of the desired behaviours. 2.5. Empowering Employees for Broad-Based Action Any implementation of a major change requires actions from people (Kotter 2012). It is very possible that any effort will fail if someone from a team, supervisor or especially some executives try to undermine the effort to implement a change. Kotter (2012) emphasizes the importance of such employees to be recognized since a whole project maybe led to a disaster. There is also tremendous importance of leaders to help employees to overcome their barriers during implementation as they in most cases exist only in their heads. 2.6. Generating Short-Term Wins It is obvious that big and serious transformations require long time to be accomplished. In most cases a project that is aimed to bring a transformation takes up to 18 months or even longer. In order to keep complacency down and to successfully perform the project, shortterm goals are to be set. In that way, it is quite possible to avoid resistance from employees over the long time period that is required to successfully accomplish such a long time transformation. 2.7. Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change A common mistake that is done by companies during a transformation process is to celebrate when some stage of it has been done. As Kotter (2012) says, it is not wrong to celebrate such a success, but it is a terrible mistake to create an impression among employees that the job has almost been done. If such an impression has been created, there is a huge possibility that transformation will fail. Instead, after the improvement is further consolidated, it must be continued with changes and bring the project to the end. Otherwise, the planned changes will disappear by time and it is very foreseeable that they will be forgotten in the future. 2.8. Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture It is very important to anchor changes that are performed, and not neglect the efforts done in order to achieve the current success in an organization. Employees as well as board of executives must be conscious about what helped them to attain this stage. There is a serious danger that current changes will not survive if this is not done. Factors that contribute this error to occur are usually present through retiring key people who lead the transformation process. It also may happen during resignation of those people. If something like this occurs, it is of a high importance to ensure that the next generation management personify the new approach and retain those organizational values. 3. RESULTS: INTERVIEW An interview has been done with Maryam Zarrinjouei, a software designer at Ericsson. She contributed in many change projects such as radio-based stations. As a core member involved in the transformation project to 4G, which Ericsson started to integrate in 2008, she answered a group of questions based on Kotter's Eight-Step Change Model. The questions and answers are as follow: Question 1: What are the consequences if the project has not been applied? For example, would there be economic and market effects (market share and competitiveness)? And how much familiar were people across Ericsson about these consequences? Answer: Since Ericsson business rests in technology and telecommunication industry, it was very crucial for the company to keep abreast of all possible updates, otherwise, the customer loyalty would be lost gradually so would the market share. For example, if Ericsson did not respond to integrate 4G, where speed is radically different from 3G, current customers would for sure look for that speed somewhere, as it is not only a fashion, 4G improves other businesses radically our customers were totally aware of it. Besides the nature of employees in Ericsson made it easier to comprehend the need for that transformation to survive as competitive company. Therefore, almost everyone found it essential and interesting. The annual plan was kept updated for employees assigned to other projects. Therefore, it sounded familiar every time I had to introduce myself and the project I was involved in. However, it was new, and you never get consensus on new initiatives. Question 2: How much close was the monitoring of tasks performance? How were you kept alarmed during the project? Answer: We were very closely supervised. We needed to go on details for every contribution or part of work when done. We were also supported by project coordinators and managers. They used to help as in getting complicated things done. That was quite alarming for us to and it gave us the sense of how important and crucial is the project we have been involved in. Question 3: In your opinion, were there more underestimations, overestimations, accurate estimations, or good enough estimations for the time limits, costs and effort needed? Answer: I would say that a great part of decisions slightly underestimated the resources needed. We felt that they were trying to be good in all dimensions. In other words, that inaccuracy is not because of perceiving that project as easy-going. You know that Ericsson is a big company, and the atmosphere of uncertainty they used to deal with in their industry is quite high. Therefore, budget allocations have higher tolerances than other industries. However, they strive to standardize similar and repetitive practices as much as possible to decrease the uncertainty levels for any projects in the future. Question 4: Did Ericsson prioritize change projects in the right rank among other projects? Answer: Generally in Ericsson, projects are ranked in terms of priority according to many dimensions including novelty, relevance, strategic impact, cost and size. Change initiativesmay get high rank as they are most likely to include novel activities and strategies, and have strategic impact on the current business. The transformation to 4G for example was one of the top projects in terms of priority as it has essential implications on 70-80 % of Ericsson's services. Question 5: Did the project involve of whom represent powerful formal titles, information and expertise, reputations and relationships, and the capacity for leadership in Ericsson? How powerful was the leadership in comparison with corresponding change resistance? Answer: Most members board directors, senior managers, department and project managers, and even consultant partners agreed on the importance of integrating 4G in Ericsson. However, there was no clear shared vision about how and when to make the change. All in all, most of resistance was about the timing of the project due to economic concerns. The group that was completely convinced that it was the time to make it started by convincing the sources of power in the company as I heard. They also included some specialists in their sessions to impress the shareholders. Later on, the voices of supporters continued to raise until the project turns into action. Question 6: Was there any official transformation vision for the project? How was it formed? Answer: The vision of Ericsson as a company is used for all projects, which is "To be the Prime Driver in an all-communicating world". Question 7: How much clear was the transformation vision of the change need? Was the transformation purpose comprehendible and easy to perceive and communicate within Ericsson? Answer: A goal could be more appropriate to use for describing the contribution of individual projects. It was very clear that the company wanted to integrate 4G as new capability to be built in service providing and operating. That essentially contribute to the general vision of the company. Question 8: What kind of activities related to the promotion and diffusion of the transformation vision within Ericsson has been considered? In which frequency? How many people from different management levels did consider the transformation vision in daily communication and speeches? Answer: The reason I can remember the vision of the company and the contributions of the project I worked for is that we could find them everywhere inside the workplaces and in all occasions such as kick-offs and meetings. Many organizational titles from different levels of the company were always invited to monthly meetings and kick-offs, which raised the project profile, and thus we became more enthusiastic. Generally, the strategies to achieve the project goal and the use of the project deliverables as strategic assets to the company have been repeated many time throughout the project. Question 9: Have you observed any behaviour of visible individual that is antithetical to the transformation vision? Answer: Since the contribution of our project was highly significant and required to the global competitiveness, it was difficult to find some managers that do not make deliberate decisions. Most project and department managers seemed to be real believers and adopters of Ericsson values and vision. Question 10: What could you mention were the obstacles in a sense of structural barriers during the transformation in order to match the development process? (Please mention something that looked to you contradictory with the goals your company wanted to achieve) Answer: Our managers first lead a group of 20 people that were divided into several small groups for teamwork. By time it was realised that it is difficult to track these group work so only two groups were created and both were under the responsibility of one manager. Our company created some courses for employees to attain additional and useful skills for our project. The courses were too much intensive and would usually take up to three days. If an employee did not pass, he had to take the course again and there were quite a lot of them who fail. In my view this was opposite of the company's goals because of the time and money that were spent. Question 11: During the process, could you notice that were some leading employees who were troublesome in sense that they instead to lead the change passively or actively undermined the effort of people who tried to do their best in order to this process succeeds? Answer: I did not notice that any of managers that were involved directly in this process were doing something like this, but I did notice that some of employees did it in a way ...this should not be done like this because we always did it that way. By the way, the managers were great by helping everyone who needed help and all the time motivated the people. Question 12: Were there and if they were, what were the short-term aims during the project? (They also can be defined as steps that were to be accomplished during the project? Answer: Many, many meetings were held at different levels and for different purposes. At the meetings held by managers there were short-term wins introduced as well as what have been done so far which helped employees' motivation. Question 13: Do you think these short-term goals helped that some reluctant or neutral employees become more interested in the whole process and start playing more actively after these short-term goals were achieved? Answer: Absolutely yes. Moreover, this kind of approach motivated some people to do more than they were expected to do, of course, in a positive way. Question 14: Who and at what level of management pushed the things go even when considerable achievements were accomplished during the project? Answer: These were, in the first place, the line managers. I was the part of the change so my communication was at the first place with these people. They always were close to us and motivated us by directly involving themselves into the work processes. Question 15: What were the practices and behaviours taken by the management that the project does not let up? (For example additional people being brought in to help with the changes, employees empowered at all levels to lead projects, constant effort to keep urgency high etc.) Answer: In my opinion, they kept us awake by the huge numbers of meetings that were driven by a great energy and the courses for employees kept us always under some kind of positive pressure. Question 16: Could you say there were some practices during the project that directly confronted to your organizational norms of behaviours and shared values? (For example some new ways that are superior to the old ones or something that encouraged some employees to leave) Answer: I find Ericsson among the world leaders in terms of learning and development atmosphere. I might prefer the approaches of some managers over other ones. But the values of the company and mine are not contradicted if not on the same page. Question 17: What were dose practices that you think were planted during the project? (Something that even slightly will remain in your organizational culture such as norms, values) Answer: I am not sure, but it seems changes are always present at our company. For example, we are very much related to customer satisfaction. 4. CASE ANALYSIS The case analysis is based on the given answers and the corresponding theory proposed by Kotter (2012). Kotter listed and provided thorough explanations for reasons of failure of business organizations during the implementation of transformation process. As shown in the theoretical framework, there are eight steps for organizational changes and the analysis consists of eight parts accordingly in order to investigate if they have been implemented at Ericsson during the integration of 4G systems. The results show that the change model proposed by Kotter (2012) is highly considered in the change management of Ericsson. 4.1. Establishing a Sense of Urgency According to Kotter (2012), the first step that prepares any organization to accept a change is to keep the level of complacency as low as possible and make sure that the sense of urgency is prominent. Maryam confirmed that the organizational change in telecommunication industry is characterized by high uncertainty levels and most of people involved are aware of that uncertainty. There were many awareness activities to which disastrous consequences may happen in case that transformation was not considered. That was what Kotter (2012) mentioned as triggering the sense of urgency by revealing some serious situations for the absence of a change to be acquired. Maryam also talked about the high professional and knowledge levels in telecommunication industry that makes it easier to make staffs comprehend how serious the situation is. Kotter (2012) also discussed some mistakes a company may fall in when they do not monitor the performance and behaviours of the project members very closely. As Maryam said, supervisors and managers did not stop to closely monitor and support project members in their tasks to let them feel how that is crucial to the company, and to keep them highly alerted. On the other hand, Maryam mentioned that there were many slight underestimations due to the uncertainty level of the industry. Kotter (2012) emphasizes the fact that underestimations may reflect that the level of urgency sense is not high as much as required. 4.2. Forming a Powerful Guiding Coalition According to Kotter (2012), a change is more likely to be happened if led by a powerful guiding coalition including shareholders representatives, powerful titles, and required experts and skills. In Ericsson, projects are given attention according to their novelty, relevance, strategic impact, cost and size. That could be seen as a rational shared ground to start any possible negotiation for changes to be integrated. She claimed that the transformation to 4G project was ranked as one of the top project in terms of priority due to its impact on Ericsson services. Therefore, the guiding coalition was powerful enough to lead the change even though it started on a very limited organizational spot before being diffused using the power of rationality and common sense. 4.3. Creating a Vision Having a vision to a change that is easy to promote and be understood by different mindsets is another crucial step to guide the project effort to the right direction (Kotter, 2012). In Ericsson, the main vision of the company is used as a change vision. How each individual project contributes to the ultimate vision has been clarified for the 4G project, which emphasizes customer satisfaction as same as Ericsson vision does. Maryam regards Ericsson vision as easy to memorize and understand. She said that helped her very much in decision making when she had to improvise. She had to study all options' contributions to the vision, which made it easier for her to accelerate her pace and assure time commitment. 4.4. Communicating the Vision It is not enough to have understandable, simple, clear, and strongly relevant vision. Kotter (2012) discussed three recommended ways for better communicating the vision including using all possible methods to share and promote that vision, giving examples for how to achieve a vision by setting different strategies for example, and walking the talk and reminding of the desired behaviours. Maryam mentioned that in Ericsson, all occasions and methods are used to promote and remind of the vision of the company. She also indicated that it takes very short time to memorize and adopt that vision while working. Moreover, Maryam underlined that management from different levels were invited to attend kick-offs and monthly meetings, which imparted more enthusiasm to the spirit of the project team. She said that the vision was the keyword used to release their energy and guide the direction of the project. Manager used to clarify the strategies followed to achieve a project goal, and the contribution of the project deliverables to the main vision of the company. Members with supervising tasks were encouraged to closely assist individuals such as providing them with helpful strategies regarding how to get the work done in a fine manner. Kotter (2012) also reminds of the risk of behaving antithetically to the transformation vision, while Maryam claimed that for the project of integrating 4G, the majority were tightly believers and adopters of the company vision in words and actions. She also claimed that what contributed to have this majority is the fact that the vision of Ericsson is purely directed to technology, which avoids the likelihood of opposing others' values and beliefs. 4.5. Empower Others to Act on the Vision From the answers given and listening to the whole interview we concluded that most of important parts of this step were satisfied. For example, when it was noticed that people are lacking skills, training courses were created. The training courses were found quite intensive by employees but the attending was mandatory and all the people had to successfully pass them. In this way, the company avoided a lack of needed skills of employees. It was also noticed that it was not easy to track the progress of smaller groups, so the structural change was quickly done and the problem was solved by creating two bigger groups that one manager was responsible for. The managers provided help and support to all the actors involved in the project but also understood when people got overwhelmed. 4.6. Plan For and Creating Short-Term Wins As the interviewee emphasised, the short-time wins were presented at the meeting that were held in a frequent period of time. It is very important to introduce short-term wins as they break the feeling of monotonous routine off and have impacts on two sides. It is very possible that the active players will become more active and that some people who are resistant become active and start playing the roles they are supposed to. In our case, Ericson implements this stage very actively and as it is seen successfully. From the latter talk with Ericsson's employee we found out that the company does celebrate some shortterm wins but such cases are very seldom and those celebrations are very symbolic which is from Kotter's perspective fine and cannot be harmful for the change, except if the celebrations present some kind of impression that the job has been almost done. If so, the complacency level comes back high in people and it causes transformation failure. 4.7. Consolidate Improvements and Producing Still More Change All through the transformation change were not pauses that would let changes sink into the culture. The line managers played an important role for continuity of change and were present amongst their people with their soul and body. From the interviewee perspective the activities such as frequent meetings full of energy and intensive training courses kept awake the employees of getting asleep. There was always some kind of pressure around that kept the change on which is important in satisfying the Kotter's seventh step. This kind of reality kept those who are always ready to undermine the project away. There are always potential actors who recognize this opportunity and if their moment comes they will make use of it. The seventh stage was satisfied and it seems that there is not a place for such people in Ericson Company. 4.8. Institutionalise the New Approaches The interviewer could not answer to this question because she was only the part of the change. This Kotter's stage encompasses the importance of showing people how much it had to be done in order to get into the stage, practice they are at present. If this is forgotten, there is a danger that everything that has been achieved may sink into the culture again. Although she was not able to provide a concrete answer on this stage, she mentioned that the company pays a lot of attention to customers' satisfaction which Kotter also mentions when it comes to anchoring new approaches in an organization's culture. From our insight, the customer's satisfaction is rooted in social norms and shared values into Ericson Company. 5. DISCUSSIONS As the proposed change model is highly considered in Ericsson, which is one of the global big companies in telecommunication services, we believe that it is really a helpful asset to use as change guidelines. Starting that from all practices that would awake and increase the sense of urgency for the project staff. However, we believe that the practices should be applied wisely and based on facts and numbers in order not to create reverse effects. It is more or less clarifying the seriousness and significance of the current and future situations. The complacency could be detected by referring to way decisions are made. If there are no several scenarios, and the uncertainty is not considered, there is probably much confidence in management. Besides, the case results reflect that any change needs a powerful change makers. The sources of power should be identified first before gathering the acceptance and agreement of whom possess most of those sources. We believe that it needs to start by convincing the right individuals that may help later on to promote a change idea. Furthermore, having relatively mature conception gives also more credit to the idea. Lacking powerful guiding coalitions means inability to change since they would be facilitating that change to be happening and absorbing any probable resistance during the project until it becomes deeply rooted in the organizational culture. Another important step to change is creating and communicating a clear transformation vision. It saves much time and effort if a good vision is formed. Our argument is that managers would not need to tell every individual what to do in specific details. Instead of that, it is much easier to tell all of them what destination is to be approached and how contributions are gathered together to make it. Additionally, that vision should be diffused properly with the company. It would also be helpful for other departments or projects to know that there is a transformation that would take care of a specific era so that they move their focus to other organizational eras. Promoting visions should be given all possible assets to make the best of it. Global companies seem to give significant attention to their visions. They even support them by inspiring slogans and logos. After the first four stages have been, one by one, successfully accomplished next phases should be performed and implemented in the same careful manner. The first four phases are of use to defreeze organization's environment and to prepare actors for changes to occur. There should not be structural barriers or lack of employee's skills to participate in change process. As it is stated above in the text, Ericsson Company is aware of these facts and it strives to fulfil the prerequisites in order to acquire change implementation in a proper way. Short-term goals are made and they are an important part of any project and especially of the one that takes a long time. The goals are set to win and create conditions for peoples' motivation. However, once the goals are achieved, there is no place to relax due to this state leads to bringing complacency back and whole project can sink to organization culture that was the case before starting the change. Finally, when the transformation process has been successfully done the new operation style has to be firmly grounded in the organizational culture. This is what is advised to be done in the Kotter's last stage or otherwise, the whole effort can be lost and the transformation process and changes that are brought it will inevitably fail. 6. CONCLUSION All the steps mentioned represent the overall process. Every phase needs to be fully implemented to its end. We would like to emphasize that according to Kotter, the changes implementation is done by leaders. Leaders are the one who establish direction, align people and motivate and inspire them. They are obviously present in Ericsson, but as our interviewee says, they are line managers. We tend to agree with Kotter's distinction between managers and leaders and that managing changes depends 70-90% on leaders and 10-30% on managers. From our interview we noticed that the word "manager" has been rooted deeply into business organizations and it will remain so long to be that. Additionally, although the new business era has already been present around us, many people still embrace the twentieth-century growth model. We also tend to conclude that due to globalisation, tighter competition and volatile markets, only the companies that stick to the eight-step model will be able to grow, sustain and survive under the conditions of forthcoming future of business market. Prepare a report about Ericsson change case study while considering the following: -What is the purpose of Kotter's Change Model?

- What are Benefits and Limitations of Kotter's Change Model?

- How was Kotter's Change Model implemented in Ericsson's business?

- Why did Ericsson fail as a business in its change management?

- What are some recommendations that Ericsson could have implemented in order to succeed based on the case?

- In your opinion, what could Ericsson's business have done to succeed in change management while relying on Kotter's Change Model? (Write full sentences no bullet points Approximately 600 to 800-word count).....