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From the Dean's Desk
February and March have been exciting months, with
the undergraduate and MBAs recruitment going into full swing. You’d
have seen the BBA ads on TV and in the Straits Times. And many of
you would have taken part enthusiastically in the NUS Centennial
Open House. Read on in this and later editions of Business Leads
to find out more. Here, I am pleased to highlight some recent developments
and accomplishments.
Top ranked one more time
Coming right after a Top 30 global ranking of our Executive MBA
program in Financial Times 2005, our regular full-time MBA program
was recognized as being among the best in the world in the January
2006 FT ranking. With such accolades, this brings us closer to our
vision of being a leading global business school. The ranking also
shows that we are, among others, Top 5 in “International Mobility”
and 12th in “International experience”.
Grabbing all the top prizes
At the 5th Annual Bangkok Business Challenge in early March, our
NUS MBA team emerged champions from among 12 teams which made it
to the grand finals. Notable among the finalists were teams from
Indian School of Business, China Europe International Business School,
Sasin and Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.
The team will also be going for Asia Moot at Sasin
on 23 March. The team has also qualified for the HKUST 2006 International
Business Plan Competition from 4-6 May in Hong Kong. This is a remarkable
achievement as the selection to be invited for the competition is
very keen, with fewer than one in six proposals accepted. We wish
the team good success. Watch this space for more reports about their
winning feats.
In this edition, we also carry a story on another
NUS MBA win at Intaglio 2005-06, an ISO 9001:2000 certified B School
festival organised by the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta.
Congratulations to all our winning MBAs!
Employment figures up
Employment figures are looking up, according to surveys of graduates
who joined the job market in 2005. This is generally true for all
the undergraduates from the three local universities. The combined
picture is an upbeat one, with everyone finishing school right smack
on the economic upswing.
The picture looks just as good for our MBA graduates.
While the 85 per cent employment rate three months into graduation
of our 2005 cohort remains relatively unchanged from one year ago
(86 percent), the salary experienced a significant 17 per cent jump,
from S$68,157 in 2004 to S$79,500 in 2005.
I want to congratulate our 2005 BBA and MBA for finding
employment so quickly, and that they need not go through the tedious
task of hunting for a job, notwithstanding the better salaries they
now command.
Cerebration participation hits the roof
Another point to celebrate in March is the runaway success of Cerebration,
a hybrid business plan and business case competition solely organized
by our MBA students. The contest saw participation from a record
of over 640 teams from 120 world-class universities across 30 countries.
Understandably, the event was already a winner even before we launched
the latest instalment—the second in the series. Evidently,
from sponsors to MBAs, participants do see valuable takeaways.
On a personal note
I’ve been on the road over the past 2-3 weeks. I’ve
had meetings with Kellogg, Columbia University and University of
Southern California. In the coming months, I hope to be able to
announce new initiatives that I’ve been able to work on during
these visits.
Chris Earley
Dean
Lead Story
NUS MBA again ranked among world's
best
NUS
Business School’s full-time MBA programme has been ranked
among the Top 100 in the world, according to the Financial Times
MBA 2006 ranking which is topped by University of Pennsylvania’s
Wharton Business School, followed by Harvard, Stanford and Columbia
Business Schools.
The School has the distinction of being among the
very few schools in this region to earn a place in this highly competitive
list dominated by top US and European business schools. Other Asian
schools recognised include China European International Business
School and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Business
School.
The Financial Times ranking of full-time global MBA
programmes is based on data compiled from two main sources: the
business schools and their alumni who graduated three years ago.
The data obtained and criteria used give an overview of main areas
like:
- the alumni’s career development
- the diversity of each school and its programme
- each school’s research capabilities.
Apart from its overall competitive position, NUS
Business School earns a much-coveted Top 5 ranking in terms of “International
Mobility” which traces the employment movements of alumni.
The School is also ranked highly in “International Experience”
(which measures the degree of international exposure students receive
during their education) and “Value For Money” (which
is calculated using the salary earned by alumni three years after
graduation and course costs, including the opportunity cost of not
working during the course).
The School was also recently ranked Top 30 globally
by Financial Times for its Executive MBA programme.
School Notes
Building bridges in corporate governance
Jointly
hosted by the Department of Business Policy and the Corporate Governance
& Financial Reporting Centre, the “Building Bridges: A
Corporate Governance Workshop and Research Round Table” held
on 20 January 2006 in NUS Business School was attended by more than
50 participants from Singapore Press Holdings and other universities.
Participants spent a highly stimulating day
hearing and discussing the challenges facing corporate governance,
and exploring the latest trends to make research relevant to practice.
The keynote presentation was conducted by Professor Edward Zajac
from Kellogg School of Management, who spoke on “Challenges
in Corporate Governance: Research and Practice”. Dr Zajac
was invited as a Distinguished Visiting Professor by the Department
of Business Policy under the Lim Kim San Professorship from 16 to
20 January 2006.
Visitors from
abroad
NUS
Business School played host to visitors from Chulalongkorn University
on 20 January 2006. The group, comprising 66 students and 7 lecturers,
was led by Associate Professor Chuta Manusphaibool, Director of
Master of Arts Programme in Labour Economics and Human Resource
Management, Faculty of Economics.
As part of their study tour, the group attended two
talks by Mr Alan Koh from the Department of Management and Organisation
and Associate Professor Anthony Chin from the Department of Economics
in NUS.
Chulalongkorn University is a leading university
in Thailand founded in 1899.
Student Highlights
MBAs win Best International Team award at
Intaglio 2005-06
The
“Best of Singapore” team represented by NUS MBAs An
Li Shin, Ryan Mbagaya and Masano Kazhuhiko won the Best International
Team award at Intaglio 2005-06, an ISO 9001:2000 certified B School
festival organised by the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta
(IIM-C).
Despite stiff competition from Harvard, Kellogg, Wharton
and the top 25 Indian b-schools, the team from NUS won first place
in the Philips Sound of Music contest and the McKinsey Consulting
Knights contest.
Intaglio is a series of competitions and seminars organised by IIM-C.
It consists of four premier case competitions sponsored by McKinsey
Consulting and Phillips Electronics, and eight MBA course-related
quizzes. Intaglio 2005-06 was held from 21 to 25 December 2005 in
Kolkata, India.
Please visit http://www2.bschool.nus.edu.sg/corpdev/Bizleads/Mar06/perspective.htm
to read about the NUS team’s experience in India.
BBA wins Business
Times essay competition
Armed
with a strong passion for writing, Melissa Loh (BBA, Year 1) took
part in the Ray Heath Memorial Essay Competition last October. Penning
her thoughts on the hotly-debated casino topic, her carefully thought-out
article “Integrated Resorts With Casinos: A Necessary ‘Evil’”
emerged as the winning piece and was reproduced in The Business
Times on 31 January 2006. Melissa walked away with a cash prize
of $1,000 and a paid internship with The Business Times.
The Ray Heath Memorial Essay Competition is organised
by The Business Times in memory of Ray Heath, a former associate
who passed away in 2004.
SMEs, MNCs at
Academic Week 2006 reveal hiring preference
Whether
it’s SMEs (medium-sized enterprises) or MNCs (multinational
corporations), students attending the Academic Week organised by
the NUS Students’ Business Club Academic Committee had a taste
of what employers of big and small firms are looking for.
Representatives from four SMEs, Elite International
Logistics, Byun & Co, Nicholas Goh & Associates and Urbanlink
Consultancy spoke on what they look out for during recruitment.
Hiring decisions were based more on one's attitude, one's conduct
and one's passion rather than the academic results or the discipline
one graduate in.
Staff
from MNCs Bloomberg, Singapore Airlines, HSBC and UMC who were at
the session on 8 February spoke on their companies’ hiring
practices, which apparently do not differ much from what the SMEs
were looking for.
Held from 6 to 8 February 2006, the sessions attracted
more than a hundred students each. This year’s Academic Week
was held in conjunction with the highly successful CEO Unplugged
session on 7 February.
Please visit http://www2.bschool.nus.edu.sg/corpdev/
Bizleads/Mar06/alumniupdate.htm#au1 to read about the CEO Unplugged
session.
Young and senior
business students interact over drinks
Nearly
60 BBAs (honors) and APEX-MBA participants (14th intake) got together
on 20 January for a night of fun and wine appreciation at the NUSSU-run
Munchie Monkey café. This is the second instalment of a series
initiated by the Undergraduate Programme office.
The session provided an opportunity for our
undergraduates to meet and learn from the APEX-MBA senior executives
in a casual environment. The APEX-MBA participants on their part
took the chance to meet up-and-coming young talents.
Says BBA Leonard Ng, “It was certainly good fun interacting
with the APEX-MBA participants. Really appreciate such events being
planned for the students and am looking forward to the next one!"
Staff News
Does service excellence mean higher cost?
Not so, say dons
Over
a hundred alumni, students and members of the public turned up to
listen to our professors’ analysis of Singapore Airlines’
success story. The enthusiastic crowd packed the Hon Sui Sen Auditorium
to catch first-hand the secrets to “Cost Effective Service
Excellence” from the three speakers, NUS Business School’s
Associate Professors Jochen Wirtz and Nitin Pangarkar, and Dr Loizos
Heracleous of University of Oxford.
The talk, held on 18 January, was based on a book
by the three speakers “Flying High in a Competitive Industry–Cost
Effective Service Excellence at Singapore Airlines” launched
at the event.
In the book, published by McGraw-Hill, the authors
delved into how SIA could maintain its high service standards and
yet keeping its costs low. Areas examined included SIA's strategy,
core competencies and internal organization, innovation processes
and human practices.
Dr Heracleous drew lessons from Singapore Airlines
that could be applied to achieve competitive differentiation; while
Assoc Prof Wirtz expounded on the importance of service excellence
and cost effectiveness. Assoc Prof Nitin Pangarkar provided an overview
of the aviation industry, and why service excellence matters even
in such a transaction-based, price-sensitive and highly competitive
environment.
Within a month of its launch, the book climbed to
Top 3 at Times Bookstores in Singapore, and was identified as one
of the Top 3 Bestsellers at Changi Airport.
Please visit http://www2.bschool.nus.edu.sg/corpdev/Bizleads/Mar06/special.htm
to find out more from the authors themselves.
Mak Yuen
Teen appointed board of New NKF
Associate
Professor Mak Yuen Teen, co-director of the School's Corporate Governance
& Financial Reporting Centre, has been appointed to the board
of the National Kidney Foundation and a member of its Audit Committee
with effect from 17 January 2006.
Aside from this latest appointment, Assoc Prof Mak
has been invited to be a judge for the CFO of the Year and Best
Investor Relations Awards, two of the four awards under the Singapore
Corporate Awards organised by the Singapore Exchange and The Business
Times.
Assoc Prof Mak is currently a board member and Vice
Chairman of SATA, Chairman of its Governance and Nominating Committee,
and a board member of the Financial Industry Dispute Resolution
Centre Ltd (FIDReC).
Catherine
Tay re-appointed member of NHG
Associate
Professor Catherine Tay has been re-appointed as Member to the National
Healthcare Group (NHG) Domain-Specific Review Board from 1 April
2006 to 31 March 2009.
The NHG Review Board is tasked to review the scientific
and ethical aspects of research protocols. The Board also evaluate
the safety of the ongoing clinical trials or research studies; as
well as ensure that all ongoing clinical trials and research studies
are carried out in accordance with the Singapore Good Clinical Practice
Guidelines and standards specified in the NHG Domain-Specific Review
Board's Standard Operating Procedure.
New Staff
We would like to extend a warm welcome to our new
colleagues:
- Mr Kevin Chang
(Director, Corporate Development & Communications)
- Ms Jeanine Chen
(Alumni Relations Manager, Corporate Development & Communications)
- Ms Zann Foo
(Student Development Manager, MBA Programs Office)
- Ms Emily Ng
(Business Development Manager, MBA Programs Office)
- Ms Noorhayati Binte Supari
(Executive, Corporate Development & Communications)
- Mr Yong Khee Ming
(Senior Manager, MBA Programs Office)
Alumni Updates
CEO Unplugged continues to inform and impress
The
11th instalment of the CEO Unplugged series was held in conjunction
with the Academic Week at NUS Business School on 7 February 2006.
This flagship event of the NUS Business School Alumni Association
(NUSBSA) was sponsored by NUSBSA and Startup@Singapore.
The CEOs present included Mr Arvind Argawalla (Founder
and CEO, FACT Software International), Mr Ou Shian Waei (GM, Lenovo
Asean/South Asia) and Mr Peter Choo (CEO, Westcomb Financial Group).
Moderator Associate Professor Tan Hwee Hoon did not
fail to quiz and reveal the CEOs beyond their veneer. Mr Arvind
Argawalla shared that pursuing one’s dream was important.
Despite his science background, he held true to his desire of being
in the software business. Integrity and passion are key elements
to his management style, citing his inspiration from a cleaner he
met who said she wanted to be the best cleaner in Singapore.
Mr Ou Shian Wei candidly shared about his experience
working for Lenovo, a Chinese company. Lenovo, being a very progressive
company, positions itself internationally with its headquarters
in the US. When asked about his enemies, Mr Ou said he does not
have any, citing that different people make up this world. His favourite
book? Conquest of Happiness by Betrand Russell.
Mr Peter Choo opened his own session by humming
a Chinese song which drew laughter from the audience. He was forthcoming
about his courtship with his then-girlfriend, now-wife, amusing
everyone with descriptions of himself being a “lang zai”
(Cantonese for “handsome”). On a more serious note,
he shared about odds against him when he first started his five-year
old business. He reiterated that track record and testimonials are
vital for continuing success.
Mandarin Alumni
welcome the Year of the Dog
Some
60 alumni of the NUS Business School Mandarin Alumni gathered at
Qian Xi (Paya Lebar) Restaurant on 12 February to usher in the Year
of the Dog.
Mr Sebastian Teo, President of the alumni body, together
with his executive committee, started the evening with good wishes
to all for the year ahead. Commencing with the festive tradition
of “tossing the fresh fish salad”, everyone had a fun
time “competing” to say more good things.
An entertaining evening followed with a meticulously-planned
game prepared by Second Vice-President Mr Jing Xianyang. Themed
“Who wants to be a billionaire”, participants were divided
into six teams and quizzed on their knowledge of the alumni body’s
growth and activities. The team which answered the most questions
correctly emerged the winners.
The evening concluded with a traditional practice
– the committee presented a pair of mandarin oranges to each
alumnus present to wish all a prosperous new year ahead.
Perspective
Mix of East meets West captures best International
Team award
The mix of East and West proved
too colourful and powerful a combination in the Singaporean-Kenyan-American
team, as shown in their win at the Intaglio Business challenge organised
by the Indian Institute of Management- Calcutta. Team member An
Li Shin (MBA, Year 2) shares on his team's winning formula.
We
flew off from Singapore on 20 December, excited and very much looking
forward to our first visit to India’s second most populous
city Kolkata; the country’s best MBA school, the Indian Institute
of Management Calcutta (IIMC); the prestigious Intaglio MBA competition;
and a chance to experience Christmas in the Hindu country.
Kolkata was very much alive even at 11 in the evening;
the roads were filled with India’s ubiquitous yellow taxicabs,
horns blaring and throngs of people moving about in the streets.
The Kolkata university was established as India’s first national
institute for Post-Graduate Studies and Research in Management by
the Government of India in November 1961 in collaboration with Alfred
P. Sloan School of Management (MIT), the Government of West Bengal,
The Ford Foundation and Indian industry.
The opening ceremony of the competition commenced
on our second day there, and we got our first chance to meet our
fellow competitors, many coming from India’s 25 prestigious
postgraduate universities as well as other international teams from
Harvard, Wharton and Kellogg. This was truly an international field
and the standard was certainly going to be very high.
Given the prestige and interest of the competition,
we were interviewed on Indian television. That evening, IIMC spared
no expense and hosted us to a corporate dinner at the exclusive
5-star Taj Bengal Hotel. That dinner also served as a recruiter’s
night as we met guests from firms such as UBS and Morgan Stanley.
Incidentally, all of IIMC 2005 MBA students have already been placed;
the average foreign salary was above US$90,000. That night we made
many new friends, and wined and dined like kings, but at the back
of our minds was the challenge we’ll face the following day.
Gruelling process
Competitions
on Day 3 began as early as 9am and the day’s program lasting
till half past midnight. Competitions typically started with an
elimination round followed by a final presentation round for the
best eight teams. Each competition was based on a field taught in
MBA, such as operations, economics and finance, marketing, strategy
and human resource. A total of 12 competitions were held over the
two days.
We had earlier been selected out of over 160 contesting
groups for the finals of “Philips: Sound of Music”,
which was the second most prestigious event. Present to judge the
event were Philips’ Marketing Director for India as well as
their General Manager for Engineering. The seven other finalists
were all very current and impressive in their presentation. However,
the judges liked our presentation and commented that our business
proposal was both very practical and similar to what they had in
mind.
Hooray! We had won our first event!!!
Between competitions, we attended seminars, workshops
and discussions led by senior officers from firms such as Mckinsey,
Bank of America, Wipro and Morgan Stanley. The organizing committee
had certainly made Intaglio to be more than a competition, but also
a place of learning and networking, with ample opportunities to
engage with prominent industry leaders, plus the night party, dance
performance and even a rock performance.
Charm offensive
Day
four was truly special for us. We met Ms Susan Abraham from Kellogg
School of Management, and as she was without a team. Ryan and I
teamed up with her to contest for the most prestigious event in
Intaglio, the “Mckinsey Consulting Knights” challenge.
When only the top MBA graduates get placed with investment banking
and consulting firms, this was truly an event for the best. We sat
down late in the morning to go through over 50 pages of data in
preparation for our presentation to be held later that evening.
Imagine our horror when we found out that the event was brought
forward to 2pm!
With splitting headaches and empty stomachs, we put
together a pretty decent presentation and headed to the event. One
by one the various teams gave impressive presentations filled with
numbers and ideas, and we knew that we were up against some very
sharp minds. As this was an interactive presentation intended to
replicate a true consulting environment, the judges gave piercing
comments and were relentlessly driving contestants up the wall with
seemingly impossible situations and requests.
When our turn came, undaunted, Susan gave what I considered
an outstanding performance, with her charm and humility shining
through in clear and eloquent speeches. Ryan softened the judge’s
stand by inquiring to understand better the reasons behind their
requests and I closed the session by offering solutions that best
met their requirements. In the end, the judges were impressed with
Susan’s grace, Ryan’s gentle approach and my thoughtfulness—the
mix of East meets West proved too colourful and potent to deny,
and the Singaporean-Kenyan-American team came out tops!
At the closing ceremony, we did NUS proud and were
given a plaque for our special performance as the Best International
Team, especially for winning the top 2 Intaglio events sponsored
by Mckinsey and Philips, a first in Intaglio history, which together
accounted for more than 15 per cent of the total prize money.
Although our flight was scheduled at 10pm, remembering
the distinctively krazy and khaotic Kolkata traffic, we left early
with heavy hearts and warm goodbyes, forever cherishing our moment
in India.
In December 2005, Ryan Mbagaya, An Li Shin and
Masano Kazuhiko set off for India to represent NUS in the Intaglio
Business challenge organized by the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta
(IIM-C). They won the best International Team award by capturing
the first place in both the Philips Sound of Music contest and the
McKinsey Consulting Knights contest.
Special Feature
Principles to Cost Effective Service Excellence
In the Times NewsLink Bestsellers list for
the period 30 January to 5 February 2006, “Flying High in
a Competitive Industry”, the latest book by Associate Professors
Jochen Wirtz and Nitin Pangarkar, occupied Top 3 spot in the Business
category. Number 6 on the list is “Winning” by Jack
Welch and “The Apple Way” by Jeff Cruikshank (8th spot).
Published by McGraw-Hill, the book hit the marketplace in early
January. NUS Business Leads catches up with all three authors, including
co-author Dr Loizos Heracleous of Oxford University, to learn more
about the subject of the book: the “secrets” of Singapore
Airlines’ success.
1) Why did you decide to collaborate on this
book? What was each of your contribution?
Jochen: Service businesses are incredibly complex, and this was
a unique opportunity for conducting some truly cross-functional
research. Loizos is an expert in organizational strategy, Nitin
in corporate strategy, and I in service management. Furthermore,
all three of us have had many years of experience in consulting
work and executive education with SIA, and therefore know the company
very well. It is rare to find three researchers and authors who
complement each so well.
Nitin: There were clearly many strategic dimensions to consider
and we expected strong synergies due to our diverse backgrounds
and perspectives. The actual synergies were even greater than we
expected—in the form of critique of each other's ideas as
well as synthesis of our diverse approaches.
Loizos: At some stage we realized that we were all doing research
related to airlines and to competitive advantage. We all see the
issues from different lenses, that are complementary and additive.
These different perspectives have helped us shed light on the basic
question of strategy: why do some firms outperform the rest? What
principles can we learn that can be applicable to other companies
and industries?
2) What are SIA's secrets of success in
a very difficult industry, and despite setbacks (not least, an air-crash)?
Nitin: SIA's resilience can be attributed to the clarity of its
vision and strategy and the unwavering commitment of the top management
to stay the course even in the face of adversity. In the middle
of the Asian crisis (1998), SIA spent S$500 million on an overhaul
of all classes of service. Explaining the bold decision, SIA's marketing
manager had said: Crisis or no crisis, customers expect the best
from SIA and that's what they well get. After the Taiwan crash,
SIA was quick to offer generous compensation to the affected people
and its efficient handling ensured that the brand name was not tarnished
in any way.
Loizos: We found that many of SIA's "secrets" are based
on sound principles of strategic management and effective organization
that most companies are aware of, but very few practise effectively.
These include strategic alignment, development of competencies and
capabilities that are central to what stakeholders value and to
being competitive in specific industries, creation of virtuous,
self-reinforcing circles of activities that operationalise these
competencies, flexibility and ability to change, constant innovation,
and creation and sustenance of a culture that supports all these.
Almost all senior managers, if asked whether their company has these,
answered positively. It takes determination, skill, hard work and
seamless execution however to move from a situation of simply espousing
these principles to actually adopting them.
Jochen: Bouncing back means the company needs to have a sound long
term strategy with a great value proposition for its target markets.
It needs to be resilient, to have a great management and service
employees, and the necessary financial resources.
3) How can these success factors be applied
to other companies in various sectors and environments?
Loizos: Our study has the aim of helping us learn principles relevant
to sustainable competitive advantage that can extend beyond airlines
to other industries. Many such principles indeed apply across industries,
as is the assumption for example of MBA courses, aiming primarily
to teach students to think strategically and analytically, rather
than to learn the details of particular industries.
We can consider the principle of the need for effective strategic
alignment, one of SIA's success factors, as an example. Effective
strategic alignment entails coherence, consistency, and integration
among four levels of analysis (organisation, core competencies,
strategy and competitive environment); and at each inter-level juncture
the kind of inter-connections that are needed are different but
crucial. This principle is indeed applicable across industries,
and careful analysis of most organisations will reveal certain mis-alignments
that if addressed will improve that organisation's competitiveness.
The task for senior managers is to take a hard, objective look at
their organisation, discover these misalignments, and address them.
Jochen: As economies develop, and fully join the global market space,
competition will be getting tougher and tougher. Hitherto at least
partially protected industries will have to face the full brunt
of best practice competitors. SIA had to face them from day one,
and therefore had to compete and adopt best practices as well as
innovate all along.
Other industries in Asia, for example like the banking sector, have
not been exposed to full competition yet – they will have
to learn, adopt and outsmart, or face declining rates of return.
Nitin: While the airlines industry has been extremely competitive
for some time, industries such as electronic gadgets (including
computer hardware) and automobiles have already moved in that direction
and many others are expected to do so.
The successful players in the new hypercompetitive
environment will be multi-dimensional – highly skilled at
balancing (seemingly) conflicting strategic imperatives such as
being innovative as well as low cost. Toyota, for instance, is a
low-cost producer of automobiles. But it also has the fastest growing
luxury car brand as well as a strong position in the new technologies
such as hybrids. Increasingly, the winners in a variety of industries
will resemble SIA and Toyota.
4) How can Asian and Singaporean companies
create cost-effective service excellence?
Loizos: In brief, we found that some aspects of this achievement
relate to structural environmental factors that can make it cheaper
to do business in some countries than others (e.g. lower labour
costs, largely accounting for the current phenomena of outsourcing
and off-shoring). This is something that many companies view as
the easy answer; jumping on the bandwagon for example and opening
factories in cheap locations. This action may at some point be necessary,
but will not grant sustainable success because competitors will
do the same thing.
Beyond these structural environmental factors, there are more complex,
and hard to imitate company-related factors that are crucial. The
details of these will vary with each company, but they entail an
integration of a concern with high quality with a very efficient
organisation and processes. Any organisation would need to take
a holistic approach to this, and address its culture, structure,
people and process dimensions to create this. In chapters 2 and
3 of our book, we explain in detail how SIA achieves this feat.
It is not impossible to achieve it, but very difficult, which explains
why SIA has had sustainable competitive advantage in its industry
for over three and a half decades.
Nitin: SIA has adopted several strategies that enable it to simultaneously
achieve this objective. Its young fleet, for instance, ensures a
more comfortable cabin, less unscheduled maintenance (fewer flight
cancellations and delays) and on-time arrival. Its usage of a high
degree of automation reduces errors as well as leads to high productivity
and value added per employee at SIA has historically shown a strong
uptrend.
Coming Events
CGFRC-ICPAS forum on "Auditors and
Audit Committees - Partners in Corporate Governance"
22 March 2005, Sheraton Towers Singapore
Islamic Capital Market –
The Way Forward Seminar
23 March 2005, Grand Hyatt Hotel
938 Live on Campus
24 March 2006, Hon Sui Sen Auditorium, NUS Business School
Cerebration – NUS-IE Singapore Global Business Challenge
27 March 2006, Raffles City Convention Centre
Calendar of Events - http://www2.bschool.nus.edu.sg/corpdev/calendar3/
In Touch, In Tune
We welcome feedback and suggestions. Please
e-mail us at askbiz@nus.edu.sg.
Calling all Bizaders: Stay in touch. Please update your contact
details at https://www.alumni.nus.edu.sg/alumNET/index.jsp
Published
by Corporate Development and Communications, NUS Business School.
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