‘Singapore Airlines: Robust turnarounds’ by NUS Professor at CIMA BLS 2011

Quick turnarounds are on every business leader’s mind and the CIMA Business Leaders Summit 2011 will address this key area, as well as others, in a two day summit that begins on 21 June 2011 at the Cinnamon Grand Colombo titled ‘Changing Challenge-Challenging Change’ is coined to draw focus what the business leaders are up against.

The discussion ‘Singapore Airlines: A robust strategy to engineer quick turnarounds’ will be headed by Dr. Nitin Pangarkar, Associate Professor, National University of Singapore.

Dr. Pangarkar, one of the events most illustrious panelists, received his Ph. D. from the University of Michigan in 1993. He teaches strategy and international business courses in the BBA, MBA and Executive MBA programs at the National University of Singapore. Previously, he has held academic positions at the University of Minnesota (USA) and the Helsinki School of Economics (Finland).

His research interests lie in the areas of strategic management and international business—specifically cross-border strategic alliances, mode of entry and global strategy. Dr Pangarkar’s research has been published in the form of several international journal articles, conference proceedings, cases, and book chapters. He is a co-author of Business Strategy in Asia: A casebook published by Thomson Learning in 2001 and 2004.

Speaking on the importance of the summit, a spokesperson for CIMA stated that given the current speed of change, challenges faced by individuals, businesses and nations push professionals to collectively ‘challenge the changes’ already made, to survive. In this background CIMA have sought international and local speakers to share their thoughts from individual to a nation how survival is possible by challenging changes in the changing challenge environment.

With estimated long terms rates of return of around one per cent, the airline industry one of the most challenging industries to make profits.  In the past, one of industry’s top executives has suggested that operating an airline is even more challenging than trying to survive an economic depression.

Adaptability has been one of the key driving factors behind Singapore Airlines’ success. Several factors contribute to Singapore Airlines’ adaptability including a far-sighted top management, a flexible and lean cost structure, a ‘young’ asset base and committed staff.

In his talk Dr. Pangarkar will discuss the drivers and constituents of each of these factors and how they help Singapore Airlines’ adaptability and will also identify the generalisable lessons that can be applied to other industry contexts.