The Future Strategic Competitive Success of Singapore Airlines
Singapore Airlines ranks among the top Airlines in the aviation industry. As a strategic consultant, it is good first to appreciate the fact that the blend in between differentiation and cost leadership strategies has been a success for the organization (Heracleous & Wirtz, 2014). Regarding SIA’s competitive success, there are few additional strategies that need consideration and implementation in the airline. With globalization and thus increase in competition, SIA could continue with some of its strategies but in a different way.
First, SIA should invest further in its HR practices. The improvement will ensure that it has a workforce that is geared up towards the development of adaptability, innovation, excellent customer service, customer orientation, and cost-effective capabilities (Heracleous & Wirtz, 2009). These will enable the company in achieving its dual generic strategy of low cost and differentiation in the industry (Wirtz, Heracleous, & Pangarkar, 2008). To ensure that the workforce sustains the competitive advantage, the management of SIA should motivate the employees.
The company should also empower the front-line manager, and put up successful service delivery groups (Heracleous & Wirtz, 2014; Andriopoulos & Lewis, 2009). Additionally, SIA could also have extensive training that is customer based and retrain the employees (Wirtz, Heracleous, & Pangarkar, 2008). The company should also have a stringent selection and recruitment process to have the best workforce (Heracleous & Wirtz, 2009). All these strategies will promote leadership service excellence that is a cost reducing strategy (Sistare, Shiplett, & Buss, 2009). Even when using strategic human resource management, the company should ensure that there is diversification of the workforce. The essence is so as to have different approaches regarding handling issues within the company (Pangarkar, 2011; Andriopoulos & Lewis, 2009).
Secondly, SIA should continue with its centralized and decentralized innovation strategy to ensure continuity in service provision (Pangarkar, 2011). In this case, the Distributed innovation is important in sustaining the aspect of service excellence that will ensure that all the services will align with the organizational goals. SIA should also continue with this substantial innovation to ensure that the customer experience improves through feedback from the customers (Wirtz, Heracleous, & Pangarkar, 2008).
SIA’s future corporate level strategy of diversification will optimize through more subsidiaries that are geographically advantaged to ensure it has an international presence (Heracleous & Wirtz, 2014). This strategy will contain the costs of expanding into other countries (Pangarkar, 2011). Additionally, the company should consider outsourcing its non-core activities to other countries, such as China and India to have a good market share in the emerging economies (Pangarkar, 2011). Singapore Airline should continue with its premium service delivery to the customers as there are those customers who are very demanding (Heracleous & Wirtz, 2009).
The company should continue investing more of its cash in Changi airport that is one of the air transport hub, which is cost effective (Heracleous & Wirtz, 2009). The company should also have different brand names that will target different niches and position it as the superior airline. The other strategy that can be effectively used by SIA is standardization as well as personalization (Heracleous & Wirtz, 2009). The customers will get satisfied and feel special when they get standardized and personalized services.
The infrastructure of the company should be maintained and be up to date with the technological advancements in the industry for sustainability (Sistare, Shiplett, & Buss, 2009). The company should invest heavily in training infrastructure, facilities, and the aircrafts (Pangarkar, 2011). When all these strategies are aligned in place and taken care of, the company will soar greater heights and achieve the dual strategy it is currently rolling out (Heracleous & Wirtz, 2014).
References
Andriopoulos, C., & Lewis, M. W. (2009). Exploitation-‐exploration tensions and organizational ambidexterity: Managing paradoxes of innovation. Organization Science, 20(1), 696-‐717.
Heracleous, L. T., Wirtz, J., & Pangarkar, N. (2009). Flying high in a competitive industry: Secrets of the world’s leading airline. Singapore: McGraw Hill.
Heracleous, L., & Wirtz, J. (2009). Strategy and organization at Singapore Airlines: Achieving sustainable advantage through dual strategy. Journal of Air Transport Management, 25(2009), 1-6.
Heracleous, L., & Wirtz, J. (2014). Singapore Airlines: Achieving Sustainable Advantage through Mastering Paradox. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 50(2), 150– 170.
Pangarkar, N. (2011). High Performance Companies: Successful Strategies from the World’s Top Achievers. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Sistare, H. S., Shiplett, M. H., & Buss, T. F. (2009). Innovations in human resource management: Getting the public’s work done in the 21st century. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
Wirtz, J., Heracleous, L., & Pangarkar, N. (2008). Managing human resources for service excellence and cost effectiveness at Singapore Airlines. Managing Service Quality, 14(1), 4-19.