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How can some companies be the innovation leader in their industry over prolonged periods of time, whereas others cannot? The purpose of this study is to understand a firm’s capability to be a successful serial innovator and to generate a constant stream of industry-leading innovations.

The paper uses a longitudinal case study approach to gain an understanding of what and how Singapore Airlines sustained service innovation for over 30 years. The study uses triangulation, whereby the core data from in-depth interviews with senior and middle management and frontline employees were complemented with academic research, case studies, annual reports, observations and archival documents. In total, 240 single-spaced pages of interview transcripts with over 130,000 words were analyzed and coded using MAXQDA for identifying repeated patterns of meaning.

The authors identified three key institutional foundations for service innovation: innovation climate (i.e. leadership and service culture), human capital (i.e. recruitment, training and development and engagement and incentives) and resource configurations (i.e. systems, structure and processes). These foundations enabled the organization to build the following four service innovation-related dynamic capabilities: embrace ambidexterity, institutionalize learning and knowledge integration, orchestrate collaboration and reinvent customer value. Interestingly, these institutional foundations and capabilities remained largely stable across 30 years; what changed were the contexts and specifics, not the foundations and capabilities.

Data were collected only from one company. Because of the method of thematic analysis, the generalizability of the findings needs further investigation.

This study is the first to investigate the drivers of industry-leading sustained service innovation over a prolonged period of time. The proposed framework provides a fuller and more integrated picture of sustained service innovation than past cross-sectional studies.

Awareness of the need for board and director performance evaluation is growing, but implementation has been both partial and slow. It is unusual for boards to undertake evaluations of their own performance, and more so to evaluate individual directors. Directors often feel that individual director evaluation has several drawbacks including undermining collegiality in the boardroom. There is thus a perceived attractiveness of director self‐assessments rather than peer review or outsider assessments. Self‐assessment, even though subject to a higher degree of biases than a combination of self‐assessment and peer assessment, is less likely to give rise to defensive routines and can provide a psychologically safe environment for a director to evaluate their own knowledge. Bearing in mind the above, we developed a 20‐question self‐assessment tool, which aims to assist directors in evaluating their understanding of important governance concepts and principles, as well as their legal duties as directors.

To explore the potential role of biometric technologies in driving service excellence, productivity and security in the service sector, and their role in fostering sustainable competitive advantage.

This paper used a case study approach involving 16 in‐depth interviews with executives at Singapore Airlines and the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore on their use of biometrics technologies with focus on the Fully Automated Seamless Travel project.

The potential for innovative technologies to foster sustainable competitive advantage can be assessed in terms of their potential impact on customer experience, as well as the extent to which their implementation involves significant business process reconfigurations that are hard to imitate by competitors.

With regard to limitations, this research is based on an in‐depth study of a single case of biometrics implementation. More cases need to be examined to enhance the validity of the findings. Research implications relate to evaluation of new technologies from the perspective of achieving competitive advantage, outline of dimensions of strategic alignment, and discussion of competencies and processes fostering strategic innovation.

The findings provide a new framework for evaluating innovative technologies in terms of their potential for enabling an integrative strategy of differentiation and cost leadership; highlight the importance of strategic alignment; and outline competencies fostering strategic innovation.

This paper is one of the first exploring the role of biometric technologies in service delivery; addresses the strategic implications of implementation; and concludes in terms of broader strategic principles.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize strategizing as a playful design practice; illustrate this view by describing a process for fostering effective strategic play; outline the benefits of the process and discuss how executives can play effectively.

The paper presents a concept development with a case illustration.

The paper finds that strategizing through playful design offers both an alternative conceptual lens as well as a novel practice of strategizing.

Strategizing through playful design is a useful complement to dry, conventional strategic planning processes and helps to open up and orient fruitful debate about an organization ' s particular strategic challenges.

Concentrated ownership implies greater alignment between ownership and control, mitigating the agency problem. However, it may also engender governance challenges such as funds appropriation through related party transactions and the oppression of minority shareholders, especially in the context of weak legal systems. We draw from legal theory (the tradeoff controlling shareholder model and private benefits of control) and from organization theory (socioemotional wealth), to suggest that concentrated ownership can be beneficial in both robust and weak legal systems for different reasons. We advance theory on the effects of controlling shareholders and suggest that the longer-term outlook associated with engaged concentrated ownership can aid the shift of the corporation toward Berle and Means' (1932, p. 355) “third possibility” of corporations serving the interests of not just the stockholders or management but also of society.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge conventional wisdom suggesting that public sector entities should learn from the private sector, and to state some potential lessons for business based on case study research in leading edge public sector entities.

The approach is longitudinal case study research using the interview method and a literature search on public sector management.

Business organizations can learn valuable lessons from leading edge public sector entities, such as the need to employ technology to reinvent themselves or to support unconventional strategies rather than just support existing processes; to change proactively rather than wait for a crisis; to strive for strategic innovation rather than simply incremental improvements; and to develop a heightened sense of competition to fight inertia and groupthink.

One limitation is the small number of leading edge public sector entities studied here. Further research can include a larger sample, to explore the validity of the lessons stated here, and to derive additional lessons from leading public sector entities.

Business managers should take seriously the potential to learn from leading public sector entities.

The paper provides a challenge to conventional wisdom that public sector entities should learn from business, rather than the other way round, by examining two leading edge public sector entities; Singapore Airlines and the National Library Board of Singapore.

Considers the “rational” decision‐making model and argues that it neither describes actual decision‐making processes nor can be used as an adequate guide to effective decision making as it ignores potent social, political and cognitive influences. Suggests that the main assumptions of the model are, in practice, unrealistic, and offers an alternative framework, emphasizing cultural, structural and processual factors, as a more useful guide to effective decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of Singapore Airline's human resource (HR) management practices that enable the company to deliver consistent service excellence in an efficient manner and achieve sustainable competitive advantage.

The paper presents an in‐depth case study based on primary and secondary data, and especially in‐depth interviews of senior management and senior flight crew.

The study finds that Singapore Airlines' HR practices involve stringent selection and recruitment processes, extensive training and retraining, successful service delivery teams, empowerment of front‐line staff to control service quality, and motivating staff through rewards and recognition.

This research has implications for organisations that aim to deliver consistent service excellence, by outlining HR practices that assist in this goal; and for senior management, particularly highlighting the importance and contribution of HR to competitive advantage, and the importance of strategic alignment between functional strategies and business‐level strategies.

The paper contributes to the understanding of how HR practices contribute to service excellence and competitive advantage, this being a key dimension of strategic alignment.

To conceptualize and theorize dialogue's diagnostic as well as generative functions for strategic innovation and organizational change.

Conceptual development with case illustration.

Strategic innovation requires shifts in existing mental models of organizational actors that underlie the overall strategy paradigm of a firm. Dialogue as a form of reflective conversation enables actors to alter managers' mental models through conscious, critical exploration.

Conceptual framework introduces reflective dialogue, as a crucial processual element for encouraging shifts in mental maps and as a necessary, but not sufficient condition for strategy innovation; provides an analytical framework for enhancing understanding of the emergent processes of strategic innovation, and for studying shifts in organizational actors' mental models.

Provides organizational change agents and strategists with perspectives and frameworks for appreciating and fostering reflective dialogue in the context of strategic thinking and innovation.

Concept of reflective dialogue and associated frameworks link micro‐levels and macro‐levels of strategy innovation and address critical process elements.

We draw from psychological theories of leadership and literature on computer-mediated communication to challenge the received wisdom of the organization change literature about the need to match communication media richness to the equivocality of the task or change situation. We make the counter intuitive proposition that leaner forms of communication can be linked to higher perceptions of leadership charisma and effectiveness even in equivocal situations, and therefore can be more potent in effecting change than richer forms, under certain conditions. We discuss these conditions and the implications for organization change communications.