Joseph Wolfe

The Role of Management Games and Simulations in Education and Research

This review takes a broad look at the management gaming movement and summarizes how the field has evolved to its current state. The article defines terms and parametersfor the management gamingfield and briefly reviews the history of business gaming. Several models of experiential learning applicable to gaming are explained. Included are studies on the educational value of management games and a review of the literature that deals with management games and simulations as research laboratories. Some of the fields trends and future developments are also projected.

Management Education and Development: Current Issues and Emerging Trends

Rapid changes have been occurring in the management education and development area, fueled by the callfor accountability, an increase in experiental techniques, the availability of educational technology, and a recognition of the needfor lifetime learning. This review recognizes some of these changes and trends and suggests implications for practitioners. Recent literature in the field is reviewed according to a three-part typology: content, experience, and assessment/feedback. Research gaps in the field are noted and implications for future researchers are discussed.

Team cohesion effects on business game performance

Numerous relationships between student team cohesion and its effects on simulated company performance were hypothesized and tested within a fairly complex business game. Cohesion was both directly and indirectly related to a team’s economic effectiveness.

The External Validity of a Business Management Game: A Five-Year Longitudinal Study.

A five-year follow-up study investigated relationships between student performance in a top-management game and various measures of business career success. Positive results were found between numerous predictor variables, Relationships between course-related features and other predictors of career success were also examined.

Creating Models of the Strategic Decision Making Process Via Participant Recall: A Free Simulation Examination

Numerous models have attempted to explain the strategic decisionmaking process. Most of these models have used participant recall as their data base. Several theoretical arguments are cited regarding the potential invalidity ofparticipant recall data. The results of afree simulation study demonstrate a severe lack of agreement among participants about the nature and details of their own strategic decisions. Recallfidelity increased with deeper levels of detail, with an attendant loss in information comprehensiveness. A distinction was made between a lack of agreement arising from failures to remember elements mentioned by another decision maker and disagreements which occurred when each person remembered afact or event differently.

Team-building effects on company performance: a business game-based study

The objectives of the research presented here were twofold to investigate the effects of team building on the economic performance of task teams and to understand further the role of group cohesion within pedagogical gaming applications. Regarding the first objective, the techniques for improving individual and organizational performance are a veritable alphabet soup of panaceas MBO, OB Mod, OD, QC, QWL, TA, and Theories X, Y, Z. Unfortunately very few of these techniques have proven their effectiveness in rigorously applied research investigations (Cummings et al., 1974; Huse, 1980; Locke et al., 1980). As a subset of the general organization development (OD) literature, team building’s advocates have likewise been unable to prove that team building is a viable strategy for improving an organization’s performance. Although DeMeuse and Liebowitz (1981) found positive results in 29 of 36 studies, Nicholas (1982) in 2 of 4 studies, and Woodman and Sherwood (1980) in 19 of 30 studies, none could make firm statements about the bottom line-the economic performance value of the team building applications they reviewed. Many studies lacked internal validity; subjective or perceptual data rather than objective output data were often employed, and the interventions were described in such obscure or indefinite terms

An investigation of the need for algorithmic validity

It has been noted that the adversarial and warlike aspect of the game of chess is the genesis of today’s business games. As traced by Cohen and Rhenman (1961) the movement from the chess board and its diversified opposing forces to &dquo;New Kriegspiel,&dquo; with its actual battlefield maps and opposing wooden figures, was an apparent and logical one (Thomas, 1957). Although both chess and New Kriegspiel possessed the qualities of formality and abstraction, the next development in war gaming was a response to the opposing demands for greater game realism to effectuate higher levels of learning versus the needs for greater game playability, construct clarity, and administrative ease (Weiner, 1959). Accordingly, war gaming branched into the separate paths of &dquo;Rigid Kriegspiel&dquo; and &dquo;Free Kriegspiel,&dquo; although the underlying pedagogical issues were not resolved. The advent of the digital computer in the late 1940s and its widespread dissemination in the 1950s brought about even higher degrees of realism and processing ease to educational gaming. With this grand tool the business gaming field had the ability to program and process thousands of integrated algorithms, which, when combined in a ratio-

New developments in the use of cases for learning

The case method’s use has grown steadily since its inception in the 1920s. The number of cases available to instructors, and the number of case writers and the outlets for their cases, has increased to meet the demand. Recent developments in the use of cases for teaching purposes are related to the types of computer‐based case analysis software available, an expanding number of case sources, the advent of customized publishing, and the professionalization of case writing and of those who engage in the method.

A Role for Management Games in Internationalizing the Business School Curriculum

A business schools strategic management and business policy course can serve as a vehicle for internationalizing its curriculum. Six commonly available computerized international management games are evaluated regarding their ability to deal with a large set of critical international business issues. All simulations dealt with most issues needing treatment, although they differed in range and depth of coverage. If international simulations are to serve as a medium for helping to globalize a business schools curriculum, a game must be augmented with international case studies, lectures, or readings.

New developments in the use of simulations and games for learning

Business games for instruction have continued to grow in their use. While the basic structure of these games has largely remained the same, the technical support provided to both players and game administrators has changed substantially.