Board Room Simulation Game Helps Strategic Management Course

Abstract

Loyola Institute of Business Administration (LIBA), a premier management teaching institute in South India, wanted to shift the focus from teaching to learning. Learning by performing an activity or by doing work helps in managerial skill development. The objective was to make the participants learn through collaborative and integrated methods for holistic management education. A method that has the components of interpersonal relationship, collaborative and integrated approach, experiential base and business acumen will serve the purpose. Considering this, teaching through cases, projects and simulations were examined. Due to the advantages of simulation over the other learning methods, the faculty introduced the ‘simulation game in strategic management’ course in LIBA. The course had a blend of cases, projects and a simulation game. This case will focus on the simulation game and describe how the ‘The board room simulation game’ was played in the class for the strategic management course. It will also examine and analyse the impact of the initiative on the participants in terms of interpersonal, collaborative, experiential, integration, and business acumen learnings. To assess the impact of simulation game, data on the skills of the participants were collected before, after and during the game. A 5-point scale was used to get the data on the five dimensions through a questionnaire. The analysis of the assessment on the learning’s found that the impact on business acumen was significant.