Learning with business simulation games: factors influence undergraduate students outcomes

Abstract

The use of business simulation games has grown progressively during the last 40 years as an educational tool for teaching strategic managerial economics in universities, business schools and also for executive training. The participants must develop a business strategy to achieve their goals in a competitive environment. In addition to improving their skills, "decision-making", "financial analysis", "market analysis","operations", "problem solving", "strategic thinking", "tactically develop", "teamwork" and "leadership", they have an enjoyment experience, with an emphasis on winning, but also allowing the hope and opportunity of improvement and doing better in the next decision. This research focuses in a business simulation game applied in the process of educating 1500 students, of different undergraduate level years, in the fields of business analysis, finance, and management during 2013 to 2017 in one or two semesters. The study seeks to analyse the influence of different factors in the students' academic performance, taking into account that they belong to almost 20 different universities covering the whole Spanish territory. Numerous benefits result from enriching curricula with business simulation games to develop the undergraduate students' abilities to manage businesses, experiencing other indirect advantages, such as "effective group work", "shared responsibility", "understanding of business environment", as well as "multi-dimensional long-and short-term planning", nevertheless, not all the students use the full potential of simulation game. Simulation results of the different student's teams not only depends on their implication, analysed in relation with other factors of the student profile as region, university, age and degree area of knowledge, but also on the scenario where each team have to compete with each other in simulated market circumstances, managing complex and dynamic situations, since the same decision with different competitors have a different reaction in each round result. These findings are useful to determine how to administrate the simulation as a training tool in strategic managerial economics subjects, choosing the better years of the degree to implement it and the best way to create the scenario, organizing the student teams depending on their characteristics and maturity, to enhance their educational outcomes.