Abstract

This article focuses on the role of business decision games in learning business skills. The best-known business games are parlor games intended for amusement, such as Monopoly and Easy Money. Games and game-like activities oriented toward training in interpersonal relations, such as role-playing sessions, are also familiar. Less publicized, but of growing importance, are games specially designed for experimental research on organizations and management. These business decision games are rule games, whose procedural requirements, scoring systems are clearly defined and depend only slightly upon the judgments of referees. In this, and also in their emphasis upon concrete results instead of upon the attitudes and emotional responses of their participants, they differ from such activities as role-playing. Business decision games require sequences of decisions from their players. Corresponding sequences of reports on results of the decisions are fed back to the players, often very soon after decisions are made. Business decision games are new and aimed more toward the future than the present.