WHO BENEFITS MOST FROM PARTICIPATION IN BUSINESS POLICY SIMULATIONS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF SKILL DEVELOPMENT BY FUNCTIONAL AREA Insights into Experiential Pedagogy, Volume 6, 1979 257 WHO BENEFITS MOST FROM PARTICIPATION IN BUSINESS POLICY SIMULATIONS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF SKILL DEVELOPMENT BY FUNCTIONAL AREA Eugene T. Byrne, Southern Methodist University ABSTRACT Henry Mintzberg [5] defines a set of ten roles and eight skills common to all managerial performance. This paper reports a study of a business policy simulation designed to determine if students have sufficient opportunities to perform the ten roles and whether the opportunities are related to simulation roles. Perceived skill development was obtained and tested for any relationship to simulation role. Results indicate that students have sufficient opportunity to perform managerial roles and there is a relationship between opportunities and simulation role. However, there is no relationship between perceived skill development and simulation role. INTRODUCTION Henry Mintzberg in his highly acclaimed study [6], The Nature of Managerial Work [5] concludes that ‘. . .we must recognize that although the management school gives students M.B.A. and M.P.A. degrees, it does not in fact teach them how to manage.” This is true despite the fact that, ‘There is clear evidence that all managerial jobs require the incumbent to perform a common set of roles....” Further, Mintzberg notes that, The one course that might have dealt with the management process --the course in policy--has either been conspicuously absent from the curriculum of the modern management school or it has more often than not been taught by the case method.” In reviewing the ability of the case method to teach managerial skills, Mintzberg states that our study gives us reason to believe that this kind of instruction does not develop the wide array of talents managers need.” In his study Mintzberg identifies ten roles which are common to all managers: figurehead, leader, liaison, monitor, disseminator, spokesman, entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator [5, pp. 92-931. The purpose of this paper is to report the results of an empirical study of a course in business policy. The course utilized The Executive Game [3] as the sole instructional method. The research that was conducted had three purposes: 1. to determine whether students in the simulation had sufficient opportunity to exercise each of the ten managerial roles identified by Mintzberg; 2. to determine if there is a relationship between the functional areas of concentration and the managerial role opportunities reported by students; 3. to determine if there is any relationship between the number of role opportunities and the perceived learning of students. THE STUDY The study was conducted in a senior business policy course enrolling twenty-seven students. The simulation was composed of seven teams of which six had four members and one had three. The teams formed voluntarily and selected their own form of organization. Most teams organized along formal lines while one team elected the consensual form of organization. For purposes of analysis the simulation roles were categorized into President, V-P Marketing, V-P Finance, V-P Planning and Other (including consensus). Periodically students were asked to complete a questionnaire reporting on whether they had any opportunity to perform a managerial role in the events leading up to a given simulation decision (Sample--Appendix I). Each questionnaire directed attention to five specific managerial roles and was administered three times during the semester. Students were informed that their specific responses would not be graded but participation was viewed as a professional development activity that would be worth five percent of the final course grade. At the end of the semester students were asked to complete a perceived learning questionnaire (Appendix II). Managerial Roles The results of the managerial roles questionnaires are shown in Table 1. Cell entries represent the proportion of time that students in each simulation role reported at least one opportunity to perform each managerial role. Insights into Experiential Pedagogy, Volume 6, 1979 258 Whether these proportions represent sufficient opportunity appears to be arbitrary. However David Kolb has quoted 0. K. Moore to the effect that “One environment is more conducive to learning than another If it both permits and facilitates the taking of more perspectives toward whatever is to be learned.’ [4, p. 17] Applying a conservative interpretation to this statement suggests that sufficiency can be represented by at least equal proportions of opportunity/no opportunity. Thus any proposition in Table 1 > .500 will be considered as sufficient opportunity. Using this criterion, the data in Table 1 reveals that students may not have had adequate opportunity to serve as disturbance handler or negotiator. Generally it would appear that students did have sufficient opportunities to serve the other eight managerial roles. Managerial Roles/Simulation Roles Further examination of the data in Table 1 reveals that students serving as V.P. Planning reported sufficient opportunities to serve nine manager roles While students serving as Presidents or V.P. Finance indicated they had sufficient opportunities to serve eight of the managerial roles. Finally, those students who served in Other roles (consensus, V.P. Production) reported sufficient opportunities for seven roles while V.P. Marketing reported sufficient opportunities for only six of the ten managerial roles. Perceived Skill Development/ Simulation Roles The final question to be examined is whether the simulation roles are related to the amount of perceived skill development reported by students in the end of semester questionnaire. To facilitate the use of the framework provided by Mintzberg, the responses to the twenty questions in the skills questionnaire were combined into the eight categories of managerial skills specified by Mintzberg [5, pp. 188-193]. The results are shown in Table 2 as average skill development scores. A t-test of significant differences was calculated comparing the skill development scores for individual skills and for the average overall skill. There were no significant differences in any of the comparisons. Therefore we can conclude that simulation role is not related to perceived skill development. DISCUSSION The findings of this study indicate that students have sufficient opportunity to perform eight of the ten managerial roles performed by managers in actual practice. However, there was not adequate opportunity for students to serve as disturbance handlers or negotiators. Since the most common expression of the negotiator role is found in labor negotiations, merger-acquisition discussions and other non- routine negotiations with individuals or organizations, its absence in this study is understandable. None of these circumstances are built in to The Executive Game. However the failure to provide opportunities to serve as disturbance handler are not as easily explained. Mintzberg notes that common disturbances are a feud between two subordinates, the sudden departure of a subordinate or the loss of an important customer [5, p. 84]. From observation, these events were not unusual in The Executive Game. 8ut they may have been so infrequent (e.g., no student dropped the course once it began) that they were disregarded. In the authors opinion, these findings suggest that a business policy simulation can provide opportunities for a true managerial experience. This is in contrast to some previous studies [1, p. 121]. The failure of students serving as V.P. Marketing to report sufficient manager role opportunities is surprising. The Executive Game places heavy emphasis on successful marketing management. This result is even more surprising in light of the relative success of V.P. Planning students to perform more managerial roles. The answer may be found in the fact that there is such a strong marketing emphasis that students in this function must focus solely on marketing problems. Planners, on the other hand, having no specific area responsibility may periodically engage themselves with every facet of the firms operations. Presidents, who could have been expected to report the greatest proportion of opportunities may have spent too much time coordinating activities in order to eliminate the problem of presiding over a peer group. In any event, the results of this study do not support the fairly popular contention that ‘. . .having only one group leader throughout the exercise (as in many previous simulations) prevents the three or four remaining members of the team from experiencing managerial responsibilities.” [1, p. 125]. This conclusion is given further support by the finding that perceived skill development is not related to the simulation roles taken by students. A number of factors in administering the simulation can contribute to this finding. First, students voluntarily created teams and were permitted to choose their own roles and form of organization. Second, performance evaluation was designed to be a function of cooperation and sharing. In addition to a team grade the final paper evaluating the teams performance was jointly prepared and written. Even the individual papers fostered cooperation and overview by permitting and encouraging all members to help each other in preparing to write papers on different aspects of the simulation. Insights into Experiential Pedagogy, Volume 6, 1979 259 CONCLUSIONS The results of this study suggest that a business policy simulation can provide students a rich managerial experience by providing them with sufficient opportunities to perform the roles of real-world managers. Although the opportunity to perform each role is somewhat dependent upon the simulation role taken by a student there is no indication that this creates significant differences in perceived development of the important managerial skills. Insights into Experiential Pedagogy, Volume 6, 1979 260 REFERENCES [1] Aplin, John C. and Richard A. Cosier, Creating A Responsible Managerial Experience,’ in Brenenstuhl and Certo (editors), Exploring Experiential Learning: Simulations and Experiential Exercises (Tempe, Arizona: Bureau of Business and Economic Research, 1978, Pp. 121-126). [2] Badgett, Tom F., Daniel C. Brenenstuhl and William J. Marshall, “An Analysis of Performance in Simulation Games Compared to Performance on Structured Course Criteria: A Case Study, in Brenenstuhl and Certo (editors), Exploring Experiential Learning: Simulations and Experiential Exercises (Tempe, Arizona: Bureau of Business and Economic Research, 1978, pp. 32-37). [3] Henshaw, Richard C. and James R. Jackson, The Executive Game (Homewood, Illinois: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1972). [4] Kolb, David A. ‘Individual Learning Styles and The Learning Process,’ Cambridge: MIT Working Paper No. 535-71, Spring, 1971. [5] Mintzberg, Henry The Nature of Managerial Work (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973). [6] Weick, Karl E., ‘Review Essay: Henry Mintzberg, The Nature of Managerial Work, ”Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 1, March 1974. [7] Wolfe, Joseph, ‘The Effects and Effectiveness of Simulations in Business Policy Teaching Applications,” Academy of Management Review, April 1976, pp. 47-56. Table of Contents Volume 6, 1979 The Use of Cases with Role Plays in a Research Methods Course Debugging and Implementing the Live-Case Approach to Marketing Research in the Australian Environment Using a Case as the Basis for a Modified Debate Using Cases in Business Communication Classes A Structured Approach to Case Analysis and Reporting Intercollegiate Case Analysis Competition as an Experiential Learning Experience Attributes Germane to Student/Live Case Situations Understanding Dispute Resolution Through Experiential learning Personality Development and Conflict Dynamics: An Experimental Design to Study the Effects of Teaching Methodologies on Conflict Resolution Interpersonal Competence and the Digital PDP-11:40 The process of Writing a Collective Bargaining Simulation: A Case Study in Practical Pedagogy Simulating Negotiations in an Educational Context Simulations as a Technique for Teaching Collective Bargaining Experiential Processing of Differing Managerial Perspectives: The Use of a Game Show Format Individual Self Report vs. Group consensus in Small Decision-Making Groups Effects of Sex-Role Stereotypes on Promotion Decisions: An Exercise Computer Aids to Planning: The Budget and Forecasting Module Use of a Microcomputer in a Decision Analysis for Investment Portfolio Selection A Game of Investment Strategy: Description, Use, Criticism and Modification Coping with Future Uncertainties Through Probabilistic Budgeting Administration and Design of Simulation Materials for a Specialized Management Training Program Managing Stress in Organizational Life Banksim: The Bank Management Simulation Issues in the Organizational Application of Simulation and Experiential material Games Within Games: The Role of the Glitch Experiential Learning from Classroom to Business An Evaluation of the Small Business Institute Program as an Experiential learning Exercise Conversations with Top Management (Simulated) Experience in the Use and Assessment of Simulation in Management Education A Statistical Analysis of Simulation Users: Relationships between Stress and Human Subject guidelines Group Decision Making in a Computer Game Analysis of Demographic and Psychosocial Variables Comparing Performance During Three Managerial Accounting Simulation Schedules Business Policy Simulation and the Intense Course Structure The Use of Intensive Simulation in Executive Development and Academic Settings The Use of Experiential Exercises in the Undergraduate Consumer Behavior Course A Personal Marketing Strategy Approach: Framework and Application Teaching PERT Experientially in Marketing Research Discovering the Majority Fallacy An Experiential Approach to Studying International Business A Demonstration of the Business Simulation Game as a Curriculum Assessment Device Relating Teaching Methods with Educational Objectives in the Business Curriculum The Junior Achievement Applied Management Program as a Compromise Situation Between the Simulation and the Internship Who is Using Computerized Business Games?: A View from Publishers' Adoption Lists Trials and Tribulations in Testing Educational Innovations An Examination of the Perceived Effectiveness of Computer Simulation in a Classroom Setting as Affected by Game, Environmental and Respondent Characteristics Game Administration: A Life Cycle Analysis Research on the Effectiveness of Using a Computerized Simulation in the Basic Management Course Gaming and Attitudinal Change The Teacher-Student Relationship in Experiential Classes and the Student's Perception of Course Effectiveness An Exploratory Study of Student Characteristics and Educational Processes in Programmatic Experiential learning General Incongruity Adaption Level (GIAL) as a Predictor of Risk Preferences in a Simulated Management Game The Cap-Stone Opportunity: Combining Business Simulation and Experiential Learning Incorporating MIS/DSS into Policy Courses Via Simulation Who Benefits Most from Participation in Business Policy Simulations: An Empirical Study of Skill Development by Functional Areas The Use of Program NAMEX in Teaching the Accounting for Nonmonetary Assets The Use of Program CVP in Teaching Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis Experiential vs. Traditional Classroom Approach in the Basic Management Course: A Puerto Rican Experience A Guide to the Successful Use of Business Simulation Games The Dynamic Aspects of Interactive Gaming Puts the Realism into Gaming System Representation of SIMORG The Design of a Database System to Support Business Simulation and Experiential Learning A Data Entry and Retrieval System for a Computer Simulation (DERS) Simulation - An Advantage for Accounting Research Computer-Aided Project Performance Control Simulation: An Interactive Experiential Gaming Technique for Managerial Decision Making Utilization of Manual Simulation Games to Develop Scenarios of Future Events - An Exploratory Study Foundry: A Foundry Simulation Customized Debriefing: The Achilles Heel of Experiential learning? Computerized Business Simulations and Experiential Learning Exercises: An Instructional Interface The Baseball Game: A Group Role Observation, Problem Solving Experience A Practical Design for Experiential Learning Exercises: Roles, Technical Equipment and Alternative Debriefing Formats