EXPERIENCECSR – A CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY SIMULATION Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, Volume 32, 2005 EXPERIENCECSR – A CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY SIMULATION James Chisholm ExperiencePoint Inc. james.chisholm@experiencepoint.com Greg Warman ExperiencePoint Inc. greg.warman@experiencepoint.com ABSTRACT ExperienceCSR is a Corporate Social Responsibility e- learning program featuring an immersive business simulation that challenges participants to develop a comprehensive CSR strategy for SkyTech, a realistic high- tech organization. In the simulation, participants must create and implement a strategy focused on the corporation's ethical responsibilities to employees, the community, customers, suppliers, the environment and shareholders. Since its launch in early 2003, ExperienceCSR has received many accolades from industry and academia. Of particular note was recognition as one of the top three e- learning products of 2003 by the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD). ExperienceCSR’s success is a result of an innovative partnership model that brought together the content knowledge of the University College of St. Michael’s (UCSM) with the simulation design and development expertise of ExperiencePoint. Enron. WorldCom. ImClone. While these companies and others have focused media attention on the issue of corporate accountability, a growing body of research suggests that good corporate citizenship increases competitiveness through improved financial performance and lowered risk. It was against this backdrop of media and research momentum that ExperiencePoint and the University of St. Michael’s College (USMC) at the University of Toronto partnered in 2002 to create ExperienceCSR: Corporate Social Responsibility. ExperienceCSR is a Corporate Social Responsibility e- learning program featuring an immersive business simulation that challenges participants to develop a comprehensive CSR strategy for SkyTech, a realistic high- tech organization. In the simulation, participants must create and implement a strategy focused on the corporation's ethical responsibilities to employees, the community, customers, suppliers, the environment and shareholders. ExperienceCSR is designed to teach four key concepts to students and professionals: 1. A good CSR strategy is comprised of policies and practices that encompass five areas of social responsibility, called the five pillars of CSR: business ethics, employee relations, human rights, community investment and environmental sustainability. 2. A range of CSR policies and practices are available, however not all are appropriate. ExperienceCSR presents participants with a broad range of feasible options and challenges them to create a customized CSR plan for their client. 3. It is important to make the right decisions at the right time. As implementation is where most good strategies falter, ExperienceCSR rewards decision- making that follows a disciplined approach to change management. A seven-stage change model that draws influences from John Kotter’s work underlies as the evaluative framework. 4. During implementation it is critical to survey a wide range of internal and external stakeholders to gauge and manage support for, and resistance to, the strategy. 97 mailto:james.chisholm@experiencepoint.com mailto:greg.warman@experiencepoint.com Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, Volume 32, 2005 ExperienceCSR is delivered in many different ways, depending upon the professor’s (or consultant’s) preferences. There are three basic components to the delivery of the simulation: (1) Theory; (2) Simulation; and (3) Debrief. The online nature of the simulation offers great flexibility as one or more or all of these components can take place outside of class-time. Regardless of whether a professor employs a traditional classroom-, distance- or, blended- approach, all students are provided with their own username and password via email to the ExperienceCSR website. This access typically occurs a week prior to the intended simulation date and students are instructed to review a SkyTech background case study and the CSR theory, both contained on the site. The traditional classroom delivery requires 5 hours and is commonly split between 2 or more classes. Under this approach, the Theory component is delivered by the professor in the form of a 30-60 minute overview of both the Five Pillar approach and the underlying change management model. After the Theory component, the professor divides the class into teams of 4-6 participants and sends them off to private breakout rooms with an internet-connected computer. Although the option to have participants play the simulation by themselves exists, the team-based approach has proven itself to be extremely valuable as a learning model. In fact, with over 10,000 online simulation users over the past 5 years across four ExperiencePoint products, greater than 95% have experienced their simulations as a member of a team. The team members start the simulation by interviewing key stakeholders both inside SkyTech and in the surrounding community. The interviews typically take an hour to complete and yield variegated perspectives on the issues facing the company. It is the team’s role to sift through these sometimes conflicting ideas to ascertain what is really going on inside the company and what needs to be done from a CSR perspective. Once the team has gathered information through the interview process, they are challenged to quickly synthesize this information into a plan for implementing a holistic CSR strategy. Provided with approximately 50 different tactics – each with their own description, time and cost – participants must determine which policies and practices to implement, and when they should do so. The planning process can take as long as 2 hours, and rarely involves the computer as team-members debate the efficacy of each tactic and build a step-by-step implementation plan. Throughout the planning process teams must be conscious of two key constraints - they have 3 years and $400,000 to implement the strategy. 98 Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, Volume 32, 2005 Once the planning process is complete teams move back into the simulation for actual implementation. Implementing their plan one tactic at a time, team members receive qualitative feedback from stakeholders affected by the decisions. As instructive, however, is the quantitative feedback. The level of commitment or buy-in from key stakeholders to the CSR strategy is quantified and displayed in a ‘Conversion Map’. The level of buy-in is aggregated across stakeholders into an overall conversion score. If participants follow the Five Pillar model and change management best practice, they will achieve success in the simulation – a critical mass of stakeholder support represented as a 60% conversion score. It usually takes teams 20-25 decisions to achieve this level, and typically only one in two teams will achieve the objective the first time they play the simulation. Post simulation, participants have an opportunity to reflect upon their performance. In a classroom environment, the professor normally leads a 30 to 60 minute debrief and describes the simulation’s critical success factors, and by extension, CSR best practice. The ExperienceCSR website also contains ‘Reflect’, a comprehensive report-card module that provides feedback customized to a team’s specific experience. Participants can view details on the appropriateness of decisions made in the simulation, how the decisions were scored, and where strategies deviated from the underpinning theory. The simulation model evaluates decisions on three dimensions: 1. Timing – were decisions implemented at the right time 2. Sequencing – were interdependencies among decisions recognized 3. Execution – were certain key decisions executed well By employing fuzzy-logic principles, the simulation model ensures there is no single – and thus no palpably artificial – “golden path” to success but rather a variety of potential solutions. As long as participants adhere to the Five-Pillar approach and change management best practice, they will achieve a critical mass of support for their CSR Strategy. HOW WAS IT DEVELOPED? Since its launch in early 2003, ExperienceCSR has received many accolades from industry and academia. Of particular note was recognition as one of the top three eLearning products of 2003 by the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD). ExperienceCSR’s success is a result of an innovative partnership model that brought together the content knowledge of the University College of St. Michael’s (UCSM) with the simulation design and development expertise of ExperiencePoint. UCSM approached ExperiencePoint with a curriculum need for a powerful capstone experience for their newly designed Certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility program. UCSM’s primary need was to provide a unique and powerful learning opportunity and tools for participants in their CSR program. In addition, UCSM expressed a series of other needs: • a need for low financial investment; • a need for an ability to recover investment, • a need for strong alignment to existing curriculum; • a need for accessibility to the simulation in the future; and • a need to extend UCSM’s brand. ExperiencePoint expressed its needs to UCSM in a similar fashion. ExperiencePoint’s primary need was to expand its portfolio of products available to existing and prospective clients. A further set of needs was expressed to UCSM: • a need to protect existing intellectual property • a need to minimize upfront financial risk • a need to maximize potential financial reward • a need to extend ExperiencePoint’s brand. The collective needs of UCSM and ExperiencePoint were considered and incorporated into the following partnership model: • One of ExperiencePoint’s existing (and proven) simulation engines was chosen as the framework 99 Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, Volume 32, 2005 for the new simulation. This helped minimize risk to both parties during the process. • UCSM pre-paid for a block of licenses to the simulation. These advance licenses were sold at 50% of list price, which affords UCSM an opportunity to resell and recoup investment. (The total cost to UCSM for developing the simulation was approximately 10% of the cost of developing a custom simulation.) • UCSM contracted with CSR program faculty to provide content expertise to the simulation through the development process. • ExperiencePoint retained ownership of the simulation and provides royalties to UCSM from ExperienceCSR sales. Content developers assigned copyright for their work to ExperiencePoint. • ExperiencePoint and USMC co-branded ExperienceCSR • Aside from a Toronto-area non-compete, ExperiencePoint is able to market and sell ExperienceCSR to American, Canadian, and European business schools and companies. At its core, this partnership model is based on a deep respect by both parties – a fundamental pre-condition for good CSR. The partnership continues to benefit both UCSM and ExperiencePoint and has served as a model by which ExperiencePoint has since partnered with other business schools with similar curriculum needs. 100 Table of Contents Volume 32, 2005 LEARNER BEHAVIOR IN THE ONLINE CLASSROOM EXPERIENCE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A SIMULATION EXERCISE FOR INTEGRATING PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING IN MANAGEMENT EDUCATION DEMONSTRATION OF FOUR WEB-BASED SIMULATIONS THRESHOLD COMPETITOR: A MANAGEMENT SIMULATION ENTREPRENEUR: A NEW VENTURE SIMULATION MERLIN: A MARKETING SIMULATION MICROMATIX: A STRAGETIC MANAGEMENT SIMULATION LEARNING STYLES INFLUENCES ON SATISFACTION AND PERCEIVED LEARNING: ANALYSIS OF AN ONLINE BUSINESS GAME INTERNATIONAL INTERNSHIPS: DESIGN AND EXPERIENCES SIM MAP: TURNING ACTION-BASED LEARNING INTO SIMULATED CONSULTING PROJECTS NOTEL HEALTH SERVICES: A ROLE-PLAYING SIMULATION TEACHING EXPERIENTIALLY WITH THE MADELINE HUNTER METHOD: AN APPLICATION IN A MARKETING RESEARCH COURSE SIMULATING CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUE: IMPLICATIONS FOR GAME DESIGN AND STUDENT PERFORMANCE VIRTUAL PROGRESS: SIMULATING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ONLINE STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT: AN EVALUATION OF THE USE OF THREE LEARNING METHODS IN CHINA ADOPTION OF DISCUSSION-BASED TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT IN TEACHING STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT IN CHINA STUDENTS' VIEW ON THE USE OF CASE METHOD IN CHINA CHINESE STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF BUSINESS GAMING EXPERIENCECSR - A CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY SIMULATION CREATING DYNAMIC INTERACTION IN A VIRTUAL WORLD: ADD VALUE TO ONLINE CLASSROOMS THROUGH LIVE ELEARNING AND COLLABORATION: A DEMONSTRATION CAPABILITIES OF EXPERIMENTAL BUSINESS GAMING A COMPARISON BETWEEN SOLUTIONS AND DECISIONS IN A BUSINESS GAME VALIDATING BUSINESS SIMULATIONS: DOES HIGH PRODUCT QUALITY LEAD TO HIGH PROFITABILITY? ALIGNING ART AND EPISTEMOLOGY: ILLUSTRATIONS TO DISTINGUISH DISCOVERY FROM KNOWLEDGE BUILDING TUTORIALS USING WINK STUDENTS AS LAB RATS: THE ETHICS OF CONDUCTING NON-PEDAGOGICAL RESEARCH IN THE CONTEXT OF CLASSROOM SIMULATIONS AND EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING THE EFFECT ON GAME PERFORMANCE OF DIFFERENT MEASURES AND UNITS OF ANALYSIS IN QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS ANALYZING AND THINKING WHILE PLAYING A SIMULATION COMPUTER BUSINESS SIMULATION DESIGN: THE ROCK POOL METHOD EXPANDING THE ROLE OF E-ROOMS IN DISTANCE LEARNING APPLICATIONS TO MANAGEMENT EDUCATION APPLICATION OF TRADITIONAL AND ONLINE JOURNALING AS PEDAGOGY AND MEANS FOR ASSESSING LEARNING IN AN ENTREPRENEURIAL SEMINAR DEVELOPING MANAGERIAL EFFECTIVENESS: ASSESSING AND COMPARING THE IMPACT OF DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES USING A MANAGEMENT SIMULATION OR A MANAGEMENT GAME INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT GAME Œ AN INTEGRATED TOOL FOR TEACHING STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT INTERNATIONALLY STUDENT EXPECTATIONS OF SIMULATIONS DISTANCE EDUCATION DELIVERY OF AN INTENSIVE SIMULATION BASED COURSE TEACHING SERVICE LEARNING USING A BUSINESS GAME ROLE-PLAY SIMULATION EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVE OF COLLABORATIVE VIRTUAL COMMUNICATION AND MULTI-USER VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS FOR BUSINESS SIMULATIONS SIMULATION PERFORMANCE & PREDICTOR VARIABLES: ARE WE LOOKING IN THE WRONG PLACES TO MEASURE THE RIGHT LEARNING? VIDEO CASE: JET-A-WAY INC. Œ FOCUSING ON DIVERSITY AND ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERSHIP ACTIVE LEARNING: WHAT IS IT AND WHY SHOULD I USE IT? FACILITATING THROUGH COLLABORATIVE REFLECTIONS TO ACCOMMODATE DIVERSE LEARNING STYLES FOR LONG-TERM RETENTION ONLINE CUMULATIVE SIMULATION TEAM PERFORMANCE PACKAGE WHEN PROPHECY FAILS: A SMALL SAMPLE, PRELIMINARY STUDY USING EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING TO INTEGRATE THE BUSINESS CURRICULUM FORECASTING STOCK VALUE EMPLOYING PROGRESSIVE PRACTICES AND PRINCIPLES TO FACILITATE SEMINAR ROOM LEADERSHIP AMONG LEARNERS: SHARED POWER AND COLLECTIVE ACCOUNTABILITY INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT DOES NOT GUARANTEE TEAM PERFORMANCE: AN EVIDENCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING WITH BUSINESS GAMES DECISION MAKING IN BUSINESS SIMULTION DESIGN ZUG UM ZUG 2015: COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AS A TWO-LEVEL GAME A NEW METHOD FOR MODELING INNOVATION AND R&D IN BUSINESS SIMULATIONS: ILLUSTRATED WITH A SIMULATION OF A NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PORTFOLIO DEVELOPING A MICRO SIMULATION EFFECT OF MARKET SHARE AND PRODUCTION EXPERIENCE ON COMPANY PROFITABILITY RE-DESIGNING A CURRICULUM THAT VALUES A WORK-INTEGRATED APPROACH TO STUDENT LEARNING HOW SIMULATIONS AND EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING FIT AS WE COMPLY WITH LEGISLATIVE AND AACSB ASSESSMENT GUIDELINES: HOW TO DEVELOP ACADEMICALLY SOUND COURSES THAT ALSO MEET STAKEHOLDER NEEDS EVALUATING SERVICE LEARNING: REFLECTION AND ASSESSMENT FROM THE STUDENT POINT OF VIEW SIMPLIFYING AND ENHANCING FINANCIAL ANALYSIS IN CASES AND SIMULATIONS OVERCOMING THE BUSINESS GAME COMPLEXITY PARADOX EXPLORING THE PREFERENCE IN LEARNING APPROACH AMONG THE HONG KONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS: CASE STUDY, PROBLEM-BASED OR TRADITIONAL TEXTBOOK QUESTION AN EXERCISE FOR EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES AND POLITICAL STYLE IN THE WORKPLACE EVALUATING THE DIRECTION OF RESEARCH IN ONLINE EDUCATION: ARE WE GOING ANYWHERE? AIS RAIL SYSTEM: A COMPUTER-BASED JOB-ORDER COST SIMULATION BLOOM BEYOND BLOOM: USING THE REVISED TAXONOMY TO DEVELOP EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING STRATEGIES DELIVERING A TECHNOLOGY-BASED CASE IN A TECHNOLOGICAL WAY: THE SMARTCART CASE USING THE INTERNET TO ENHANCE COURSE PRESENTATION: A HELP OR HINDRANCE TO STUDENT LEARNING TEACHING PRACTICES: A CLUSTER ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS IN HONG KONG TEACHING PRACTICES: A CLUSTER ANALYSIS OF TEACHING STAFF IN HONG KONG EVALUATING A SIMULATION WITH A STRATEGIC EXPLORATION TOOL A SYMBOLIC MODEL OF THE SIMULTANEOUS ACHIEVEMENT OF CONCRETE BENEFITS AND LEARNING BY PARTICIPATING GROUPS IN EXPERIENTIAL ACTIVITIES: ‚THE SPHERE OF EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING