A suite for developing and using business games: supporting supply
chain business games in a distributed context
Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, (2007)Abstract
Managing today's multi-actor systems, such as supply chains, is becoming
an increasingly challenging task given developments in the markets,
e.g. globalization, and in technology, e.g. the Internet. Today's
managers are faced with increasing competition and globalization
in an ever increasingly complex and dynamic system. Multiple tools
exist to support managers in gaining more insight into these kinds
of systems, such as simulation models or case-studies. Business games
are another tool that can be used to support managers. A leading
question in the development and usage of business games concerns
the effectiveness of these two activities, e.g. development may take
too long, or the business game does not address its intended purpose.
During this research we have designed and implemented a suite of
software services that support the development and usage of business
games in a distributed, Internet-mediated context. With the games
we support players in getting prepared for today's management challenges.
This is among others accomplished by supporting the games to be played
in a continuous fashion, and the usage of computer-controlled actors
to increase the games' complexity and dynamics. The games that we
developed with this suite have been played at numerous universities
and business schools in a variety of settings, among which a global
competition played at the same time with 11 universities. The students'
educational levels that played the games developed with our suite
vary from undergraduate to (Executive) MBA. The games that have been
developed with our suite can be accessed online and played with at
http://www.gscg.org.