Research on a Learning System toward Integration

Abstract. This paper reports on a development of business game, which aims at integrating Case Method and Business Gaming. This research proposes a new gaming structure model. In this model, we structuralize the decision-making area of corporate managers and build a framework to implement it as a business game. The model also contains a method to quantitatively express a corporate structure which is a mixture of middle-term business policies and short-term business operations. We use this model to develop a business game that simulates a case of "Asahi Super-Dry" to demonstrate that Business Gaming is able to deal with the qualitative decision-making area, as well as the conventional quantitative operation area. This paper also verifies the effectiveness of using Business Gaming in Case Study. In the experiments, undergraduate and graduate students who majors in business administration played the "Asahi Super-Dry Game", and we analyzed and evaluated the learning effects on this learning system.
We have addressed to the challenges on integrating Gaming Simulation and Case Study as below: 1) These two methods deal with different types of information (Case Study mainly deals with qualitative information). ~> Convert the qualitative decision-making items into quantitative data, 2) Case Study needs to deal with the divergence between corporate manager's decisions and the executions through the organization, which often arises in actual corporate management. For example, the decisions made by a corporate manager of a large firm are represented as a broad operating policy. However, there is no guarantee that the organization conducts the operation in full accordance with the policy. We need to contrive the expressions of the game. ~> A corporate manager controls the organization indirectly with the operating policy, and the organization basically conforms to the policy but not necessarily in perfect coordination, and 3) Corporate managers are always required to attain the financial performance and are not valued with the results of corporate revolutions. We need to express both of the short-term profit and the long-term vision in the game. ~> We evaluate corporate managers with the financial performance in short-term and with the comprehensive measures, including the results of the corporate revolution, in long-term. The result of corporate revolution exerts a strong influence on long-term performance. 2.2 Framework of Simulator
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Introduction
Gaming Simulation is an effective method to virtually experience and learn business schemes in the real world. It is recognized and used in a wide range of educational institutions [1]. Case Method of the Harvard Business School is also an effective educational method and is widely adopted in various fields in the name of Case Study [2]. These two education methods have in common and both belong to the "Experiential Learning" in the broad sense, which is a theoretical framework proposed by Kolb [3] et al. However, the directions of their basic approaches are totally reversing and have evolved separately making the most of their own advantages. There is no precedent report that attempts to integrate these two methods. The subject of our rmethods: Business Gaming and Case Study. We already had reported on the fruits of our research at KES2004 [4], which was about: Construct a method to model the business actions of corporate managers in the areas of "decision-making" and "operations" separately in order to create a gaming scenario that is applicable to various cases, 2) Develop a versatile business simulator based on the model of "decision-making" area using GSSM(Graduate School of Business Sciences, University of Tsukuba )'s business game developing tools [5], In this paper, we report on two additional research results on: 3) 4) Developing a business game that simulate a case of "Asahi Super-Dry," and Verifying the availability of the business game as a decision-making system based on the experimental games we conducted. 1)
22 Gaming and Education Chapter 4 describes the configuration of the learning system. Chapter 5 reports on the result and its verification of experimental games we conducted with the system. And then we conclude the discussion in Chapter 6. 2 2.1 Development of Business Simulator that Handles Cases Challenges and Approaches