Business Games the Learning by Doing Tool for Business Management

Abstract

Our responsibility in business schools is to teach students what we do in business. That is, provide them the necessary knowledge for business management. This necessarily involves developing skills in the problem solving and decision-making involved in each stage of the business activity: analysis, planning, implementation and control. To do this, we have different teaching methods in business schools such as the lecture, concept applications, case method and simulations or business games. This article seeks to argue that business games are the most powerful method to achieve this learning objective. We analyzed the characteristics of each of the teaching methods and relate them to their potential for the development of skills in decision-making and problem solving.It is concluded that the lecture and case method allow teaching and to develop skills in the phases of analysis, planning and control, but not on the critical implementation phase. The only method that allows learning and developing skills in the implementation phase is the simulation or business game.On the other hand, it is concluded that business games provided that properly structured and also incorporating some role-play to contemplate negotiating skills may be the best method (without excluding others) for practical learning and developing skills in decision making and problem solving in all phases of the business activity.