Using Tools From Strategic Management To Help Micro-Entrepreneurs In Developing Countries Adapt To A Dynamic And Changing Business Environment

Micro-entrepreneur industriousness is a significant reason for the unprecedented economic activity in the developing world over the last 20 years. Yet as the business environment in developing countries modernizes, micro-enterprises are increasingly threatened. This paper takes a strategic management perspective and argues that micro-entrepreneurs need to do four things to better cope with this changing landscape. To better understand their new complex and turbulent environment they need to 1) perform an external environment analysis, 2) perform an internal environmental analysis, 3) plan, and 4) network

Teaching Sustainability Experientially

This paper focuses on teaching sustainability in the classroom. In it, I argue for a application of the experiential pedagogy to a kind of learning, for which experiential methods are not ordinarily used. But I believe most pedagogical scholars including those in ABSEL would not argue with my application. I also describe the course and examples of classroom activities, including cases, experiential exercises, and simulations. As I describe the course, I include some experiential activities I cannot use but experiential scholars interested in sustainability should consider

Research on Predicting Performance in the Simulation

This paper reviews research on the degree to which simulation performance is predicted by academic ability, academic major, personality, motivation, team cohesion and organizational formality. It suggests that performance varies with combinations of independent variables and that the relationship between some independent variables and performance is conditional

A Project Management Focus: A Way for ABSEL to Grow

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a way for ABSEL to grow. It is this author’s observation and opinion that ABSEL’s major focus, business simulation design and execution, is not attracting an increasing number of members. This paper asks ABSEL members to consider trying to grow by attracting new groups of teachers and professors who teach experientially but do not focus on the kinds of games or exercises which have been ABSEL’s traditional concentration. I believe that ABSEL should try to attract those who teach via the project, especially those that teach project management experientially. This paper focus-es on project management, provides evidence that it can and is taught experientially, provides examples of courses in project management where an experiential pedagogy is used, and pro-vides evidence that other business professional pedagogical organizations have yet to feature project management as one of their topics covered

Personality Variables on Group Cohesion, Team Participation and Total Learning

This paper looks at performance in the simulation as a dependent variable. It explores the influence of two independent variables on performance, the cohesiveness of the team and the personality of the individual

Who Gains and Who does not from Experiential Learning

The purpose of this study is to discover who gains and who does not from experiential learning. The study was done with twenty six students in one class. It was hypothesized that people who had the maturity and experience to take advantage of the experiential course would gain the most. The results show otherwise. Students who were less mature, less experienced and less likely to see the relevance of the course gained the most from it

Goal Setting Over Time in Simulations

This paper concerns how player goals change over time during simulation play. The players were college seniors, and goals were obtained via questionnaire given during the third, seventh, and last quarters of an eleven quarter simulation. The results show that profit, competence, and ambition related goals did not change over time, that competitive and survival goals increased with time, and that learning and business growth related goals decreased with time

Correlates of Learning in Simulations

This study attempted to identify variables that correlate with learning in simulations. The researchers explored whether simulation learning varied with (1) simulation performance, (2) the degree to which players were struggling with the simulation, (3) type of simulation goals, and (4) common sense variables often associated with learning such as confidence. The subjects were college seniors; the simulation lasted eleven quarters; learning was measured by Instructor designed instruments; other variables were measured by questionnaire. The results were that students who expressed game related financial goals, such as to maximize profits, early in game learned more and that those that perceived the game to be understandable and simple early in the game also learned more. Learning did not correlate with performance and the degree of struggle

A Moral Development Unit for Business Courses

One of the reasons why many of today’s business leaders are unethical, corrupt, and corruptible is that values transmitted (implicitly) by university business education helps to influence students to ignore ethics. This paper advocates the argument that to help future business leaders become more ethical, business school implicit values should reflect a more ethical direction and encourage students to become more morally mature. The present paper describes an experiential pedagogy designed help students to develop morally. It does so by asking students to 1) participate in exercises sensitizing them to moral development issues, 2) reflect on their own ethical values and decisions they’ve made that either mirror or contradict those values, 3) read about and understand moral development models, and 4) self-assess in terms of stages of their own moral development, as portrayed in the models

Simulation Performance, Learning and Struggle

The purpose of this study was to continue a line of research intended to evaluate learning and simulation performance. Using instructor designed instrumentation, learning scores were developed for three classes of undergraduate business-policy course students participating in simulations. One-way analysis of variance was performed on learning scores using top-middle-bottom simulation performance classifications. Consistent with previous findings by the researchers, analysis of these data found that simulation performance and learning did not co-vary. Using a series of questionnaires, the researchers also evaluated the concept that learning and the struggle to perform well in the simulation might be positively related. While this study did not find definitive proof of such an association, results indicated that this research should continue