Realism is important for teaching, but does not imply that materials need be big or complicated. Highly simplified models [not just simulations] are used to teach all kind of things, from economics to physics. The simple model seems to work as a staging post for learning – 'OK, so if we understand simple principle 'X', with all the complexities of the real world held constant, we can now add complication 'Y' and see what more we can learn'. A simple simulation serves just the same purpose – it just needs to be realistic enough within the limits defined.
An example is the Bass Diffusion Model [Bass F, 1969, A New Product Growth Model for Consumer Durables Management Science 15: 215-227] – a truly 'well-established' model of new-product uptake, which takes a population of potential customers being converted into a population of customers, through a combination of advertising and word-of-mouth. The model is tiny, but plays out the dynamics of product-sales growth and saturation very nicely. It is also pretty tricky to get an optimum performance out of the model, even when the only decision lever is advertising spend. Is it 'realistic'? - it can be tweaked to make performance look quite like the experience of some real cases, but no-one would claim it is an accurate model of any particular case.
Anyone interested in seeing this can download a simple model and free reader-software from www.strategydynamics.com/bass [this is not packaged for class use, but should be possible to follow].
Kim Warren
If simulation has a huge to play in management education then they should be realistic simulations, and they need to get a lot better. As "S.Cameron" <S.Cameron@OPEN.AC.UK> and "Bill Kaghan" <wkaghan@MSN.COM> pointed out, it's possible to produce accurate simulations of relatively simple physical systems (compared to groups of humans, an aircraft is a realtively simple system), and extremely difficult to produce accurate simulations of behaviours of groups of humans.
I do not avoid simulations; I enjoy them; they are very fun games. Bill Kaghan points out that corporations are using multimillion dollar simulators to make better decsions; that's true, but they don't let me use them to teach my students. The ones I can get run on a PC and don't cost multimillions.
Kaghan also points out that comanies like Wal-Mart create their own future (actually Peter Drucker said that, "The best way to predict the future is to create it."); we come back to the complexities simulators must deal with, e.g., multiple cultues. Wal-Mart couldn't seem to create a future in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Germany</st1:country-region></st1:place>. (Their model was probably designed by Americans.)
I'm not opposed to simulations in general; I'm opposed to simulations that don't adequately represent reality.
As I've said before in this forum, scientists use supercomputers and hundreds of millions of amounts of money to try to predict the weather, with only moderate success. I have a pretty good laptop to carry out cross-national research on managerial leadership behaviour.
Anne Tsui <Anne.Tsui@ASU.EDU> wrote:
Hi, thanks for the interesting discussions on simulations. I used the ECOTONOS in my cross cultural mangement class and it is very good. I am interested in finding an alternative cross cultural simulation, and would appreciate any suggestions.
Thanks.
Anne
Anne S. Tsui
Motorola Professor of International Management
Editor in Chief, Management and Organization Review
________________________________
From: <st1:personname w:st="on">Management Education and Development Discussion</st1:personname> on behalf of Kim Warren
Sent: Sat 8/19/2006 1:07 PM
To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
Subject: Re: Two excellent articles on shortcomings in teaching IB in this issue of AIB insights by Tipton and Dunning
Simulation does not have to be 'exactly right' to be useful - and often exceedingly so.
If we truly believe that simulation offers little useful insight, we would avoid flying in aircraft that had been designed with simulators, or were flown by pilots trained with simulators - and never drive a car whose chassis had been designed with simulators, or take drugs whose effect on our body had been tested with simulators, or take electricity from a power grid whose reliability had not been tested with simulation. We would do not believe any weather forecast we see, because these are produced from simulations [and if we don't believe them, there are plenty of others prepared to spend millions of dollars on them in order to improve planning for businesses as diverse as ice-cream sales and insurance]. In the financial markets, millions are spent, and billions made, by investing in simulations that deal with complexity orders of magnitude greater than those most managers have to deal with.
In none of these cases are the simulators precisely replicating every circumstance of the real world - nor would their developers or users claim them to do so. But they are close enough to be exceedingly useful.
Whilst it may be a good sound-bite to claim that management has to cope with 'infinite complexity', it simply isn't true. If it were, no-one could manage anything. There are considerable degrees of certainty in management. Leading organisations do not even accept the limited uncertainty and complexity that might be claimed, but make the future the way they want it to be [think SouthWest airlines, Microsoft, Walmart, etc etc].
Simulation has a huge role to play, both in management education and strategic and operational planning, and the alternative of merely discussing or debating insights and alternative policy responses has long been rejected in most other fields of human endeavour. We may carry on rejecting the usefulness of simulation in the classroom, but meanwhile large corporations are making huge sums, and avoiding huge losses, by simulating their organisations' situation and their management options. If we turn out graduates who exhibit an allergic response whenever the idea of simulation is raised, they will be destroyed by those who are prepared to use such tools to explore the future and its alternatives.
"Bill Kaghan" <wkaghan@MSN.COM>
________________________________
From: Romie Littrell [mailto:littrellaom@YAHOO.CO.NZ]
Sent: 19 August 2006 00:33
To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
Subject: Re: Two excellent articles on shortcomings in teaching IB in this issue of AIB insights by Tipton and Dunning
I'm missing the point of simulations? My life is full of missed points, but not in this case.
Virtual reality is the simulation of a real or imagined environment; as you state your simulation does not accurately represent reality, then you have an imagined environment. And as a simulation is a representation of the operation or features of one process or system through the use of another, we see how easily we can drift away from reality. A simulation is a fun game, representing an artificial ecology; students and lecturers should understand that a simulation doesn't provide any accurate approximation of real-world experience, but can teach processes of analysis and synthesis (though synthesis is rarely taught anywhere) that might be a starting point for decision-making in the real world.
Whose "universal" variables are you using? Hofstede? Schwartz? Inglehart? The GLOBE study? (They're all a bit different.) Geert Hofstede is fond of stating that the economic model of the "rational man" is ethnocentric. "Nationality constrains rationality." in "Blind Spots in Economic Reasoning": http://center.uvt.nl/sem/facsem/hofstede.pdf#search=%22%2Bhofstede%20%2Beconomic%20%2Brationality%22
As an international management educator, I reject the attitude, opinion, belief that education should not attempt to copy reality, with the excuse that reality is too complex. Aren't we trying to educate students to operate successfully in an apparently infinitely complex environment?
"Copy" reality is not a word I would have chosen, nor "mirror" reality, every time I hear "mirror" reality I'm reminded of the hall of mirrors side shows at carnivals, and mirrors show images reversed. In my philosophy, effective education must be based to the greatest extent possible on reality; otherwise, of what value is it? Given that statement, I do realise that simulations have real constraints in terms of resource availability. An interesting simulation I sometimes use is CHARMS ( http://charms99.tripod.com/ ) which is a 4.5 day service industry simulation process that requires two or three simulation leaders reviewing and scoring the team output each evening, and generating results and input for the next day. Resource intensive, but more realistic than computer generated evaluations.
Are you representing your simulation as teaching "if you do this, that will happen"? Could be misleading. I cannot recall the name of the simulation, but one business simulator I investigated had a <st1:place w:st="on">Monte Carlo</st1:place> simulation added, a random number generator that randomly added, subtracted, or left the same an amount of the proper order of magnitude to the calculated values based on the students' decisions. I like that.
To engage in a favourite academic past time, arguing over definitions, real virtual reality systems require extremely expensive hardware and software and are confined mostly to research laboratories. To use the phrase to refer to any virtual world represented on a computer is misleading in my mind.
"Thorelli, Hans B." <thorelli@indiana.edu>wrote:
Dear Dr Littrel,
I am afraid you are missing the point of simulations. They are not purporting to copy reality, precisely because it
is endless in its variations, as your several artful examples illustrate. The typical sim presents the dynamic interaction of key universal (to its purpose) variables in the "world" being emulated. To the extent that the effects of, say, fixed vs variable cost in production, or varying degrees of price elasticity affect sales, has been established in economics, we are on safe theoretical ground. In a sim like INTOPIA B2B which incorporates over a hundred of these kinds of "proven" relationships the interactions have to be credible to participants for designers to be able to talk of virtual reality.
To attain this status, we have described for participants our perception of cultural and economic differences between EU, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Brazil</st1:country-region> and the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Participants know that we may be mistaken in over- or underestimating
some of these differences, but they invariably good-humoredly accept our concepts as a reasonable approximation of reality.
I do feel we are entitled to claim that we offer practice based learning about multinational business in action.
Best, hans
Dr Hans B Thorelli
Distinguished Professor of Bus.Admin. Em.
Kelley <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">School of Business</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Indiana</st1:state></st1:place> University
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Bloomington</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">IN</st1:state> <st1:postalcode w:st="on">47405-1701</st1:postalcode> <st1:country-region w:st="on">USA</st1:country-region></st1:place>
Phone:+1 (812) 333-3174 Fax: +1 (812) 855-6440
INTOPIA Home Page: http://www.intopiainc.com
<http:>Email: thorelli@indiana.edu
________________________________
From: <st1:personname w:st="on">Management Education and Development Discussion</st1:personname> [mailto:MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Romie Littrell
Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2006 11:47 PM
To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
Subject: Re: Two excellent articles on shortcomings in teaching IB in this issue of AIB insights by Tipton and Dunning
C: Prof. Dunning, Prof. Tipton
I don't know. I'll ask them. Prof. Dunning, Prof. Tipton? Are you blissfully unaware of IB simulations?
I think what Dunning and Tipton are questioning are the validity of the theoretical, empirical, and experience-based underpinnings of things such as simulations and textbooks. I unfortunately have not personally used INTOPIA B2B, however, were the particular modules relating to national cultures and practises developed by resident natives of the cultures? If not, then we have another northern North American (i.e., north of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Mexico</st1:place></st1:country-region>) product purporting to be universal. Does it accurately simulate cultures under Shariah law? How about a business with employees all from one of the 206 major tribal cultures in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Uganda</st1:place></st1:country-region>? Are the economic underpinnings the typical 19th century Northern Europe white men's rules, or do they work in Muslim and highly colletive socities? What about places where organised crime is more powerful than the Government?
Regards,
Romie
"Thorelli, Hans B." <thorelli@indiana.edu>wrote:
Dear Dr Litrell,
Authors Tipton and Dunning are apparently blissfully unaware of IB simulations, providing reality based learning of the
multinational corporation in action. The home page of internet-based INTOPIA B2B (below) provides an example; the game has been, or is used by some 150 universities in 48 countries around the globe.
Regards,
Dr Hans B Thorelli
Distinguished Professor of Bus.Admin. Em.
Kelley <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">School of Business</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Indiana</st1:state></st1:place> University
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Bloomington</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">IN</st1:state> <st1:postalcode w:st="on">47405-1701</st1:postalcode> <st1:country-region w:st="on">USA</st1:country-region></st1:place>
Phone:+1 (812) 333-3174 Fax: +1 (812) 855-6440
INTOPIA Home Page: http://www.intopiainc.com
<http:>Email: thorelli@indiana.edu
________________________________
From: <st1:personname w:st="on">Management Education and Development Discussion</st1:personname> [mailto:MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Romie Littrell
Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 7:00 PM
To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
Subject: Two excellent articles on shortcomings in teaching IB in this issue of AIB insights by Tipton and Dunning
Two excellent articles on shortcomings in
teaching international business in this issue of
AIB Insights by Dunning and Tipton, available at http://aib.msu.edu/publications/aibinsights.asp
"Who dare to teach must never cease to learn."-John Cotton Dana
Romie F. Littrell, BA, MBA,PhD, FIAIR, An fánaí fiáin
Faculty of Business, Auckland University of Technology, N.Z.
http://www.romielittrellpubs.homestead.com/
http://www.crossculturalcentre.homestead.com/
PARTICIPATE in a study of leadership & values:
hppt://www.leadershipvalues.homestead.com/
________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger <http:>- with free PC-PC calling and photo sharing.
"Who dare to teach must never cease to learn."-John Cotton Dana
Romie F. Littrell, BA, MBA,PhD, FIAIR, An fánaí fiáin
Faculty of Business, Auckland University of Technology, N.Z.
http://www.romielittrellpubs.homestead.com/
http://www.crossculturalcentre.homestead.com/
PARTICIPATE in a study of leadership & values:
hppt://www.leadershipvalues.homestead.com/
________________________________
All new Yahoo! Mail <http: _x002f_us.rd.yahoo.com="" _x002f_mail="" _x002f_uk="" _x002f_taglines="" _x002f_default="" _x002f_nowyoucan="" _x002f_pc_mag="" _x002f__x002a_http:="" _x002f_evt="40565/*http:/uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html">"The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine
"Who dare to teach must never cease to learn."-John Cotton Dana
Romie F. Littrell, BA, MBA,PhD, FIAIR, An fánaí fiáin
Faculty of Business, Auckland University of Technology, N.Z.
http://www.romielittrellpubs.homestead.com/
http://www.crossculturalcentre.homestead.com/
PARTICIPATE in a study of leadership & values:
hppt://www.leadershipvalues.homestead.com/
________________________________
Now you can scan emails quickly with a reading pane <http: _x002f_us.rd.yahoo.com="" _x002f_mail="" _x002f_uk="" _x002f_taglines="" _x002f_default="" _x002f_nowyoucan="" _x002f_reading_pane="" _x002f__x002a_http:="" _x002f_evt="40565/*http:/uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html">. Get the new Yahoo! Mail <http: _x002f_us.rd.yahoo.com="" _x002f_mail="" _x002f_uk="" _x002f_taglines="" _x002f_default="" _x002f_nowyoucan="" _x002f_reading_pane="" _x002f__x002a_http:="" _x002f_evt="40565/*http:/uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html">. </http:></http:></http:></http:></http:></thorelli@indiana.edu></http:></thorelli@indiana.edu>
"Who dare to teach must never cease to learn."-John Cotton Dana
Romie F. Littrell, BA, MBA,PhD, FIAIR, An fánaí fiáin
Faculty of Business, Auckland University of Technology, N.Z.
http://www.romielittrellpubs.homestead.com/
http://www.crossculturalcentre.homestead.com/
PARTICIPATE in a study of leadership & values:
hppt://www.leadershipvalues.homestead.com/
Now you can scan emails quickly with a reading pane. Get the new Yahoo! Mail.