The Business Policy Game:

An International Simulation

The Windows version of the 4th edition, released in December 1998, proved to be a very solid enhancement. The 5th edition builds upon this foundation with a significant number of changes to enhance its educational value. Most of the changes have been made to enhance students' learning experiences. Other changes have been made primarily to benefit the administrator. Many of the changes benefit both parties, thus you might want to scan down both lists. The 5th edition was released in 2002, and we continue to improve it with updates and additions which currently date to late 2007.

Features to Enhance Education

The strong international component added in the 4th edition has been enhanced by offering a choice of countries to represent the fourth market area. Each country includes the addition of a separate economic environment with realistic cost and demand relationships and CPI and GDP measures. The environments are connected via relevant exchange rates.
Player output may be printed in English, Portuguese, or Spanish or a combination of the three via parameter settings.
A domestic competition may be provided by chosing Merica 4 for the fourth market area instead of a foreign country.
Financial reports are structured by market. Thus firms can assign each market area to an individual member who is responsibile for the performance of that market area.
Sales offices are located in each market area. The sales office in an area is responsible for managing its own inventory and its sales force. During any quarter, current inventory plus the units ordered and received by the office are available for sale. If the office does not place an order, sales will be limited to inventory on hand in the market area.
If a firm decides it no longer wants to compete in an area, it may close its sales office and leave the area. It may later decide to reenter the area by opening a new sales office.
If a firm decides it has too much productive capacity, it may close a plant in any area. The plant is sold to a local developer. A new plant may be built in the area at a later date if productive capacity is desired.
A graphing program is built into the game software. Graphs can be used to quickly assess the performance of the teams in a World over the number of years of play or the number of quarters of play. The Graph function is located in the Reports menu.
Sales force separations are reported so that teams can more easily keep track of their sales force.
All computer generated reports may be viewed on the computer screen and any of the reports may be printed as needed.
The menus for the programs follow common user interface guidelines.

Several features which we believe to be particularly user friendly are:

The context sensitive help feature available on command when entering decisions.
A QuickStart Manual accessable via the Player's Program menu.
A Player's Program Tutorial accessable via the Player's Program menu.
Thorough checking of decisions when they are entered with informative messages when errors are made.
An expanded decision support system for use with Microsoft Excel.
Financial statements available in comma separated variable format for importing directly into Excel.
The decision form in the manual exactly matches the form the screen displays when decisions are entered.
Players can save simulation reports each quarter to a separate folder for future reference using a menu command.
Administrators can save the history and reports for each quarter in a separate folder using a menu command.

Features to Enhance Administration

Construction lead times have been reduced to make the game easy to use when operating on a semester or a quarter system. A new line requires one quarter, a new addition two quarters and a new plant three quarters to construct.
A world may have from three to eight teams competing. This provides flexibility in fitting the game to varying class sizes.
The game may be simplified by limiting competition to one country when initializing the simulation.
Numerous parameters have been added to allow easy modifcation of customer demand, production output, and marketing variable effectiveness.
A company may be shut down at any time via parameter settings.
Both scoring programs provide a set of scores each quarter. If you decide to stop the game at the completion of a quarter other than the last quarter of a year, current scores are available.
When using individual decision entry on floppy disk, a Data Disk is used which contains only decision sets and output data. This reduces disk problems. It also simplifies disk preparation.
Individual decision entry may also be accomplished using flash drives. However, U3 flash drives do not work.
Program installation is via InstallShield.

The Business Policy Game is a general management simulation that provides students with a challenging decision-making exercise. It has been used successfully with groups of upper-class undergraduates and graduate students in business administration and in executive development programs. The simulation also has been used successfully for many years in the International Collegiate Business Strategy Games Competition.

Each simulation participant requires a copy of The Business Policy Game: Player's Manual. Each team needs access to the player's program unless the game administrator uses the central decision entry option. The Business Policy Game: Instructor's Manual and the administrator's program are to be used only by the instructor.