The Business Simulation Blog

Management in organizations is the function that coordinates the efforts of people to accomplish goals and objectives by using available resources efficiently. As such, it is a vitally important cross-departmental discipline that relies on long term strategic thinking, timely communication, and effective decision-making based on often times incomplete information.

Running such a multifaceted business as a hotel requires a great deal of cross departmental know-how of its leadership. To really understand the nuances of customer satisfaction and how it relates to bottom line performance, hotel managers must deal with a variety of decisions that span the entire chain of the organization. Teaching hospitality management is thus a complex endeavor that can benefit greatly from a risk free practical learning environment to consolidate what the students have learned in the class.

As we have covered in previous articles, business simulations are already a fantastic supplementary tool on their own in higher education learning. Today we talked to Associate Professor Anssi Tarkiainen at Lappeenranta University of Technology about how he is taking the use of simulations to the next level. Professor Tarkiainen has been using Cesim Global Challenge for 5 years in a capstone course for the internationally accredited (EPAS accreditation) Master’s in International Marketing Management program offered at the LUT School of Business and Management. Recently, LUT was ranked as the best young university in the Nordic countries by Times Higher Education 100 under 50 rankings.

JAMK University of Applied Sciences is an international higher education institution in Finland with an expertise in 8 different fields of study. JAMK has more than 9,000 students and experts from over 70 countries.

So your course is about to start, your students have been introduced to the business simulation game component, and you are ready to wish them luck on the first round. However whether you are an experienced user or a first timer, there are a number of often overlooked features that can make your life as an instructor easier when running a simulation based class.