Decentralized Business Training: Case Interactive Networked Business Game

The competitive environment around most businesses and companies is changing with accelerating speed. For example, competition is becoming world-wide, new products are developed faster, new producing technologies are emerging, and new delivery channels are available. Organizations are in the midst of whole new challenges and are seeking for better competitive position and productivity. There is a demand for the training methods to be able to describe the characteristic of the recent and future environment and to train the employees to be able to operate effectively and productively in this turbulent environment. Regardless of the level of productivity improvement desired, people as decision-makers and as responsible for task execution need to understand thoroughly what they are part of in order to be able to cope with every day tasks. While the world around businesses is changing with growing speed the business game processing methods are still quite the same as 25 years ago. In the future the use of management games in learning will probably be at least as common as today (Elgood, 1996): Technological development will certainly not slow down, and one will be able to simulate more situations with greater realism and greater ease. ...work will be seen as an activity that should be rewarding in itself, and enjoyable, and therefore something to which game-playing can reasonable be linked. Considering the recent developments there is a distinct demand for new training tools which enable distributed, interactive, real-time learning. What is suggested here is that – compared to more traditional business training – decentralized business game training and the use of Internet tools could be in many ways a better practise in business training. While writing this paper the author is on the final phase of constructing such an interactive learning tool which will be used in decentralized business training.