The MBA - Developing Future Leaders Through Business Simulations

"The good thing about the simulation is that it makes reference to some of the core management concepts, as well so it's not giving something alien to them, it's structurally aligned to their learning." Dr. Dane Anderton

December's MBA webinar with guest speaker, Dr. Dane Anderton, Senior Lecturer and Director of MBA Programmes at the University of Liverpool's Management School highlighted some key changes and innovative pedagogy in order to develop MBA students as future business leaders. 

In this blog article, we recap these insights shared by Dane and take a look at how and why he uses business simulations to develop students' hard and soft skills, preparing them for managerial promotions and opportunities within industry.

Four Elements of Experiential Learning

At the start of the webinar Dane provided an overview of the Liverpool MBA, Online, Part-time MBA, and Football Industry MBA that the University of Liverpool provides before introducing his tiered system of experiential learning employed across the programmes. These are based on four key activities that students take part in:

1. Business Simulation Activity
2. International Trip to a Business Partner
3. Consultancy Module
4. Work-based Project

This tiered approach isn't designed to "throw people in at the deep end" but to expose a diverse

demographic of MBA students to realistic business and management tasks, contexts and settings. 

"Management is a skill. There's a knowledge base. What we want to avoid is 'accidental managers' those who find themselves in management positions but have not had relevant management training. Simulations like this one allow them to experience complexity and manage multiple personalities." 

Multiple Generations - Varying goals and priorities

"There was a recent survey from AACSB or AMBA where they referenced five different types of generations in the workforce and we see this on our MBA programme and the conversations and dynamics that a simulation throws-up were really interesting."

Dane highlights how these varying backgrounds can often create healthy "conflicts" and "tensions":

"The simulation allows us that platform to tailor our lecture material around that, so dealing with conflict and how conflict can be viewed in a positive way."

"Our city is our classroom"

Dane also uses Liverpool as a case study for students to learn more about businesses within the local area. "Something I like to say is 'our city is our classroom'. We like to use various aspects of the city like the Baltic Triangle which is a creative hub. It's down there where they find out there's multiple generations, multiple sectoral backgrounds... that's what the MBA's about and the simulation helps tease out of some this in the early days [of the programme]."

Defining Managerial Roles Within the Business Simulation

"I created a kind of simulated job market."

In order to foster a realistic management setup, preventing students from creating groups made up of mainly their friends, Dane created his own "simulated job market". Here he outlined five roles that students needed to fulfil:

1. A CEO - someone with leadership qualities i.e. likes to "grab the reigns" as Dane put it
2. An Operations Director who can oversees processes and procurement 
3. A Finance Director to analyse "the numbers"
4. A HR Director to think about the overall workforce - Dane also uses current issues such as workers' strikes within particular rounds of the simulation
5. A Marketing Director to take stock of trends and respond to the simulation's news events

This leads on from and complements lectures on Belbin's 'Team Roles' and Tuckman's 'Stages of Group Development where students get a good idea of a.) their personality traits and b.) the type of management roles that are fulfilled in company organograms. 

Effects of the Pandemic - Distance Learning and Digital Skills

"There's a very mixed picture, some saw online as much more inferior whereas others complemented it." 

Dane also reflected on how the pandemic affected delivery of the MBA at the time, as well as how it's shaped the return of face-to-face teaching. This led to the integration of Microsoft Teams in his teaching and allowed students to upskill in digital tools like Zoom.

"There's a big assumption at the moment that Generation Z are digitally adept. They are not to

some extent. They're social media adept but not necessarily digitally."

Overall, despite the benefits of tools like Microsoft Teams and Zoom, Dane's preference was for the face-to-face, on campus delivery of the Liverpool MBA programme.

"I, personally, love being in the classroom. That's where I can help people... what I want back from the students is: 'you're practitioners, tell me where it doesn't work'... and the simulation is a good way of teasing some of these things out. I think we've seen a good upskilling of digital skills... we "Zoom-in" a lot of our guest speakers now. Students have asked for some hybrid at times; we do lecture capture anyhow. On the whole, the applicants we get are asking for face-to-face." 

Developing Sustainability-Minded Managers

"Within the classroom I use the United Nation's SDG Frameworks which are publicly available to help businesses translate 'what does that means for my business?" 

The prominence of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) across all areas of life has also led to changes in business priorities giving rise to more Sustainability-Minded Managers with a move from Shareholder to Stakeholder-based initiatives. Patagonia, the outdoor clothing company, recently displayed this with their transfer of ownership to become a non-for-profit Foundation with surplus going to environmental research and initiatives. Their advert 'Earth is now our only shareholder' highlighted this radical change of direction. 

So how is the Liverpool MBA fostering a sustainability ethos and developing managers who recognise sustainability as a critical business issue and can embed and align sustainable initiatives

within company strategy. 

"The simulation we use embeds the SDGs into the algorithm. Within the classroom I use the United Nation's SDG Frameworks which are publicly available to help businesses translate what does that means for my business and how might I have an impact using those UN SDGs. It also links back to my previous module about constructive alignment: what is value, how do we perceive value, and the value paradox we have to unpick with theories around growing shareholder value and more effective stakeholder governance." 

The webinar concluded with a demo of our Sustainable Business Simulation where participants could take a look at how the SDGs are linked to the business strategy students design within the simulation and how they need to align 3 or 4 of the 17 SDGs to their company objectives.

DID YOU MISS THE WEBINAR? DON'T WORRY... View the recording

Interested in Future WEBINARs? Sign-up to our newsletter for updates.