Satoshi Sugahara
The objective of the present study is to investigate the motivation for applying a Game Based Learning (GBL) to business education and training for business persons and practitioners working at Small And Medium-Sized Entities (SMEs). To explore this topic, we conducted an exploratory study focusing on a highly successful GBL initiative called the Management Game (MG). The MG is a board game type of GBL that helps participants learn management and accounting skills by playing. The MG is organized as a weekend workshop for training purposes for participants who are usually managers or employees of SMEs.
For the data collection, an open-ended type questionnaire was administered to collect qualitative data regarding the participants' perceptions of the MG as a business training tool and its learning efficacy. Data for this research were collected from business persons who participated in an MG workshop on February 25 to 26, 2017. A total of 69 people attended the two-day workshop for training in business and accounting skills and competencies. Of the 69 participants, 58 agreed to respond to our non-anonymous questionnaire.
The results of our study showed that the most common motivation for using MG as an educational tool for business practitioners is to teach the idea of participative management to employees. We also found that the aim of teaching participative management skills is to foster employees' decision-making skills from a managerial perspective. In addition, accounting literacy is regarded as an antecedent to developing effective decision-making skills.