Business Simulations and Behavioral Economics

Learn About Business Simulations and Behavioral Economics

You might be saying, "Behavioral economics? I'm outa here!" But hang tight because it's actually pretty interesting. I'm going to pull everything from online sources and I won't get into the math or anything overly deep. It is worth reading because behavioral economics goes right to the core of the reason why relativity based business simulations are superior to static model based simulations. Let's dive it.

Behavioral Economics studies the effects of psychological, social, cognitive, and emotional factors on the economic decisions of individuals and institutions and the consequences for market prices, returns, and resource allocation, although not always that narrowly, but also more generally, of the impact of different kinds of behavior, in different environments of varying experimental values. (source: Wikipedia). I have to say that this is actually a pretty easy to understand and overall nicely laid out description of such a complicated topic.Business Simulations are tools utilized to reinforce corporate training and development program material. In most cases, these tools are in the form of a game based method where teams are making decisions in order to see an outcome.There is a substantial criteria that you need to think about when you think about business simulations: Relativity Modeling. This basically means the business simulation should be setup in order for participants to compete with each other. You are probably able to see why behavioral econ and relativity based simulation modeling go hand in hand.By utilizing a relativity model, you are more in line with the advantages of behavioral economics. The nice thing about behavioral econ is that it takes into account the human emotion part of the economics equation(s). Thus, this is why business simulations is such a great fit for leadership development programs. Leadership, at its core, is a behavior. By implementing a business simulation that takes into account the behavior of the program, you are by default adding a real-real world scenario that can be found in no other place.So yes, behavioral economics and relativity based business simulations are cut from the same cloth. This might seem somewhat esoteric, but the general gist is that when you're looking for a business simulation for leadership development, it is important to look for a solution where teams are competing against each other and not against the computer. Also, make sure they aren't competing against the computer and then comparing their scores. This is basically the same thing. Relativity based solutions are more real, more engaging, and proven to be more effective.