1366: Business Decision-Making Game Facilitates Training Effectiveness: A Three-Level Meta-Analysis (13471)

Monday, August 12, 2024

11:30 – 13:00 CT (GMT-5/UTC-5)

Location: Hyatt: Michigan 1A

Session Number: 1366
Paper Session
Shareable link: https://cdmcd.co/Wypv9q

Author(s)

YC

Yingni Cai

The Chinese U. of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China
ZL

Zheng Liu

The Chinese U. of Hongkong (Shenzhen), China
MH

Mengzhen Hu

Nanjing Normal U., China
TP

Tianxing Pang

The U. of Virginia, United States
WL

Wenjing LUO

-, China
JC

Juanxi Cheng

Chinese U. of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China
YW

Yutong WEI

The Chinese U. of Hongkong, Shenzhen, China

Business decision-making games are designed to replicate real-world business scenarios, challenging trainees to make strategic decisions in management, finance, marketing, and strategic planning. Despite their widespread use, a comprehensive evaluation of the training effectiveness of these games in business educational settings is lacking. To address this gap, we conducted a three-level meta-analysis to estimate the effectiveness of business decision-making games and identified the conditions under which these games are most effective. We focused on four dimensions of training effectiveness: reactions, learning process, learning performance, and motivation. We identified a total of 41 primary studies utilizing a between-subjects experimental design (N = 8376), yielding 94 effect sizes. The results demonstrated that business decision-making games effectively enhance management training effectiveness (g = .53, 95% CI [.35, .71]), resulting in improvements across reactions (g = .44), learning process (g = .66), learning performance (g = .45), and motivations (g = .85). This positive effect remained consistent and robust across a wide variety of conditions, including participant characteristics, game features, implementation methods, and research designs. Practical and theoretical implications for business education are discussed.

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