Correlations between Academic Achievement, Aptitude, and Business Game Performance

Authors

  • Joseph Wolfe

Abstract

As business games were initially used as business school integrative devices and management development aids, it was natural that the first “rigorous” and quantitative evaluations of them would be in the form of correlational studies between a player’s previous academic achievements and the results obtained by teams of players in a particular simulation. To have any credibility, and to make at least a cursory effort at satisfying the educator’s demand for internal validity, it was hypothesized that high academic achievers would outperform those players who had proved to be low academic achievers. Certainly if a simulation “is a slice of reality” and a business education prepares an individual for a real-world life of productive activity, the integrative, capstone experience provided by a complex business game should endorse, authenticate, and vindicate all that the student/player had been exposed to in an academic career [1,6]. Unfortunately, for both the opponents and proponents of business gaming, the results of those correlational studies have led to mixed results and impressions.

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Published

1978-03-13