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Playing Arthashastra to identify Chanakyas -- Simulated board game reaches final round

Preeti Mehra

NEW DELHI, July 5

WHO says board room games are the prerogative of a privileged few? At the Amity Business School in Noida, a war of nerves is being enacted between 30-odd companies to see who has the best management talent to make it to the top.

This is the Delhi round of the 10th National Competition for Business Management Simulations (NMG 2001) organised by the All-India Management Association (AIMA). After rounds in Bangalore, Kolkata and Mumbai, the scene has shifted to Delhi where the fina lists will compete on July 9.

The tension is perceptible, as the games administrator, Prof Vinod Dumblekar, explains the rules of what has been christened the Chanakya Business Decision Game. The special software developed for AIMA is used to simulate an industry and board room scena rio while a team of four from each company work out the solutions. After 19 corporate teams in Mumbai with two emerging winners, 11 in Kolkata with one winner, 17 in Bangalore and two winners, it is the turn of Delhi with over 30 teams to declare its fou r winning teams.

At the grand finale, the regional winners will play among themselves with the top-notch team to represent India at the Asian Regional Management Games-2001 on September 4-5 in Malaysia.

How is the game played? Each company sends a group of four managerial executives from the four fields of finance, marketing, production and overall administration to constitute the management board of a computer-simulated company. One serves as the CEO, while the others work in tandem to drive their company to a winning position.

The parameters, such as the market conditions, the economic and political climate, are defined. Using this information, the team has to make its business decisions regarding production, marketing, pricing strategies, cost management, product development, etc. It also has to look at details like labour cost, godown warehousing charges, overheads, R&D expenditure, new plant capacity, cost reduction projects, etc. In short, everything it takes to make a company out-perform its competitors.

While the decisions demand that executives give the best of what they learned at business school, participation in such an event helps in more ways than one. It fine-tunes skills of decision-making, team participation and viewing a company from the macro -perspective.

``For the last two years, we're using a new software and it has given us enormous flexibility in the game,'' he says. Having run the show for the past three years, he sees the game as a perfect self-learning medium. ``Watch their faces, you won't find th is kind of animation in most sport. Right now, each team is running a company. Through this exercise the learning is very fast,'' he says.

In fact, AIMA has also been using the game as a training tool for the past two years.

And what is as interesting as the game itself are the results at the NGM for the past nine years. Seven out of nine times it is the public sector that has emerged winner. While the private sector participates on a one-off basis, the PSUs are regular and passionate about participation. Besides, it is they who don't carry lap-tops to the game.

``The private sector comes with their lap tops, the public sector with open minds,'' says Prof Dumblekar who is convinced that though the game offers the cutting edge in competition, lap tops don't help in planning strategy and taking decisions. ``A chao tic economy needs multi-skilled managers. Today's participants are tomorrow's managers,'' he says.