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The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical comparison of a high-fidelity managerial simulation, assessment center (AC) ratings, to that of a lower fidelity managerial simulation, a video situational judgment test (SJT) in the prediction of manager career success.

Archival data were collected from a large utility company. A measure of general mental ability (GMA), an SJT, and an AC were examined as predictors of career success as measured by increases in salary.

The AC and the video SJT used in this study appeared to assess different constructs, extending previous findings that ACs and written SJTs measure distinct constructs. Furthermore, the AC dimensions and the SJT remained valid predictors of salary over a six year span following the test administration. In addition, the AC explained significant incremental variance beyond GMA and SJTs in career success six years after the assessment.

The SJTs and AC used in this study are similar in psychological fidelity, yet the ACs remained a more valid predictor over time. The recommendation is that lower fidelity simulations should not be used as prerequisites for higher fidelity simulations.

The results lend general support to the value of high-fidelity instruments in predicting longitudinal success.

The paper offers a comparison of the validity of ACs and video SJTs.

Analyses critically the conceptual basis of the management standards developed by the Management Charter Initiative (MCI) and the claims both for and against the utility of the standards. Identifies a number of conceptual weaknesses of the management standards and makes proposals to overcome them. Points out that the lack of empirical evidence to substantiate certain aspects of the MCI’s claims is a major deficiency. Concludes that examples of organizations which have used the management standards and achieved business benefits as a result are urgently needed.

We investigated the relationship between personality and managerial assessment center (AC) dimensions, emphasizing age’s moderating role within volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity (VUCA) simulations.

We analyzed 327 managers and applied the AC method, examining areas like social skills, problem-solving, management and goal striving, openness to change, employee development using the VUCA framework.

We assessed personality metatraits through a questionnaire based on the circumplex model (CPM; Strus, Cieciuch, & Rowinski, 2014), identifying four bipolar metatraits. Results highlighted passiveness and disharmony as negatively correlated with all managerial AC dimensions, with passiveness adversely affecting social skills and problem-solving.

Age’s moderating role emerged as pivotal in the relationship between personality and managerial AC dimensions, especially in specific VUCA contexts. This underscores age’s influence on the interplay between personality and managerial efficacy, suggesting varying predictive capabilities across age groups. The research illuminates the complexities of these relationships, spotlighting age’s nuanced impact.

Explore the use of simulation within managerial accounting principles courses to enhance business integration learning. Course pedagogy and content changes are examined as an alternative approach to traditional lecture. Specific outcome goals include critical thinking, engagement, and communication skills development.

Literature review, stakeholder feedback, assessment examination results.

Stakeholder feedback suggests increased student motivation and engagement can occur with simulation use. A positive impact on student learning is possible where a real-world, competitive decision-making scenario is provided in conjunction with enthusiastic instructor guidance. Further, standardized examinations are available as a means to evaluate assurance of learning goals and continuous improvement models related to assessment.

Highlights the development of quantitative and qualitative decision-making skills.

Students are better prepared for business study through development of decision-making, critical thinking, teamwork, and communication skills.

The use of simulation represents a powerful tool for study of the interdisciplinary nature of business. Instructors may find the feedback herein beneficial as they consider pedagogy alternatives for their managerial accounting principles courses.

Simulation is a powerful analytical technique that plays a role in the development of managers′ problem‐solving and decision‐making skills as well as those skills related to effecting organisational change and dealing with the dynamics of organisational behaviour. An overview is presented of simulation in the health services setting. Two specific hospital simulation applications concerning the design of a same‐day surgery unit and the reallocation of beds among services are described. Each examines the impact on managerial skills and how simulation enhanced those skills. Finally, the implications of using simulation as a strategy for management development are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to extend earlier findings suggesting that affective diversity is always negative for group performance, by examining its influence on managerial decision performance in a more controlled environment.

In an attempt to mitigate some of the many methodological challenges associated with studies in “real-word” contexts, the authors chose to adopt a quasi-experimental research design involving teams of master of business administration students engaged in managerial decision making. This research design is consistent with previous research conducted in the area of affect and individual or group-level outcomes.

The results indicate that both positive and negative affective diversity are positively associated with managerial decision performance, although only the relationship with negative affective diversity is significant. Overall, these findings support the idea that affective diversity may constitute a strength in the context of managerial decision making. These results contrast with the findings of previous studies.

Further quantitative and qualitative investigation is recommended in order to clarify the contradictory results between the current study and previous research. Specifically, this investigation might concern the effect of contingency factors such as type of team (i.e. ad hoc vs long term), type of task and team-level self-regulation ability.

Since the seminal work of Barsade et al. (2000), no further studies have attempted to resolve some of the empirical questions emerging from preliminary research on affective diversity. The paper thus provides new insights into the effects of affective diversity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of simulations in strategy teaching. The authors’ conceptualization is built upon the benefits and limitations of simulations by establishing a link between the skills required to be a competent manager and the capacity of simulations to develop them.

Using deductive theory building, the authors pinpoint the shortcomings of simulations, and offer a framework categorizing managerial skill development using simulations to teach strategic management.

The authors propose a new perspective on the use of simulations to teach strategic management by elaborating on their effectiveness in developing soft skills related to social issues often overlooked in simulations’ learning outcomes. The framework provides propositions concerning the ability of simulations to develop both soft (societal and human) and hard skills (technical and conceptual) needed by managers.

Literature shows that computer‐based platforms significantly increase the learning process. While such tools are widely used in teaching hard skills for decision making, they are relatively absent from teaching soft skills for decision making. Future studies should empirically explore the extent to which computer‐based platforms help cultivate soft skills.

Simulations are one of the most praised learning tools by management students. MBA administrators and strategy instructors would benefit from improved simulations that take into account the social environment surrounding managers. Expanded simulations, then, might lead to better preparation of management candidates for their tasks. In addition, simulation developers may find guidance in the authors’ conceptualizations to construct more effective teaching aids.

Contrary to the mainstream literature that focuses on hard‐skill development through simulations, this study calls attention to simulations’ capacity to foster the soft‐skills required to be a competent manager.

A widespread interest in organizational learning has been precipitated by the need for radical change and strategic renewal in many institutions. “Learning laboratories” or “microworlds” have been proposed as powerful tools for enhancing learning through experience. As costs of technology decline, and software becomes more accessible, the use of customized computer simulations in microworlds will become a feasible option for many management development programmes. Describes a leadership development programme in the telecommunications industry in which a customized microworld computer simulation was used to promote managerial learning, teamwork and co‐operation. Goals of the programme include development of a new paradigm for competition in the industry and a new vision for the organization. A unique feature of the programme was that success of the microworld was measured and systematically evaluated. A significant impact on improved co‐operation, individual and group learning was observed. Discusses characteristics of microworlds and challenges to simulation designers. Finally, presents some guidelines for successful microworld design, together with suggestions for future microworld application.

In this chapter we examine some possibilities of using computer simulation methods to model the interaction of affect and cognition in organizations, with a particular focus on agent-based modeling (ABM) techniques. Our chapter has two main aims. First, we take stock of methodological progress in this area, highlighting important developments in the modeling of affect and cognition in other fields, including psychology and economics. Second, we outline how ABM in particular can help to advance managerial and organizational cognition by building and testing theoretical models predicated on the interaction of affect and cognition. We argue that using ABM for this purpose can improve the level of specificity of cognitive and affective concepts and their interrelationships in organizational theories, yield more behaviorally plausible models of behavior in and of organizations, and deepen understanding of the generative behavioral mechanisms of multi-level organizational phenomena. We highlight possibilities for using ABM to model affect–cognition interactions in studies of mental models, collective cognition, diversity in work groups and teams, and organizational decision-making.

This paper aims to explore organizational structure, efficiency and evolution, and its relationship to bureaucracy. A new mathematical model is utilized to generate theoretically consistent relationships between economic performance and organizational scale and structure, and to develop a taxonomy of organizational structure.

A systems approach is used to model structural evolution and generate consistent, testable hypotheses concerning organizational sustainability and financial performance. This theoretical treatment seeks to reconcile contradictory views of bureaucracy, modeling both positive and negative impacts on performance and behavior. A variant of agency theory is used as an organizing paradigm, based on three competing organizational needs: control, autonomy and ownership of consequences.

Simulations reveal that organizations evolve through five stages of development: from an entry (flat/parallel) stage, through a hybrid or mixed stage, to the massively serial (hierarchical) stage. As firms evolve, the risk/return ratio first falls as employment expands, but later rises as higher levels of hierarchy appear. Eventually, organizational complexity rises sufficiently to produce lower levels of managerial ownership of consequences and professional autonomy, as well as higher levels of control, leading to a collapse of organizational efficiency. A subtle variation of agency theory is revealed: upper-management may maximize organizational depth, increasing salary differences between levels.

This paper uses an internally consistent, deductive framework to elucidate relationships between task complexity, skill level, industry life-cycle and firm age – providing the first known attribute-based metric for organizational complexity. This approach is reminiscent of Perrow’s (1999) non-mathematical treatment of organizational systems complexity.