Hatfield Company Model—A Management Learning Game

Abstract

The game is played through successive quarters over three years by teams of business students and executives who make decisions typical of the marketing, production, investment and financial operations of firms acting independently in a large but imperfect market. The decisions are fed into a computer which reports quarterly results including accounting transactions and balance sheets. Features of its design are determinacy, a single product and noninteraction between teams. The design allows for flexible administration of teams in a competitive atmosphere or separate individual play. The model is structured to permit extensive use of the techniques of economics, accounting, systems behaviour, resource programming and planning and mathematics. Because the computer terminal is restricted in speed the student learns how to supplement output with reports, graphs, tabulations and contour maps. The program is written in BASIC and is readily convertible to other languages.