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Advanced International Business Simulation

Advanced Simulation Academic Calendar

AGV Subsidiary Policy: AGV has published a Subsidiary Policy which students are expected to follow. Please review at your convenience. Notable change to subsidiary policy = limit of 300000 share issue for the subsidiary firm.

Scenarios: AGV will provide each professor with a weekly overview of scenarios to be covered during the simulation. This will provide you with the opportunity to involve topics in your classroom (i.e. ethics, WTO, labor issues). Scenarios are reported on each week for students in "The Boss" with communications direct to firms going to webct mailboxes.

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International Joint Venture Subsidiary Project:

cdanielsGlobal View Joint-Ventures; A Perspective from the Lead Instructor of the Joint-Venture Subsidiary Project Charles Daniels

Global View offers teams two important growth strategies: one, the possibility to sell product to other firms on the B2B market; the other, the possibility to open a subsidiary. (Teams with subsidiaries have won the game the last two years.) The more ambitious teams often solicit their instructors and Global View administrators about the possibility of opening a second subsidiary. These requests were always refused given a long-standing rule of only one subsidiary per firm.

However, this year it was decided that a team which had already opened a subsidiary would be allowed to open a second one upon the condition that it form a joint-venture to do so. Each joint-venture partner would own 25.5 % of the shares issued and would split dividend payments in the same proportions. It was believed that offering students the experience and the challenge of building a collaborative inter-firm relationship has definite pedagogical benefits.

Major decision areas and tasks for running a joint venture concern establishing the initial market position and marketing mix, performing demand and cash flow forecasting, establishing equitable product sourcing decisions (since the two partners jointly supply the subsidiary with product), and handling decisions regarding transfer pricing and dividends.

This spring firms 73 and 75 launched the first joint-venture in Global View history. Since their experience is presented below, my comments will be limited to the following observations. Firm 73 is composed of German students, while firm 75 is a French team. The literature on conflict management distinguishes between functional and dysfunctional conflict. A low to medium level of conflict over task and process decisions is regarded as healthy and constructive, while interpersonal conflict is always dysfunctional.

In this particular joint-venture, it quickly appeared that cultural differences were a source of friction. This was true with regard to both leadership style and task performance. A leader of the German team was considered to be overbearing by her French counterparts. Tactful behaviour on the part of the French team leader and mutual comprehension on both sides were successful in alleviating this problem. Friction also surfaced with regard to the execution of a task assigned to one of the teams. Regrettably this incident created an antagonism that may not be so easily dissipated. This last point raises the point of a dysfunctional relationship conflict arising out of task performance.

In general, business simulation games leave students on their own to sort out team problems. Helping students to do so is consistent with the espoused goal in most business schools of developing interpersonal skills for handling conflict and promoting cohesive teamwork. Instructors participating in Global View are often aware of the functional and dysfunctional conflicts which occur. However, their latitude for intervening is limited. Courses in Management, as opposed to Strategic Management, usually cover aspects of human behaviour, working in teams, and leadership styles. It is believed that such a course would be especially pertinent to schools participating in the Global View simulation game.

Working in a German-French Joint Venture; A Perspective from the German Team-Leader Miriam B.

We made the decision to create a joint venture directly after we heard that this opportunity came up. After the successful start of our subsidiary, we decided to look for a joint venture partner. So we checked who our nearest competitor was and asked him to work with us. As a result NOX (firm 75) became our partner. The idea was to control them in view of gaining NPV points by assuring that we will get the same number (NPV points) from the joint venture.

Who could have foreseen that this also would become a great lesson in how international groups can work together and what kind of problems and experiences will come up. After some group work last semester with international students, it was clear that this might become an interesting experience in view of different understandings of keeping deadlines and the way of doing things. At the beginning of our exchange program we heard from several people that studying and preparing presentations with French students might be difficult as they are used to doing everything in the last minute. For us this was something absolutely unbelievable and impossible.

Unfortunately this was true and caused some problems last semester. But after our first meeting it became very fast clear that this would be a well working relationship. The possible problems our coordinator saw, like fixing a working strategy or coordinating different styles of work didn't become a problem for us as we fixed very quickly regulations and how to do everything. Something that supported this situation very much was that we agreed about the price and marketing strategy and how to distribute benefits and orders.

So in general we can really say that this has been a really interesting experience, as the whole game is, and we learned a lot on intercultural working and communication.

Working in a French-German Joint Venture; A Perspective from the French Team-Leader Thomas Puig

Working in a joint venture was something that was really special. We agreed to work with Onéor (firm 73) because they seemed confident, and hard working people! At first, they thought that we were idiots, because we didn't have the same approach to the game : we only spent 1-2 hours on it per week, but all our team is working on Global View (not just one person per firm, and not much work for the others), plus we tend to do everything at the last minute, which is very good for the nerves, and we better get used to it since it's how firms are in real life. And why change our strategy since it has been working so well?

It was funny because I've seen that german people are very organized, but sometimes very annoying: when you do something for the joint venture and you receive an email with a thousand points on what you did wrong (but did we really?), it's quickly getting on your nerves. It was one of the things I thought that was very rude. People in firms have to say what they think diplomatically, and furthermore, the corrections that were made were very subjective : who knows who was right? I mean our firm is successful, so why act as if we didn't know what we were doing?

I guess this was one of the cultural differences I have found. We don't work the same way, and we try to say things with more diplomacy, so that people don't think they're worthless! Aside from these "troubles", we did got along very well for the strategy of the joint venture: we wanted to try a very high price, and trying the upper-end market was a very nice thing to do. I think what we've learn so far during this experience, is that team work is what makes a team great. NoX was working well because of that, and that's why we got along so well with Miriam. If we had to start the game again, I think NoX would probably try to work again with Onéor.

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Virtual Team Project

This study, led by Dr. Jane LeMaster from UT Pan Am, places students from several international universities together on a "virtual team". These teams will work together online through e-mail, chat rooms, and other Internet communication options to make weekly decisions for their firm and maneuver through a challenging business environment. For more details click here.

Introduction to Business Program:

Chat room tutor sessions can be arranged for your students with the program administrator

AGV Code of Conduct: AGV has published a Code of Conduct which students are expected to follow. Please review at your convenience.

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