Ideas for using critical incidents in oral debriefing from a business strategy simulation game

Reflecting on events or experiences can be an important means by which learning is achieved. Specifically, a critical incident is some kind of significant occurrence that can stimulate learning through questioning what has happened and why. Essentially, critical incident analysis is concerned with reflecting on causes and impacts. An incident can be regarded as critical when the action taken has contributed to an outcome, either positive or negative. A series of incidents can be reflected upon in a debriefing setting using a structured approach to help to challenge people's assumptions and promote personal and professional learning. Critical incidents are a good medium for achieving reflective learning on the nature of situational events. However, there are a number of reasons why it can be difficult to learn from incidents in the real world, and why therefore, simulation games may facilitate effective learning through the application of a critical incident method. This working paper seeks to present ideas on how critical incidents can be used by instructors in oral debriefing to stimulate learning in a business simulation gaming setting. This is based on a case study of using a total enterprise game named the Business Strategy Game to teach part-time, post-graduate/post-experience students. The students, in teams, took on the roles of Directors of a global corporation and played out strategies and decisions over a simulated period in the life of the company. Following this, students were orally debriefed and assessed on what they had learnt about strategy making from the critical incidents that surfaced in course of playing the game. Three sources of critical incidents were introduced during the debriefing, upon which the students could comment, namely: macro-environment, competitive environment and internal environment of each simulated company. Preliminary findings from the debriefings has indicated that using a critical incident method did provide significant opportunity for students to think causally and better reflect on the connections between actions and consequences under circumstances of gaming complexity. An agenda for a fuller qualitative analysis of the student debriefings is proposed.