Management games for research on strategyManagement games for research on strategy

Abstract

This doctoral thesis deals with management games as a method to be employed in empirical research on strategic ma nagement. We believe that management games, as a kind of laboratory experiment , are underestimated in management in contrast to other sciences. The general aim of this thesis is demonstrate the viability of management games to access va lid data for empirical experimentation in the field of strategic management. Sp ecific aims include: (a) to provide an extensive theoretical study on the use of management games; (b) to describe the experience in the development of a mana gement game; and finally; (c) to apply the developed management game on empi rical studies related to strategic consensus, top management team divers ity and firm R&D strategic orientation. The general results indicate that manageme nt games could play an important role in building theories, helping the research ers by replicating a nd criticizing prior field research; testing new conditions and variables by controlling the experiment; and proposing new altern atives for visualizing models and correlations among variables and constructs . The experiments indicate that the developed management game facilitated the test of new consensus measures and the access to reliable data. The results for the consensus-performance relationship also indicate that: (a) the bivariate consensus-performance relationship is positive and statistically significant considering that consensus were taken on sequence of decision making; (b) that consensus- performance relationship could be strengthened in presence of a task-related diversity team moderator; and (c) the firm R&D strategic orientation, an uncertain and risky issue, negatively moderates the consensus- performance relationship