Game playing and operations management education

There is a well established tradition of teaching operations management (OM) via various kinds of production game: real players making real decisions in a practical, albeit simulated, situation. Surprisingly, there has been much less conceptual reflection on the process and content of this approach to OM education, something this paper aims to begin to rectify. The first section clarifies terminology and defines the game concept in terms of a transformation process. The second section reviews the extant population of teaching games and deploys the conceptual model to generate a number of specific observations that underpin a discussion about the content and process of OM-related game playing. In the conclusions, particular attention is drawn to (1) the predominant content of OM-related games has not developed with the same emphasis as the taught subject with manufacturing planning and control still dominating (2) the tendency to produce complex OM games requiring IT support, and (3) the removal of competition in gaming in favour of facilitating experimentation by players. The paper finishes with a discussion of potential further work.