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September 29, 2004
McCombs School and Enspire License New Approach to
Teaching Business Ethics
AUSTIN, Texas—Educators and corporations have a new tool to
teach business ethics: the Executive Challenge, a multiplayer,
online game that forces participants to make ethically
challenging management decisions in a simulated business
environment.
Described by The Wall Street Journal as “Sim City for the
business world” (May 10, 2004), the Executive Challenge was
originally developed as a board game for MBA students at The
University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business.
Steven Tomlinson, a playwright and senior finance lecturer at
McCombs, conceived of the game as a complement to the school’s
required ethics curriculum. Tomlinson worked with screenwriters,
corporate executives and professional game developers to create
a simulation that made ethical decision-making real.
In the inaugural version, played by 150 MBA students last year,
teams competed for cash prizes by navigating virtual
corporations through scenarios that condensed the management
decisions of a year into one rapidly unfolding day. The
scenarios forced teams to balance ethical demands with the drive
for increased revenues.
The success of the experience led the school to partner with
Enspire Learning, an Austin-based company specializing in
e-learning content, to license an online version for general
release.
MBA students at the McCombs School will play the next Executive
Challenge on campus at The University of Texas at Austin Oct.
11, the same day Enspire (www.enspire.com/) begins selling the
online version. The university will receive a portion of the
revenues from all sales of the game.
“Teaching ethics can be incredibly difficult,” said Bjorn
Billhardt, CEO of Enspire, “because theory learned in the
classroom is often forgotten when leaders are faced with the
enormous pressures of the real world.”
Business-world relevance is one of the game’s strengths. This
year at McCombs, the student players will have to weigh the
ethical pressures of issues facing corporate America such as
outsourcing, campaign contributions, “no-bid” contracts in Iraq
and intellectual property theft. The flexible game design can
adapt to include current events and issues of particular
relevance to individual organizations.
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
