Business Games – Teaching Accounting in an Enjoyable Way
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure” (Prof. Rade)
Teaching and attending accounting classes is definitely not counted among the most exciting things on this planet. So how to make it more interesting and intriguing? Is there a way at all?
Yes, there is. Prof. Katja Rade introduced a business simulation in her Financial Accounting class in the first semester of the MBA program.
The business game simulates a company and its control levers that help a company to improve its profitability. The participants lead the company over several years from the top management's perspective and thus experience a new perception of entrepreneurial decisions and actions.
The participants perform tasks like depreciating fixed assets, paying interest on long term liabilities, creating a financial statement including P&L and Balance Sheet, calculating the Return on Assets and Cash Flow, reducing fixed overhead costs etc.
Business games are a popular component of management trainings. In a "safe environment" students can test how it is to control a company. Being compared with a flight simulator, mistakes can be made without anyone being hurt.
Other benefits of a business simulation are that it strengthens the entrepreneurial thinking of employees, i.e. the ability to invest time and money where the greatest success of the company lies and conveys awareness of costs to employees.
Text: JS
Pfotos: Michael Karalus
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