Journal of Business Ethics Education 11: 217-238.

© 2014 NeilsonJournals Publishing. Author Version

A Theory of Business Ethics Simulation

Games
Wayne F. Buck
Eastern Connecticut State University, USA

Abstract. This article discusses the use of computer-based simulation games to teach business
ethics. The current theory of business ethics simulation games (BESGs) is built on two axioms. The
first is that BESGs are best used to teach students ethical principles, and the second is that this is
best accomplished by presenting students with ethical dilemmas. This article disputes both of these
axioms and proposes new theory. The purpose of BESGs, on the new theory, is to induce in students
certain thought processes, not to simulate business situations. According to this new theory,
simulation games should be designed to induce in players decision-making processes analogous to
those of managers and employees confronted with ethically fraught decisions that have no obvious
right or wrong answer. These ethical conundrums involve balancing risks to others and benefits for
oneself in the course of ordinary, everyday work. This new theory is illustrated by describing a
BESG designed by the author and currently used at several colleges and universities.

Keywords: simulation, games, BP, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf oil spill.

1. Introduction

This article discusses the use of computer-based simulation games to teach

business ethics. The current theory of business ethics simulation games (BESGs)
is built on two axioms. The first is that BESGs are best used to teach students
ethical principles, and the second is that this is best accomplished by presenting
students with ethical dilemmas. This article disputes both of these axioms and
proposes new theory.
The purpose of BESGs, on the new theory, is to induce in students certain
thought processes, not to simulate business situations. According to this new
theory, simulation games should be designed to induce in players decision-
making processes analogous to those of managers and employees confronted with
ethically fraught decisions that have no obvious right or wrong answer. These
ethical conundrums involve balancing risks to others and benefits for oneself in
the course of ordinary, everyday work.
The article proceeds as follows: 1) develops the construct, “business ethics
simulation game”; 2) describes the current state of BESG theory; 3) argues that
the current theory is seriously flawed; 4) proposes an alternative theory; and 5)

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218 A Theory of Business Ethics Simulation Games

describes a BESG developed and used by the author, designed on the basis of the
new theory and currently used at several colleges and universities.

2. The Construct “Business Ethics Simulation Game”

Feinstein, Mann, and Corsun (2002) have argued that the lack of an established
classification scheme for experiential methods in education has hindered
researchers’ ability to rigorously evaluate the success of those methods (p. 732).
The lack of a clear definition of “simulation”—one of the most commonly
discussed and utilized experiential techniques—also hinders any review of the
experiential learning literature.
In order to describe the current state of BESG theory, it is first necessary to
clearly specify what is meant by “business ethics simulation game”. In this
section, this construct will be developed stepwise: first by defining what is meant
by “simulation”, then by what is meant by “simulation game” and “business
simulation game” and finally by defining the “business ethics simulation game”
construct itself.
The construct “simulation” will be treated here as a term of art with a sense
very similar to what Feinstein et al. (2002) call a “computer simulation”. They
describe computer simulations as follows: “Using a symbolic model, computer
simulation attempts to replicate the characteristics of the system through the use
of mathematics or simple object representations” (Wenzler, Kleinlugtenbelt, &
Mayer 2005, propose a typology of simulations, p. 737). For the purposes of this
article, the key aspect of this definition of “simulation” is the use of a symbolic
representation to replicate a system’s behavior. How that symbolic representation
is actually implemented in this or that tangible process is not relevant to theory.
(For example, it would be possible, albeit clumsy, to symbolically replicate a
system using just pencil and paper without a computer.) For this reason, the
qualifier “computer” will be dropped for the purposes of this article.
The definition of “simulation” used here accords with a standard dictionary
definition: “Simulation: 3(a) The imitative representation of the functioning of
one system or process by means of the functioning of another” (“Simulation”,
Merriam-Webster, n.d.). Moreover, this sense of “simulation” is well-established
in the simulation literature going back at least 50 years. Greenlaw (1962) defined
a simulation as “a sequential decision-making exercise structured around a model
of a business operation in which participants assume the role of managing the
simulated operation” (p. 5, quoted in Saunders 1997, p. 105). This use is also
supported by Maier and Größler’s taxonomy of simulations (2000) and Sauvé,
Renaud, Kaufman, and Marquis’s systematic review of the literature on the
essential characteristics of simulations (2007, pp. 251-252).
To be clear, the author is not claiming that this definition of “simulation”
captures what the word “really” means or even recommending that others adopt
Journal of Business Ethics Education 11 219

this definition. The definition adopted here is meant only as a tool to parse the
literature and narrow the scope of this article to a very specific type of experiential
activity: those involving symbolic representations of a system in order to replicate
that system’s behavior. In what follows the reader should, in other words, always
read the word “simulation” as shorthand for “simulation as defined for the
purposes of this article”.
Because of the key role that this construct plays in what follows, it will be
helpful to explicitly unpack the essential elements of a simulation. These are:

1. A target system (usually but not necessarily a real system such as a

natural system, an engineered process, or a social system);

2. A symbolic representation of that target system—i.e., a model, often

but again not necessarily, consisting of equations and algorithms
coded in a computer database or program; and

3. An instance when that model is utilized for the purposes of replicating

the behavior of the target system.

This construct differentiates simulations from role-plays, which some have

called “behavioral simulations” (Summers 2004, p. 210). Role-plays are staged
social interactions that incorporate significant fictional or pretend elements,
including specific roles for participants, acted out in front of an audience
(Feinstein et al. 2002, p. 735). They are not simulations in the sense defined
above, because there is no target system and no symbolic representation of a
target system.
We can now consider what is meant by “simulation game”. Games are rule-
governed social interactions which typically involve multiple players, turn-
taking, multiple rounds of play, scoring, and in the case of competitive games,
competition (Feinstein et al. 2002, pp. 736-737). By themselves, simulations are
not necessarily games, and games are not necessarily simulations. Yet
simulations can be used in games—for example, war games. A simulation game
(SG), therefore, utilizes a symbolic model of a target system with the intention of
replicating the behavior of that system as a central element in a game.
The construct “business simulation game” (BSG) is now readily specified as
a game that utilizes a simulation incorporating a symbolic model whose target
system is a company, industry, market or other business entity or process. BSGs
are well known and used extensively in strategy, marketing and management
courses (Faria, Hutchinson, Wellington, & Gold 2009, Mayer, Dale, Fraccastoro,
& Moss 2011).
“Business ethics simulation game” (BESG) can now be defined as a
simulation game which utilizes a symbolic model of a business entity or process
in an effort to replicate for game players situations of business decision making
where those decisions have ethical implications.
220 A Theory of Business Ethics Simulation Games

Notice that this definition of BESG does not specify any particular purpose
for using BESGs. That is, the definition does not itself limit how and why BESGs
are used. Simulations can be used to investigate the behavior of the target system
of the simulation (e.g., Davis, Eisenhardt, & Bingham 2007, Harrison, Lin,
Carroll, & Carley 2007), to test a hypothesis about the symbolic model itself, or
to teach.
So too BESGs can be used for a variety of purposes. These include
investigating unethical management behavior (Ashkanasy, Windsor, & Trevino
2006, Hunt & Jennings 1997, Lemke & Schminke 1991, Rabl 2011, Rabl &
Kühlmann 2008), as well as teaching business ethics (Schumann, Scott, &
Anderson 2006). The latter application of BESGs is the focus of this article.

3. Current BESG Theory

The literature on the pedagogical use of BSGs is extensive and has been reviewed
several times (e.g., Bragge, Thavikulwat, & Töyli 2010, and Faria et al. 2009).
There is also a growing body of literature on the use of non-simulation games to
teach ethics (e.g., Schrier & Gibson 2010).
A review of the literature on BESGs has identified 12 works—11 articles and
one dissertation—that explicitly and substantively discuss the use of BESGs to
teach ethics. Of these, only four make a contribution to BESG theory: Wolfe and
Fritzsche 1998, Schumann, Anderson, and Scott 1997, Scott, Schumann, and
Anderson 1998, and Schumann, Scott, and Anderson 2006.
Schumann et al. (1997) clearly use “simulation” in the same sense as it is used
in the current article: “Computer-based business simulations use a computer to
model the workings of a business for instructional purposes” (p. 165). They
advocate a very specific approach to BESGs: “To use business simulations to
teach ethics thus requires the instructor to write a case problem that makes use of
the simulation as the vehicle to present students with an ethical dilemma” (p. 168)
where ethical dilemmas are “situations where the manager has to choose between
profit maximization or ethical conduct” (p. 163). This approach is a consistent
theme throughout their three articles (cf. Scott et al. 1998, p. 83, Schumann et al.
2006, p. 196).
Further, Schumann et al. argue that ethical dilemmas used in BESGs must
meet certain criteria: a) the dilemma must present the student with an opportunity
to “clearly” violate an ethical principle, b) the choice between profit and acting
ethically must not be an “easy” choice, in part because c) the impact on the
student’s simulation profits—and hence her grade in the course—must be
“significant” (1997, p. 172, cf. Scott et al. 1998, p. 84, Schumann 2006, pp. 202-
203).
Schumann et al. (1997) present an example of an ethical dilemma one might
incorporate into a simulation game: giving a player a choice between fixing a
safety problem at great expense or bribing the safety inspector at much less
Journal of Business Ethics Education 11 221

expense. Three additional ethical dilemmas are presented in Scott et al. 1998 (pp.
85-88) and two more in Schumann et al. 2006 (pp. 206-216). All have in common
the choice between improving profits by committing a clearly unethical act, on
the one hand, and doing the “right” thing at the expense of profits on the other.
These authors do not say explicitly that adding ethical dilemmas into a BSG
is the only or even the best way to use BESGs to teach ethics. Yet in three articles,
published over a 10 year period, they do not mention any alternative approaches.
This suggests a pedagogical principle: the essential difference between BSGs and
BESGs is that the latter present students with ethical dilemmas (of the sort
described by these three authors).
These authors do, however, explicitly state the purpose of presenting ethical
dilemmas: to teach ethical principles. There is, according to the authors, no
fundamental difference between teaching management principles and teaching
ethical principles (Schumann et al. 1997, p. 164). Confronting students with
ethical dilemmas supports teaching ethical principles because the choices
students face provide an opportunity for the instructor to teach students about the
ethical principles and give them practice in applying those principles (Schumann
et al. 2006, p. 198).
Other scholars also advocate incorporating explicit ethical dilemmas into
BSGs as a way to transform them into educational BESGs in order to teach
business ethics: Fritzsche and Rosenberg (1989), Ullman and Brink (1992), and
Wolfe and Fritzsche (1998).
Wolfe and Fritzsche (1998) extend the discussion of ethical dilemmas in
Schumann et al. by systematizing the characteristics of ethical dilemmas. They
identify six axes: type of ethical violation (“transgression”), source of the
violation, cause, type of damage, magnitude of damage and type of recipient. For
example, they identify five types of ethical violation: bribery, coercion,
deception, theft, and unfair discrimination (p. 49). They also contribute two new
ethical dilemmas (“vignettes”).
The articles mentioned above contain an implicit theory of BESG. Because
this theory first appeared in Schumann, Anderson and Scott (1997), I will call this
the SAS theory of BESGs. The implicit theory that emerges claims:

1. BESGs, when used to teach business ethics, are best used to teach
conceptual, abstract knowledge of ethical principles and to give
students practice in applying those principles.

2. These pedagogical objectives are achieved by presenting students in

simulation games with a choice between benefiting themselves by
violating an ethical principle, on the one hand, and disadvantaging
themselves by acting in accordance with ethical principles, on the
other.
222 A Theory of Business Ethics Simulation Games

3. The decisions presented to players in BESGs have ethical implications

in virtue of being ethical dilemmas.

4. Ethical dilemmas arise under every ethical theory, and therefore

BESGs do not presuppose any particular ethical theory.

These features of the implicit BESG theory are readily apparent from the
articles themselves. There are two less obvious, but equally important, aspects of
this implicit theory:

5. What matters in business ethics is the ethical quality of individuals’

decisions.

6. The ethical salience of BESGs arise from their ability to simulate

business situations, specifically business situations that present
participants with ethical dilemmas.

An assumption in SAS—shared by many, perhaps most, business ethicists—

is that unethical behavior by a business is the result of unethical behavior of
individuals. Implicit in SAS is the claim that BESGs improve the ethics of
businesses by encouraging individuals to reflect on the ethics of their own
decisions and thereby make more ethical individual decisions. BESGs are able to
have this effect, according to SAS, because BESGs replicate business situations
involving ethical dilemmas.

4. A Critique of SAS

For all intents and purposes, SAS as described above represents the current state
of BESG theory. Note that Anderson, Schumann, Scott, Wolfe and Fritzsche do
not present explicit arguments in support of any of these six tenets, whether on
conceptual or empirical grounds. Indeed, they treat their view of BESGs as
unproblematic, perhaps even too obviously true to require a defense.
Yet SAS is not obviously true. Indeed, in what follows I will present three
arguments against SAS. First, I will argue a reductio ad absurdum: if the SAS
theory is correct, BESGs are necessarily either ineffective or unethical. Since it
cannot be true that all BESGs used to teach business ethics are either ineffective
or unethical, the proposed theory must be rejected. Second, I will challenge some
of the key assumptions underlying SAS. And finally, I will propose an alternative
theory of BESGs that avoids these problems.
The reductio argument begins with the central claim of SAS: BESGs should
present students with ethical dilemmas, that is, a choice between benefiting
themselves by violating an ethical principle, on the one hand, and disadvantaging
themselves by acting in accordance with ethical principles, on the other.
Journal of Business Ethics Education 11 223

Consider the ethical dilemma devised by the SAS authors themselves: a

player must choose between fixing a safety problem or bribing a safety inspector.
The cost of fixing the problem is six times the cost of bribing the inspector
(Schumann et al. 1997, pp. 175-177). Clearly, a student who decides to do the
“right” thing by fixing the problem significantly harms her simulation profits,
lowering her grade in the course.
What about the student who decides to “bribe” the inspector? The obvious
fact is that this student does not, and cannot, actually offer a bribe. There is no
actual inspector, and no money actually changes hands, so no actual unethical
behavior can occur. The “unscrupulous” student merely pretends to bribe, and
pretending to bribe (particularly when everyone one involved knows there is no
actual bribe) is not unethical.
Students confronted with the SAS dilemma in fact face no genuine moral
dilemma. Their choice is between actually harming themselves, on the one hand,
and pretending to engage in some unethical action, on the other. Given these
alternatives, deciding to do the “right” thing would in reality be nothing more than
a gratuitous act of self-inflicted harm. The philosopher John Searle has pointed
out that simulated weather is not weather (Searle 1990); likewise, a simulated
ethical dilemma is not an ethical dilemma.
Students are, of course, well aware that there is no one to actually harm or
treat unfairly in a BESG. It becomes tempting for students to treat the BESG as
“just a game” and hence not take the intended learning seriously. This “it’s just a
game” attitude is likely what accounts for the fact that students often seem to
suspend moral reasoning when playing simulation games (Reall, Bailey, & Stoll
1998).
SAS requires a BESG to present students with genuine moral dilemmas, and
this means genuine opportunities to act unethically (not just to pretend to act
unethically) in pursuit of profit and a higher grade or to act ethically (not just to
pretend to act ethically) and thereby forego profits, risking a lower course grade.
Just as a strategy-oriented BSG gives students an opportunity to strategically
“screw up”, a BESG can be an BESG only if it presents students with genuine,
not pretend, opportunities to behave unethically. Moreover, an opportunity to act
unethically is genuine only if students know they can “get away with it” or, if they
are discovered, know they will not punished.
One way to solve this problem would be to require that the modeled (i.e.,
imaginary) injuries in a BESG trigger real harm to others. However, merely
causing harm to others is not enough. Players of competitive games harm others
as a matter of course by playing better and winning, depriving their competitors
of the benefits of victory. But this kind of harm is perfectly just and not unethical.
The imaginary harms in an ethics simulation game must, according to SAS,
trigger harms that are both real and unjust. Just as imaginary profits deliver real
benefits to the player, imaginary ethical violations must cause actual unjust harm
to others.
224 A Theory of Business Ethics Simulation Games

But which others? The only others available to be harmed are the other
students playing the simulation game. What kinds of harm are possible in the
classroom context? I can only think of two: imposing additional course work on
a student or reducing her grade. For example, a BESG could be implemented so
that every time a student made an “unethical” choice, some other student in the
class, selected at random, is required to complete an additional assignment or
loses points that would otherwise count toward her overall course grade.
Such a rule would indeed confront BESG players with a genuine moral
dilemma: either increase profits at the expense of unjustly harming a fellow
student, or reduce their own profits in the interest of protecting their fellow
students. The demands of the SAS theory of BESG would now be satisfied.
Here is the difficulty: It is not fair to permit, much less deliberately contrive
a situation to cause, a completely innocent student to suffer because another
student acts selfishly (cf. Maddox, Armstrong, & Wheatley 1991). Even worse,
the requirement that BESGs contain genuine opportunities to benefit oneself by
unjustly harming others has the following perverse consequence: grades for
students who maintain their ethical standards would be unjustly reduced, and
grades for those who act selfishly and unethically would be unjustly increased.
The very purpose of the grading system would be undermined and indeed
perverted. In effect, students would be rewarded for cheating and punished for not
cheating—certainly an unethical result! Hence the reductio ad absurdum: SAS, as
a theory of BESGs, entails that BESGs are either ineffective or unethical.
One possible response to this reductio would be to challenge the claim that
SAS requires BESGs to provide genuine opportunities to unjustly harm others.
There are other kinds of ethical violations, the defender of SAS might say, and
hence other kinds of ethical dilemmas that could be incorporated into a BESG.
These kinds of ethical dilemmas, so the counterargument runs, would not result
in the same paradox of an unethical BESG.
What might these alternative kinds of ethical violations be, if not harming
others? One that comes to mind is breaking a promise. Suppose that a BESG
included a dilemma that forces a student to choose between benefiting herself or
breaking a promise she has made. Would this not be a genuine ethical dilemma,
and one that is ethical to present to students?
Consider, for example, the example ethical dilemma mentioned earlier: fix a
safety problem or bribe the safety inspector (Schumann et al. 1997, pp. 175-177).
SAS would be saved from the effects of the reductio if, before the game began,
players promised not to do anything that, outside the game, would be unethical.
In the case of this particular ethical dilemma, the player would essentially be in
the position of having promised not to pretend to bribe safety inspectors. Therein
lays a genuine ethical dilemma for the player: advantage oneself by breaking a
promise (the promise not to pretend to bribe the safety inspector) or keep one’s
promise and disadvantage oneself.
Journal of Business Ethics Education 11 225

This approach to ethical dilemmas would indeed defeat the reductio

argument presented earlier, and to that extent “save” SAS. But at what cost?
The ethical accusation against business is that businesses put profits ahead of
people, not that they put profits ahead of promises. Would BESGs limited to
dilemmas forcing players to choose between disadvantaging themselves and
breaking promises made solely in the context of the game, be effective?
Admittedly, that is an empirical question that is best answered with empirical
data, not theoretical arguments. Yet in advance of empirical data, there is reason
to seek an alternative to SAS. Consider again the SAS example of bribing a safety
inspector. Why, in the end, does anyone care whether or not an inspector is
bribed? The answer ultimately has to be because bribing inspectors rather than
fixing safety problems puts employees and the public at risk of real harm. The
promises made by businesses that matter are those which, when broken, increase
the risk of harm. Suppose, for example, a company promises to use only green
and white for its corporate colors, or promises that all the music in its
advertisements will be in 2/4 time. Absent any other factors, would we care if
such promises were broken? Clearly not, because breaking those promises will
not harm anybody.
We need a new theory of BESGs and a new approach to designing and
implementing BESGs to teach business ethics. For the reasons presented above,
the new theory and new approach cannot be based on incorporating ethical
dilemmas into BSGs.

5. Laying the Foundations for a New Theory of BESGs

Despite the failure of SAS, there is broad agreement in the literature that BESGs
can and should play a larger role in teaching business ethics (e.g., Smith 1975,
Smith 1979, Fritzsche & Rosenberg 1989, Ullmann & Brink 1992, Schumann et
al. 1997, Scott et al. 1998, Wolfe & Fritzsche 1998, Cannon & Schwaiger 2005,
Schumann et al. 2006).
Business strategy games (BSGs) have proven to be an effective teaching
method in business classes (Hofstede, de Caluwé, & Peters 2010). They provide
an opportunity for participatory, engaged, experiential learning that brings
textbook concepts to life. A BSG can confront students with the challenges of
decision-making when it comes to business strategy, marketing or operations.
Despite the failure of SAS, and of the ethical dilemma approach to BESGs, there
seems to be no reason, in principle, why BESGs should not be able to confront
students with the complexities, uncertainties and ambiguities of ethical business
decision-making.
Any new theory of BESGs must begin from the realization that BESGs,
unlike BSGs, are not appropriate vehicles for delivering abstract knowledge. This
should not be a surprise, since after all BESGs are meant to be experiential
226 A Theory of Business Ethics Simulation Games

exercises. The goal of teaching abstract knowledge of ethical principles and

giving students practice in applying those principles is laudable, and one to pursue
using other means. BESGs are ill-equipped for this task.
As experiential exercises, BESGs are meant to give students certain
experiences. What experiences? I suggest that BESGs are uniquely appropriate
vehicles for immersing students in morally perilous business situations. They can
provide opportunities for students to experience what it is like be caught up in a
business process headed toward a moral crossroads, and what it is like to
participate in an organization in moral crisis. Moreover, BESGs can provide
students with an opportunity to watch and reflect on their own revealed behavior
as they feel and react to the pressure to out-compete their classmates and struggle
with the temptation to sacrifice other values for the sake of personal gain. In sum,
BESGs hold out the hope of being able to better prepare students to handle the
ethical complexities of business decision-making.
Redeeming this hope for BESGs without resorting to ethical dilemmas
requires a broader perspective on the ethical challenges facing business. The
focus of many ethics textbooks is on business decisions that, in reality, most
managers are unlikely to encounter in their everyday decision making. Bribing an
official, withholding clinical trial results, using insider information,
misappropriating client funds are the kinds of ethical challenges that Fernando
(2012) had in mind when he stated: “most students confronted with an ethical
issue at work will know the correct ethical response but will lack the moral
conviction and moral courage to apply their ethical choice” (p. 120). As
significant and consequential as these challenges are, and as prominent as they are
in both the news media and our business ethics textbooks, they are not the stuff of
daily management decisions. The author’s own experience during 25 years in
business, in a variety of companies from a Fortune 500 corporation to small
startups, suggests that these kinds of ethical challenges, important as they may be,
constitute a relatively small share of most managers’ decisions.
Our business ethics textbooks also focus on big strategic business decisions
that have significant ethical implications. These include such challenges as
whether a company should offshore its manufacturing, whether it is morally
acceptable to employ low wage workers in developing countries, and whether a
company should manufacture products that although legal and in demand will
injure consumers. Again, important as these are, both for a company’s success
and for their potential impact on society, these decisions are the province of senior
executives, not lower or even middle management. Most business students
entering the workplace will never be in a position to make these decisions—or if
they do become senior executives, it will be much later in their career.
Our students, when they enter the workforce and as they advance as
managers, are more likely to participate in day-to-day company operating
decisions than big strategic decisions or to face the stark ethical dilemmas found
in textbooks. The design of the fuel system on next year’s automobile model, the
Journal of Business Ethics Education 11 227

number of clinical trials to run on a new drug, how much training to provide to
chemical plant operators and how much to spend on upgrading a computer control
system are typical of everyday managerial work.
As these examples suggest, day-to-day management decisions can have
important ethical aspects and yet their proper resolution is often not obvious or
easy. Consider, for example, the challenge faced by a marketing manager in
developing new labeling for a processed food product. Her challenge is to
determine how much information to include on the label. Too much information,
even if it would be useful or even desired by some consumers, could easily
confuse consumers and muddle the company’s marketing message. Too little
information risks not providing the information consumers need to help them
make a decision, or even misleading them. The choice facing the marketing
manager is not a binary one. Her choices are not as simple as “lie” or “don’t lie”
about the product. The challenge she faces is to balance conflicting risks and
conflicting benefits. Clearly her decision is at least in part an ethical decision, yet
the right answer is far from obvious.
As a second example, consider an automobile engineer contemplating a
safety enhancement such as larger disc brake pads. Increasing the size of the pads
will improve braking performance and reduce stopping distance, making the car
safer. Yet it will also add to cost and, because of the implications for suspension
design and the need to reprogram the car’s anti-lock braking and electronic
stability control systems, increase time to market. The current brake pads have a
surface area of 11.6 inches. In the interest of safety, should that be increased to
12.0 inches? What about 15.0 inches, which will require that the entire suspension
be redesigned, made bigger and heavier, and thus require a more powerful engine,
reducing fuel mileage and increasing the price of the vehicle? Again there is
clearly an ethical dimension to this decision, but it is far from obvious what the
right choice is.
And finally, consider the question of how much a chemical plant manager
should spend on maintenance, repair and safety training. In general (although
there are diminishing returns), the more spent, the safer the plant will be. Yet a
serious accident could still happen no matter how much is spent. How safe is safe
enough?
These challenges are not ethical dilemmas with obvious right and wrong
answers, but rather ethical “conundrums”. Like all conundrums, ethical
conundrums present managers with “confusing or difficult problems”
(“Conundrum”, Merriam-Webster n.d.). They have a family resemblance to
“wicked” problems (see Rittel & Webber 1973). Good judgment plays an
important role in responding to these ethical challenges, where “good” does not
just mean “nothing unfortunate happened” as a result of making that judgment.
Reasonable, well-informed, well-intentioned people can come to very different
“good” judgments. Not only is the right solution to the problem contested, but
even how to think about the problem is contestable.
228 A Theory of Business Ethics Simulation Games

The only “dilemma” in the ethical dilemmas imagined by SAS is, “will she or
won’t she do the right thing?” The conundrum in ethical conundrums is to figure
out, from incomplete, inaccurate, out-of-date information, what the heck is the
right thing to do when required to balance risks and the rewards when both are to
important degrees unknown.
To illustrate the differences between ethical dilemmas and ethical
conundrums, let us take a specific instance in which no amount of experience
playing a SAS BESG would have helped prevent an organization from acting
unethically.
In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, owned and operated by
Transocean but under contract to BP, exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. Eleven
workers were killed, dozens more injured. The oil platform itself, a corporate
asset worth roughly $1 billion, was a complete loss. Over 200 million gallons of
crude oil flowed into the Gulf during the three months it took to cap the well,
creating the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history and damaging the Gulf
economy at a cost of billions of dollars (Graham, Reilly, Beinecke, Boesch,
Garcia, Murray, & Ulmer 2011). An official investigation has determined that
management errors were the root cause of the disaster (Bartlit, Grimsley, &
Sambhav 2011). Unethical behavior likely played an important role in causing the
disaster (Lustgarten 2010). Two BP managers have been indicted for
manslaughter for their decisions on the oil rig preceding the explosion (Krause
2012).
Few would dispute that BP as a company acted unethically in how it managed
this particular project. Yet what, exactly, did BP managers and employees do that
was unethical? Who did what such that if he or she had played a SAS BESG,
different decisions would have been made with a different outcome?
Consider the two BP managers indicted by the Department of Justice for
manslaughter. They are accused of misinterpreting certain tests of the well's
structural integrity, discounting contrary instrument readings, and concluding on
the basis of a mistaken understanding of the mechanical properties of deepwater
drilling that the well was secure. In fact, it was not. As a result crude oil and
natural gas surged up onto the rig and exploded (USA v. Robert Kaluza and
Donald Vidrine, pp. 6-7).
The Department of Justice essentially accuses the two men of making
mistakes in judgment. There is no suggestion that the two intended the disaster to
happen, but according to prosecutors their mistakes amounted to “negligence and
gross negligence” (USA v. Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine, p. 6).
The facts revealed in the official investigations show that the two made
repeated efforts, in collaboration with others, many of whom were quite
experienced at deepwater oil drilling, over a period of eight hours, to understand
the conflicting test results. They spent significant time in discussion as a group to
come to a consensus about what was going on some four miles below them and
on how to proceed (Graham et al. 2011, pp. 105-109).
Journal of Business Ethics Education 11 229

The two BP managers, together with others, came to the conclusion that the
risks of deeming the well secure and proceeding were minimal. They made what
turned out to be a bad call, a call they all sincerely believed at the time was right
and for which they had, in their own minds, compelling reasons to make. The
unfortunate result of this bad call was a horrific disaster.
Yet it is not obvious that the two men acted unethically. Similar decisions, in
similar circumstances, had been made dozens of times without causing a
blowout.1 Much less is it obvious how any amount of practice with ethical
dilemmas would have improved their judgment in this case. What ethical
dilemma were these two managers facing? Certainly their decision choice was not
“be safe and lose money” or “take risks and make money”. Any decision involved
risk, so “take no risks” was not an option. The question they faced was “how
much risk is it responsible to take and how muck risk is too much?” That choice
is not a dilemma, but rather a conundrum.

6. A New Theory of BESGs

The admittedly impressionistic and anecdotal considerations about everyday

management issues presented above suggest a new theory of BESGs. On this
theory, BESGs for teaching business ethics should be designed to confront
students with the challenges of ordinary work, specifically the challenge of
balancing risk of harm to others against one’s own self-interest, of making an
appropriate trade-off between risk to others and reward for oneself. The choices
facing students playing a BESG should be the same choices that confront
executives, managers and employees everyday, and not the simplistic “do I bribe,
lie, cheat, steal or coerce in order to get what I want?”
Further, on this new theory the fundamental purpose of using a BESG to
teach business ethics is to give students certain morally-salient experiences, not
teach abstract concepts and principles. BESGs should be employed to induce in
the mind of the student a pattern of reasoning and decision making, and as a
consequence a pattern of behavior, that mimics the reasoning, decision making
processes and behavior of business people confronting the ordinary business
challenges of balancing risk to others against gain for oneself.
On this new theory, the pedagogical efficacy of a BESG is not a product of
how accurately its model replicates business processes, nor the result of
confronting students with finely crafted ethical dilemmas. Rather the job of a
BESG as a method for teaching business ethics is to induce in students the same

1. Although there have been a number of major offshore accidents due to blowouts (see
Committee on the Analysis of Causes of the Deepwater Horizon Explosion 2012, and Graham
et al. 2011), given that thousands of offshore oil platforms have been operating for decades in
offshore waters, the incidence of accidents is low enough that the average oil worker is very
unlikely to experience a blowout anytime in his career.
230 A Theory of Business Ethics Simulation Games

feelings and perceptions as business people and think the same way they do, then
encourage them to reflect on their decision-making.
How can these goals be accomplished if in fact players’ decisions pose no
risks to others? BESGs on this new theory are obviously still simulations, and as
such cannot present players with opportunities to do real harm. Indeed, no BESG
can provide opportunities to do real harm—otherwise it would not be a simulation.
The lack of real harms in BESGs is not a “flaw”, just a fact about what it means
to be a simulation.
What any theory of BESGs needs to provide is some explanation of how they
can be effective in the absence of real harms. SAS fails, in the end, because it
cannot provide this explanation. The new theory can. On the new theory the
absence of the possibility of doing real harm does not matter because, according
to the new theory, the purpose of a BESG is not to replicate a business situation,
much less a business situation that presents an ethical dilemma. Rather, the
purpose of a BESG is to replicate in the mind of the player the same kinds of
reasoning and decision-making that occurs in the minds of managers and
employees when they engage in behavior that exposes others to inappropriate
levels of risk. In other words, BESGs should be designed to bring players to the
point where they discount, overlook, downplay and rationalize the excessive risk
they run in the same way that real business people discount, overlook, downplay
and rationalize the excessive risk to which they expose real people. On this
theory, BESGs are effective precisely because they do not involve any real risks.
The model that is at the heart of a simulation is indeed meant to replicate the
behavior of a real system; but the simulation itself needs to replicate something
else entirely if it is to be effective: namely, it needs to replicate, in the heads of its
players, what goes inside the heads of business people when they treat the
possible harms of their business operations as not real.
The supposed weakness of BESGs is that “no one really gets hurt” in the
simulation if things go bad—yet that is exactly the attitude of business people who
make decisions exposing others to excessive risk of harm. It would be much more
appropriate to bring the complaint against those business people who expose
others to too much risk: “you approached making your decisions as if you were
playing a simulation, not exposing real people to the risk of real harm.”
The table below summaries the differences between SAS and the new theory.
Journal of Business Ethics Education 11 231

Table 1: Comparing SAS and the New Theory

SAS New Theory

Ethical dilemmas Ethical conundrums
BESGs replicate business situations BESGs replicate business decision-making
Ethical dilemmas must involve actual violations Ethical conundrums can involve balancing
of ethical principles that do not result in actual pretend risks to others against actual rewards to
unjust harm oneself
Focuses on individual adherence to ethical Focuses on balancing risks and rewards to
norms oneself and to others
Invokes artificial and uncommon business Invokes the messy realities of everyday
situations managerial work

7. Putting the New Theory into Practice

On the basis of this new theory, the author has designed, built and used a BESG
in an undergraduate business ethics course. This BESG was initially developed in
the Spring of 2011. As of Spring 2014, 760 students have played the simulation,
360 of the author’s students and another 400 at seven other institutions. The
BESG is also being used by a large manufacturing firm as part of their leadership
development program.
The simulation has been used primarily in undergraduate courses, but also in
one instance in a graduate course in business ethics. Undergraduates have largely
been business majors in the junior or senior year who have completed the
standard foundational courses in business: accounting, finance, marketing,
human resources and management. Institutions include state universities and
small private not-for-profit four-year colleges.
The BESG was designed with five specific learning objectives in mind:

• Develop a deeper appreciation of the ethical complexity of business

management by experiencing the challenge of running a business in a
complex and morally ambiguous environment.

• Cultivate the ability to recognize and articulate the ethical implications

of managerial decision-making by experiencing the conflict between
profit-seeking activity and one’s responsibilities to others in a
competitive situation.

• Strengthen the recognition that business decision making—including

ethical decision making—is a matter of managing probable outcomes.
232 A Theory of Business Ethics Simulation Games

• Enhance the ability to view business decisions from multiple points of

view, including customers, employees and the public as well as
investors.

• Foster a sense of caution and humility in assigning moral blame to

others involved in harmful but complicated, confusing and
unpredictable events by experiencing the simplifying and distorting
effects of hindsight bias.

The BESG was inspired by the April 2010 explosion of Transocean’s

Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico (see above). Offshore deep water
oil production was chosen as the modeled business for several reasons. First, the
connections between management decisions on the one hand, and business results
and risks on the other, are clear, direct, immediate and relatively easy to model.
Second, the recent 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf provides a dramatic real world
backdrop that engages students’ imagination and gives the simulation a degree of
relevance that it might not otherwise have. Third, the energy business, particularly
fossil fuel energy, is deeply intertwined with many of the most critical ethical
issues facing business today.
The BESG is called “Deepwater”. In the simulation, students manage an oil
production company operating offshore in deep water in the Gulf of Mexico. In
most implementations of Deepwater, students compete against each other to
maximize profits and earn points toward their course grades. (The author bases a
student’s simulation grade solely on end-of-simulation company financials and
has recommended this approach to other instructors using Deepwater. Most, but
not all, have followed this recommendation.)
For each round, students make decisions about how to operate their oil rig and
then enter those decisions online outside of class. Decisions include how much
crude oil to produce, how much to spend on equipment maintenance and worker
safety programs, how many workers to hire, fire and or train, and whether to make
an investment in pollution control equipment. After each round, students receive
operational, financial and market reports. These reports provide the basis for in-
class discussion and reflection.
The simulation is played over multiple rounds. The author typically has
students play two practice rounds and then 10-12 “regular season” rounds. At one
round a week, the simulation is played over the course of the entire semester.
During some semesters, students play as individuals, competing against each
other. Other semesters, students are assigned to competing teams. Because of the
flexibility of the simulation design, other instructors have structured their
simulation games differently, such as including more or fewer rounds, or running
more than one round a week.
As in the real world of deep water oil drilling, Deepwater simulation
managers run the risk of worker fatalities and injuries, safety violations and
Journal of Business Ethics Education 11 233

blowouts. If they work their equipment or people too hard, the chances of an
accident increase. If they reduce spending on maintenance or safety programs, the
chances of an accident also increase. On the other hand, if simulation managers
spend more on equipment maintenance and safety, accident probabilities go
down.
The simulated consequences of an accident in Deepwater are dramatic. When
a student logs on to Deepwater after a worker has been killed or injured, a pop-up
instantly appears. The pop-up message gives the worker’s name, a brief
biography, including family details, and describes the accident.
In addition to the ethical conundrum of balancing the demand for revenue
against worker safety and environmental protection, students are also presented
with a series of specific ethical conundrums called “ethical challenges”. These are
not ethical dilemmas. Rather each ethical challenge presents students with a
changed information context or a business complication. Students then need to
decide how to operate their oil rig in the face of the new information or the
changed situation.
For example, in one round students are given information that suggests a vital
piece of safety equipment might be faulty. They have the opportunity to test the
equipment, at some expense and with a reduction in output, or to continue
operating without doing the test. In another round, students are denied access to
a critical indictor that provides them with information about the condition of their
equipment. They are told that an instrument is broken but will be fixed “soon”.
Again, they have to decide how to proceed in the face of this missing piece of
important information. In yet another round, students receive a memo from the
company CFO imposing expense caps on maintenance and safety spending.
Students have the option to throttle back production to levels appropriate for the
reduction in maintenance and safety spending, risking their competitive position,
or they can produce larger volumes of crude oil, running a higher risk of an
accident or blowout.
None of these ethical challenges has a “right” or “wrong” answer. Each
challenge is yet another example of a business decision that necessarily involves
making a tradeoff between risk to others and benefits to oneself. Because the
Deepwater model calculates outputs using probability functions, each ethical
challenge requires a decision about probabilities: if I produce more, I increase the
probability of an accident. Students must struggle with determining how much of
an increase in risk is justifiable.
Clearly some level of risk to others is justified—otherwise every business
would have to shut down and send its workers home. But how much risk? And
what are the pressures and temptations that managers are subject to as they think
through these challenges?
The choices facing these BESG players are not either “benefit myself by
acting unethically”, or “do the right thing and disadvantage myself”. There is no
right answer in Deepwater to the question, “how careful should I be?” In fact, in
234 A Theory of Business Ethics Simulation Games

an important sense, there is no way to act unethically in Deepwater. Providing

such opportunities is not, according to the new theory, the proper purpose or
method for BESGs.
In Deepwater exposing others to a (pretend) risk also exposes players
themselves to (real) risk. A blowout triggers a large fine and shuts down
operations for several rounds. Both of these severely impact a company's
financial position and competitive standing. Injuring or killing a worker also
results in fines and lost productivity.
Students are encouraged to make decisions “as if” they were actually
managing an offshore oil rig, but nobody is fooled into thinking that is actually
what they are doing. Rather, students find themselves acting in surprising ways,
in ways that they themselves thought they would not. In particular, students
playing Deepwater become aware of the gap between their own intentions and
values, on the one hand, and their actions on the other.
There is evidence to suggest that Deepwater has been successful in exposing
the gap between intentions and values to students. For example, in one recent
class, 75% of students in an anonymous post-simulation survey stated that they
either “strongly agreed” or “agreed” with the statement: “In making my
simulation decisions, it was important to me to minimize the chances of injuring
or killing a worker.” Yet 70% cut corners on maintenance, and 72% decided not
to spend money to test a piece of safety equipment that was suspect.
To tie the BESG to the real business world, the simulation is accompanied by
readings about instances when managers made what turned out to be bad
decisions balancing risk to others and business success. These readings provide
considerable detail about the people who made these decisions, the circumstances
they were in, the information they had at hand, and the business pressures on
them. These instances include readings about the BP and Transocean managers
who misinterpreted well tests and made poor decisions about well design,
readings about the design decisions made by Ford managers about the Pinto, and
decisions made by the owners of the Station nightclub that led to the death of one
hundred patrons. Students discover how these decisions, at the time they were
made, seemed reasonable and responsible, yet in retrospect turned out to be
irresponsible.
Assessment is an important activity in the successful use of any BSGs (Chin,
Dukes, & Gamson 2009). For this reason, the author has developed and
consistently used a variety of assessment instruments to support Deepwater.
Assessment surveys are administered to students before a Deepwater game
begins, during the game and after it concludes. The surveys ask students about
their attitudes, expectations and experiences with the simulation. A few ask about
their expectations regarding their own future behavior. Most of these data were
gathered anonymously. One other instructor, at a different institution, also used
these survey instruments. As a result, the author has a considerable amount of
both quantitative and qualitative data.
Journal of Business Ethics Education 11 235

These data have yet to be fully analyzed, and in any case extensive
presentation of that data is not appropriate in the current article. The following
table summarizes survey results from two instructors (one of who was the author)
at two institutions who used Deepwater during the past year. These results
suggest that BESGs designed in light of the new theory have the potential to be
useful tools in the teaching of business ethics.

Table 2: Deepwater Student Survey Results

Question Anonymous Response Prcnt. n

Playing the simulation has been a good way for me Strongly agree or agree 66% 131
to learn.
How would you rate your overall simulation Very good or good 82% 93
experience?
How engaged overall were you with playing the Very or moderately engaged 71% 83
simulation?
My participation in the simulation has given me a Strongly agree or agree 74% 172
better understanding of the ethical challenges
facing employees, managers and executives.

8. Conclusion

An implicit theory of BESGs emerges from a review of the literature on business

ethics simulation games. This implicit theory (designated SAS after its
proponents), holds that the purpose of BESGs is to teach abstract ethical concepts
and principles and to give students practice in applying those concepts and
principles. Further, SAS holds these goals are best met by presenting students
with ethical dilemmas. These dilemmas force students to choose between
benefiting themselves by violating a recognized ethical principle, on the one
hand, or disadvantaging themselves by acting ethically, on the other.
SAS, however, is not a convincing theory of BESGs. Students playing
BESGs are presented not with opportunities to actually violate moral principles,
but only opportunities to pretend to violate moral principles. Modifying SAS to
allow BESGs to provide students with opportunities to actually act unethically
and actually harm someone else is unacceptable, since doing so would make
BESGs unethical.
A new theory for BESGs is proposed. On this theory, the task of a BESG is
to recreate in the classroom the ethical conundrums of everyday managerial work.
These conundrums require managers to balance risk to others against their own
welfare in complicated, opaque and ambiguous circumstances where no
definitive right answers are discernable. Since every business decision must
impose some risk on others, the ethical challenges presented to students in BESGs
236 A Theory of Business Ethics Simulation Games

should be how to responsibly balance risks to others and benefits to oneself in the
face of this complexity.
The purpose of a BESG, according to the new theory, is first to give students
the experience of being caught in complex and ambiguous circumstances where
they are forced to weigh risk to others against benefits for themselves. The second
purpose of a BESG is to give students the experience of making and rationalizing
decisions that, from the point of view of other stakeholders, excessively discount
the risk to others and overly emphasize business success. Third, BESGs should
aim to provoke in students moments of recognition and self-realization about the
nature and quality of their own decision making.
A BESG built by the author on the basis of the new theory is described. This
BESG is meant not only to illustrate a practical application of the new theory, but
also to lay the groundwork for testing it. Experience with this BESG, including
feedback from students, suggests that the new theory holds promise for
supporting the effective use of BESGs in teaching business ethics.
Journal of Business Ethics Education 11 237

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