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: Management games are no child’s play. For students of management and corporate excutives, they help hone skills in dealing with vexing office problems across a range of issues. For corporate houses such as Infosys which are now partnering with the B-schools, this gives them an opportunity to test the future employees and their reactions to these real life problems in various areas such as finance, marketing and human resources management, in a simulated business environment.

Management schools use the games technique to simulate real-time business environment, so that students can get a feel of the the cut and thrust of the organisational workplace. ‘‘We conduct one set of management games for corporates and another for students,’’ says Kamal Singh, director, centre for management development, All India Management Association (AIMA).

Corporate interest, however, is growing and AIMA, which started its national management games in 1992 with just four corporate teams, saw 112 teams including the Birlas, Larsen & Tubro, ITC, ABVP and Infosys participating in the event this year. ‘‘Management games help corporate houses to train future leaders. These games are used by organisations internally to simulate a real-time environment to prepare executives for boardrooms,’’ Singh adds.

For students, on the other hand, management games are organised primarily to help them hone their decision-making skills in a realistic simulated business environment. Singh says, ‘‘These games are computer-based simulations that imitate market and economic reality. Students get the opportunity to augment the management methodologies, tools and techniques learnt at their B-School. Since SMG was first launched in 1997, over 2,400 students from 150 B-Schools have participated in them.’’ Singh said: ‘‘For the past few years, AIMA’s student management games (SMG) are called AIMA-Infosys SMG. For Infosys it helps to be associated with AIMA, and we benefit as we get a sponsorship of Rs 5 lakh from Infosys.

‘‘With such high-profile sponsors and participants, it is participation in these events is increasingly becoming a status symbol,’’ says Sameer Nigam, student coordinator for Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA). The institute hosts two major management festivals annually - Confluence, which attracts corporates and global B-schools; and Insight, IIMA’s annual marketing research festival.