Abstract for: Matching Role Playing, Balanced Scorecards and System Dynamics modelling in management training: the “Strategic Micro-Factory”

The article is based on the presentation and use of a business game called "Minifabbrica strategica” (“Strategic Micro-Factory”). The aims pursued by this paper are two fold. First the paper aims to show how business games, and more in detail role playing games, may be successfully used in management education, since they provide safe contexts in which is possible to support processes of knowledge elicitation and knowledge sharing, develop collaboration and team- working attitudes among participants, promote forms of individual and organizational learning and improve the ability to take decisions and design managerial policies in complex and dynamic business domains. Second, the paper addresses the problem of measuring and evaluating the performance and the improvements made by the participants to a gaming experience, adopting to this end two specific tools: a performance measurement system (the “Balanced Scorecard”) and a System Dynamics model.