Perceived self-efficacy of students in a business simulation game

Self-efficacy correlates positively and strongly with task significance, job satisfaction and organisational commitment (Jex and Bliese, 1999). In contrast with constructs such as outcome expectations, self-concept and perceived control, it is a multidimensional disposition (Zimmerman, 2000). It deals with the future and predicts students’ effort, persistence, achievement, changes in performance in their studies, and emotional reactions. Mastery experiences, also known as enactive experiences or performance accomplishments, is the most influential source of self-efficacy, when compared to the other three sources identified by Bandura (1977, 1995). Jensen (2012) identified enactive mastery experiences in naturally occurring situations. In the growth experience, mastery grew from exposure to repeated experiences. In the interactive experience, mastery was generated from emotional, communicative and other actions performed jointly with others.

Self-efficacy predicted flow experience and academic engagement in a study of 346 Philippino and Argentinian undergraduate students (Mesurado et al., 2015). It develops from mastery and vicarious experiences through practice and exposure, as seen from the experience of Korean undergraduates who had stayed abroad in English speaking countries (Kim and Cha, 2017). Their English language learning self-efficacies, as self-perceived abilities, in the use and comprehension of English, grew due to their immersion and regular exposure to the English language environment in the foreign country. Oliveira et al. (2018) used a perceived self-efficacy scale composed of three factors, namely, academic success, self-regulated learning and extracurricular activities, to show that each factor correlated with their academic achievement and career exploration.

Individuals with high self-efficacy behave differently from those with low self-efficacy. Employees with high general self-efficacy and felt responsibility are more likely to take charge and create change in the workplace (Morrison and Phelps, 1999). High self-efficacy individuals are more committed to their teams, are more satisfied with high significance tasks, and experience less stress despite difficult tasks, especially when the team's collective efficacy is high. They are far less likely to be influenced by external advice or inputs than those with low self-efficacy, especially when the domain task is more difficult (Lucas et al., 2006). Students with high self-efficacy were more engaged in their studies, earned better grades, and had higher academic ambitions than others (Bassi et al., 2007). They approached their homework and other learning tasks with a high level of optimal experience that was characterised by clear goals, feedback, high perceived challenges matched by their skills, involvement and concentration.

Entrepreneurs had high self-efficacy due to their convictions that their goals were achievable and because their perceived mastery over their competence and actions was driven by their economic self-interest and their openness to feedback and change (Brandle et al., 2008). Employees’ self-efficacy is positively associated with their performance (Tim et al., 2014). A mixed-methods study showed that the direct experience of mastery was the only predictor of self-efficacy (Usher et al., 2019). Although both success and failure affected the girls’ confidence, they were affected more than boys by their negative experiences. Girls reported more vicarious experience than boys in math, while boys experienced more self-efficacy in science than girls.

A person's belief is an indispensable input into one's thoughts and actions. The meanings of knowledge and beliefs overlap so much that it is very difficult to distinguish one from the other (Pajares, 1992). It is not easy to define beliefs clearly, which have many synonyms such as attitudes, judgements, values, perceptions, dispositions, preconceptions and perspectives. Beliefs begin to form very early in the life of individuals and therefore develop as a product of their reasoning and experiences. However, they are rarely affected by events or logic, later in their lives. Their belief systems help them to understand and cope with external events, and their beliefs help them interpret their knowledge and shape their perceptions and behaviours, including their choice of tasks and tools. Attitudes and beliefs lead to actions, including information-processing and participation in change. Beliefs are ‘psychologically held understandings, premises or propositions’ of the world (Richardson, 1996, p. 104), as accepted to be true by them. They are the results of their past experiences and are difficult to change.

The individual's mindset is the belief that personal characteristics such as intelligence, creativity, assumptions, perceptions or philosophy can be changed (Dweck, 2006). This belief guides every aspect of a person's life, including efforts, failures and successes, in terms of two different mindsets. The fixed mindset is the individual's conviction that personal characteristics cannot change; the growth mindset is the conviction that one is sure to learn or acquire new abilities and apply them. The growth mindset produces perseverance and resilience from the conviction that individuals can enhance their abilities using personal characteristics, life situations and external conditions. Beliefs satisfy important psychological and functional needs of the individual. They are visible in the form of confidence in one's abilities, moral self-esteem, hope and anxiety reduction, social identity, political ideology and religious faith (Bénabou and Tirole, 2016). They tend to be choices between accuracy and desirability and depend on affective and functional motives that are based on the selective denial of reality, self-deception, irrational perspectives and misinterpreted information to suit the individual's self-image. Consumer decisions are driven by beliefs that affect their behaviours in choice and purchase. High-priced products gain from their beliefs about quality (a measure of product features) and cheaper goods gain from their beliefs about taste (a measure of buyers’ preferences) (Spiller and Belogolova, 2017).

A game is a world of fantasy in which its players tackle the challenges and unpredictable situations within. They feel the urge to accomplish the goal by outsmarting and overcoming their adversaries, who are other players in the same game. Their behaviour is constrained by rules that define the game and is shaped by feedback about their own and their competitors’ progress (Garris et al., 2002). Game players may experience a psychological state of consciousness called flow, where they can become so engrossed in their actions that they can lose sense of time (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Such games have clear goals (winning objectives) and challenging problems that are a match for their skills. The players receive immediate and regular feedback on their progress, which enhances their absorption in the game, helps them to learn, adapts their behaviour, and builds their confidence to use their abilities to solve game problems. In a study of 83 students engaged in nine creativity games, the flow experience in the period of their deep engagement with their games, due to the challenge therein, influenced their mastery experience and self-efficacy, and their self-efficacy influenced their mastery experience (Yeh et al., 2019).

Tompson and Dass (2000) showed that the self-efficacy among 252 undergraduates in the enterprise simulation of their strategic management programme was enhanced due to their participation in the game. The business strategy game is a learning experience that develops the players’ self-regulatory skills, such as the ability to make and assess decisions, set goals and persist with action, despite difficulties. Self-efficacy built their convictions to deal with uncertainty, chaos and randomness, strengthened their resolve to act, and produced desired results. A simulation represents an event whereas a game is an artificial activity with a context, goal and rules that create a competitive platform for its players (Wilson et al., 2009). Thus, the closed and controlled environment of the business simulation game offers an excellent space for the study of the players’ self-efficacy in a business context.

Perceived self-efficacy is the belief of an individual that predicts intention to complete a specific task. The foregoing review of the literature has shown that belief has many meanings, such as attitude and perception. The composites of perceived self-efficacy of players in any game were not found in the literature. The present study was conducted to understand the construct of perceived game self-efficacy of players in a competitive business simulation game with the following objectives:

To extract and understand the factors of the construct of perceived game self-efficacy under such conditions.

The study was conducted in a management school in Coimbatore, India, in a business game called IceBreaker, an enterprise simulation designed by the first author. The game was chosen for this study because it offered a business context in a competitive environment of interactions among players who would exhibit self-efficacy in their goal-oriented game behaviour. Both authors had a cumulative experience of almost 40 years in the design, development and facilitation of simulation games, and more than 70 years in teaching, instructional design, research, training, assessment, administration and other management education functions. The first author created the basic frame of the game in 2003 and since then has facilitated it for more than 12,000 learners of different disciplines. The authors understood it better than any other game, as they were aware of its processes, features and benefits. Thus, they knew that they would be able to control the gameplay as desired, and design appropriate statements in the instrument used in the study.

The game was conducted as an all-day competition between teams of four students each. A set of 10 teams made and sold products in a dynamic, simulated economy. Before the game, each player received a game manual of terminology, instructions and examples, to enable them to play the game. The first author facilitated the game and guided the teams by explaining the game rules, team behaviour, deadlines and results. Each team managed its respective firm for six months of business operations in two stages of three months each. Students received reading material about business issues that kept them focused on the game. Team-specific financial reports at the end of each stage enabled them to know the relative positions of other teams. The competition awarded prizes to the students of the winning teams.

The participants in the competition were students in the final year of different colleges in Coimbatore, India. They were enrolled in degree courses in commerce (46%), engineering (30%), business administration (16%) and other disciplines (8%) after 14 years of schooling. The youngest and oldest students were 18 years and 23 years old, respectively. The mean age of the respondents was 19.94 years, with a standard deviation of 1.01 years. Of the final sample of 227 respondents, 52% were male students and 48% were female students. Before the game began, students formed teams with their classmates and registered for the competition as teams of four members each.

The self-efficacy instrument was described with keywords that affected or described a player's expected behaviour in the game, such as plan, action, confidence, problems, progress, winning, discourage, unforeseen, rules, challenge, failure and victory. First, the authors made a list of 40 statements from these keywords, based on their deep exposure to simulation games. Next, it was scrutinised for representativeness of beliefs and efforts (key aspects and descriptors of perceived game self-efficacy), redundancy and lack of clarity. This exercise ensured the face validity of the statements in the instrument and confirmed that the statements collectively represented the perceived game self-efficacy of the players in a simulation game. Many statements were shortened and recast for quick responses. Finally, the list was pruned down to 30 statements, so that the short instrument would facilitate quick responses at the end of the competition. As players in the game, the students made business decisions, analysed business results, and were immersed in learning under competitive conditions. The game environment developed their self-efficacy and primed them emotionally to respond to the statements in the instrument. The instrument was administered to the students after the results were declared at the end of the game, ensuring that their game experience affected their responses.

The data were subjected to exploratory factor analysis (EFA), using SPSS 21.0. The EFA is a method of abductive reasoning that reduces data which was descriptive, appropriate and relevant to perceived game self-efficacy as the phenomenon under study (Haig, 2005, 2008). The EFA produces factors as condensed products of the statements which together represent perceived game self-efficacy. The factor names represent the keywords in the statements and give due consideration to repeated and similar keywords and their loadings within the factor. This paper describes and discusses each factor from different angles and offers the most balanced and meaningful interpretation of the findings.

This research offers new insights into perceived game self-efficacy and its factors. Self-efficacy, self-determination (Deci and Ryan, 2000) and grit (Duckworth et al., 2007) produce goal-oriented behaviour. It would be interesting to ascertain how the three constructs and their elements correlate with and predict one another under common conditions. Would self-determination correlate with determination? Could persistence predict determination? And, how would autonomy and competence affect innovation, experimentation and proactivity? The appropriate platform for the research could be a simulation game in the context of a business environment of scenarios, problems and challenges.

The simulation game represented a manufacturing business environment and produced eight factors of perceived game self-efficacy, which characterised the environment and the expected behaviours of players as managers that produce optimal business results. Perceived game self-efficacy could shape the development of business games based on learning objectives and provide insights to students and teachers in business management education. There is a need to develop game self-efficacy scales with appropriate factors for other business game environments, such as services, trading, extraction and agriculture. Similarly, we need scales and factors for functional environments such as financial, marketing, human resource and project management. The discovery of self-efficacy in different domains of human activities would offer a deeper understanding of their processes for students, teachers and practitioners. The participants in the game were undergraduates; if the participants in other business or functional games were older, their work experience would be adequately captured in the research efforts.

This study was conducted in the context of a business simulation game in a competition. The development of similar scales in other games may help to select efficacious players. Games like cricket, football, basketball, tennis and baseball attract huge investment for their infrastructure, player training, branding and advertising, prize money and technologies in their professional competitions, and therefore need players with the right mindset of potential actions, traits and belief. To capture the unique context of any game in the research, it would be necessary to conduct player interviews and observe player behaviour, to ascertain the nature of the game and its competitiveness and to develop appropriate statements for the instruments.

An individual's propensity to innovate and take risks may develop with the successes and experience but may decline due to role overburden after middle age. Klassen and Chiu (2010) studied 1,430 teachers and found that their teaching self-efficacy (measured in terms of classroom management, instructional strategies and student engagement) grew with teaching experience, and then declined after about 23 years of experience. Thus, future research may attempt to discover self-efficacy factors that are affected by human characteristics such as gender and age.

The game self-efficacy factors offer vital clues to effective action in situations that demand timely completion (e.g., in surgeries, projects and sales campaigns) and victory (e.g., games and competitions). If the scale were customised for specific roles and environments, it could be used for testing, recruitment, roles and promotions in behavioural domains that need timely and effective task completion as formal management policy.

A competency is a clearly described behaviour driven by knowledge, skills, attitudes and traits that can lead to clearly defined and desired outcomes associated with a task, role or organisational need, and is therefore seen as vital in recruitment and selection, career development and performance management practices of organisations (Sparrow, 1995). The contributions of innovation, experimentation and proactivity were hitherto unreported in previous self-efficacy research. Management policy should ensure that employees be selected and trained for such competencies, so that employees use novel means to act, respond to problems before others do, remain undiscouraged by failure and embarrassment, are eager problem solvers and respond to challenges. Thus, game self-efficacy factors could be instrumental in selection, development and performance enhancement via goal-setting, training and coaching.