Conscious Capitalism®

The Conscious Capitalism® simulation challenges participants to operate a conscious business in contrast to the traditional profit-maximizing business paradigm. They must consider all of the firm’s stakeholders, including customers, stockholders,

employees, suppliers, and the community. They must deal with ethical, environmental and sustainability issues in addition to the usual management challenges of running a business.

Content

While participants encounter the challenges of starting up a fully-functioning entrepreneurial firm, they are also exposed to tensions underlying Conscious Capitalism decisions, including employee morale, product reliability, as well as environmental and health concerns. The decision content includes marketing, product development, traditional and web sales channel, human resource management as well as the fundamentals of finance, accounting and operations.

Storyline

Your students or employees are provided with the seed capital to start up their new business. They have limited financial resources and complete accounting responsibility. They build a factory, open up distribution channels, design brands, as well as advertising and web marketing campaigns. They hire workers and decide on the compensation packages, deal with demand projections and the basic concepts of production scheduling. After several quarters in business, your students’ firms can receive additional funding from the Venture Capitalists. They can invest this money in new R&D, bring out improved products, expand their distribution and production capacity in order to maximize their business performance. The goal is to become a profitable conscious business that aligns and harmonizes the interests of employees, customers, suppliers, the community, and shareholders.

Target programs

• Green Management, Energy, and Corporate Social Responsibility
• Sustainable Global Enterprise
• Environmental Management for Business
• Sustainable Management
• International Development (Environment, Sustainability, and Politics)
• Ethics and Corporate Responsibility
• Business Ethics

Time frame

6 decision rounds, with each round taking 2 to 3 hours per student.

Grading

The simulation will provide you with two types of metrics to grade your students or employees:

• Hard metrics (balanced scorecard) measures profitability, customer satisfaction, market share, human resource management, asset management, preparedness for the future and wealth.
• Soft metrics measures how well the conscious actions of each firm satisfied all stakeholders' values.

Play options

Compete against peers.

Languages

English, Russian, Korean, and Polish - "Play against Peers" version