For the knowledge society: How to involve human resources in gaming

Abstract

The most important resource in the knowledge society will definitely be organized human beings. The assumptions, opinions, and objectives of people and their organizations will be primary facts for future gaming research. Peter F. Drucker (1985) pointed out that "scientific" is not synonymous with quantification. He teaches that "scientific" presupposes a rational definition of the universe of science as well as the formulation of basic assumptions that are appropriate, consistent, and comprehensive. He insisted that the first task for management science is to define the specific nature of its subject matter. To gaming researchers, what he wanted to emphasize seems to be that this should include, as a basic definition, the insight that the business enterprise is made up of human beings. Drucker's thoughts on management science, as mentioned above, have had an influence on not only our business game research, but also our gaming research in general. As gaming simulation should be understood to be human or human-computer simulation of social processes, our approach to gaming research focuses on communication, information sharing, knowledge creation, and decision making for teamwork in a small group. Although our gaming research is still in its embryonic stage, this chapter presents a series of dialogues and actions in a game without using built-in computer simulations in observing the conversational learning process of a gaming team. This empirical presentation shows the current state of teamwork activity of players in a Japanese management style. In the following sections, we address management and business gaming in order to define what gaming is universally in line with Drucker's thoughts on management. Finally, "structured facilitators" will be briefed as a new agenda for gaming research. © 2005 Springer-Verlag Tokyo.