Follow The Leader II

Abstract

This study extends, in two important ways, the seminal work done by Markulis and Strang (2012) on the extent and implications of students using “follow-the-leader”(FtL) strategies in business simulations. First, a series of in-depth interviews are conducted with student teams who actually play a simulation. The interviews are meant to ascertain the student team rationale for choosing a particular strategy. Second, this study investigates the possible use of the FtL strategy using simulations based upon the model of monopolistic competition; whereas the prior study was limited to oligopoly market simulations. In the market of monopolistic competition, there are many competitors, and the influence of any one firm is small. Because of this, the FtL strategy is hypothesized to be less prevalent than in the oligopoly market simulations. Nonetheless, an interesting finding is that students in an oligopolistic simulation often report that they are not using the FtL strategy, when the data suggest they are. Both the survey results and the analysis of more competitive market environments yielded some other important differences and insights regarding FtL behavior in business simulations