Self-Reflection - Business Disciplines

            Having to involve in such a simulated business environment can be regarded as a pleasant surprise. I believe that the exposure we got through this unit to the complex operations of the business world is vital for bridging the gap between academia and profession. Working in small multidisciplinary and multicultural teams enabled us to learn from each other and develop a collective vision for the organization. The market's reactions to our decisions always proved the close connection of all business disciplines when it comes to the final outcome. Furthermore the anticipation of contingent outcomes of our collective decisions enabled us to reflect upon the bigger picture which consists of a large amount of theories we learnt across all business disciplines. .
             Initially, we should be thankful for Monash University for identifying the importance of including a simulation challenge in its curriculum. Sometimes what we learn in academia does not apply as it is in the real world, it needs some amendments to suite the dynamism. According to Dey (2009), most of the students are not fully ready to solve such real world problems as classroom problems are solved assuming input variables are constant over time. As decision making is one of the most common challenges of a manager, this simulation is a very helpful rehearsal to face the uncertainty and dynamism of the business world. I believe the skill of operating a business can never be obtained without such a first-hand experience of how exogenous and endogenous forces shape our decisions. Usually we never get to pursue one goal as a team, under real life business conditions in typical day-to-day coursework of a university. .
             Working in a multidisciplinary and multicultural team can bring different opinions and different perspectives into problem solving. For example when our team wanted to decide whether to introduce a high-tech product or a low-tech product next, one team member provided a rationale for why it should be a low-tech and another team member with a different perspective to the situation explained a rationale for why it should be a high-tech product.