There are a number of limitations with our study worth considering. Firstly, the research
examined the perceived effectiveness of a business simulation game and did not include an
assessment of other experiential methods such as role-plays or live cases. Secondly, to ensure
comparability, we examined student perceptions in relation to one specific business
simulation game – the Operations Game. As such, we do not have data regarding other OM
simulations (for example, the Beer Game, Red-Blue Game, and Lego-game). Thirdly, data
were collected from a single university, which creates inevitable biases in the data set. These
three limitations raise the opportunity to examine the effectiveness of other experiential
teaching methods in the original research setting, and to replicate the assessment of these
methods in other contexts. Of particular interest would be to examine perceptions of students
on OM modules in different cultural settings. For example, while not a focus of our study,
differences across nationalities and between foreign students in European schools versus their
own home countries could demonstrate interesting variation. Our data showed that Asian
students were very positive towards the Operations Game, but would this be the case for
students on an OM module in an Asian university? A further limitation of our work is that we
have examined the effectiveness of experiential teaching methods in a physical rather than
non-physical setting – i.e. students have to be physically present to take part in the Operations
Game. The increasing use of technology on distance learning OM modules raises the
possibility of using some experiential teaching methods in situations where students are not
physically present. For example, the Beer Game, an experiential teaching method that
simulates the Bullwhip Effect, now has both an off-line and on-line version to allow students
in disparate locations to take part. Future research could explore the perceived effectiveness
of experiential teaching methods that require physical presence and those that do not.