Gert Jan Hofstede, Jacques H.M. Trienekens, Gerrit Willem Ziggers

This is a Web version of an article in the proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Chain Management in Agribusiness and the Food Industry . It deals with a business game that I created for the conference with my co-authors.

The game was received with much enthusiasm, being fun and giving food for thought.

You can use this text to play the game, making up your own quantities of ingredients, play money and team strategies. Or find more about this type of game in my book Exploring Culture (2002).

Go to the game description.

The proof of the pudding is the eating. This is the saying that prompted the conference organizers to have all participants participate in an international food industry chain before spending a few days talking about such chains. The game will take place on the conference’s opening night.

This particular chain will be the production of patisserie from fruit, cream, biscuits and other ingredients. Three teams of participants will play the role of providers of raw materials, three teams will confection fruit treats from these materials, three will sell the patisserie on the market. These teams have different strategies as well as different national cultures. The consumers are played by the remaining participants. For this purpose, they are provided with cash in Straws, the game’s currency.

The game’s aim is to induce the occurrence of some phenomena that may occur in international food chains. World wide sourcing and selling of food products is a new challenge for many companies. The delicate nature of food products and the uncertain supply of these products due to

typical production circumstances can make distances in time and space to important barriers for trade. Also differences in regulations between nations and cultural differences are yet

to be overcome. Combinations of these factors can lead to the occurrence of problematic phenomena such as throughput delays, bull-whip effects, unstable quality, or trust breakdowns.

One specific purpose of the game is to bring intercultural differences to the participants’ minds. We mean the sort of cultural differences that exist between countries. Such differences are part of the reason why problems occur in international chains, but their importance is not always acknowledged. Culture is defined by Hofstede (1991) as "the collective mental pre-programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group from those of another". National culture, therefore, is what distinguishes people from different countries from each other. These differences concern rules for proper behaviour, work-related rituals, religion-related food habits, the importance of symbols, and similar issues. They have deep implications for interpersonal communication (see e.g. Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey, 1988). In order to raise awareness for these cultural issues, some culture-related elements are included in the scripts for the game participants.

This article proceeds as follows. Each of its purposes is dealt with in one section. The first of these is to situate THE STRAWBERRY CHAIN in the context of management games. The field of management gaming is rich and varied and includes simulation of food chains. A few of these are briefly presented. This may be useful for players of THE STRAWBERRY CHAIN who would like to play similar games in their own organization.

The second purpose is to give a brief overview of some major problems that occur in international food industry chains. The authors are working on a scan of recent literature on this subject. So far, not so much literature was found.

The article’s third purpose is to present an overview of THE STRAWBERRY CHAIN. Two characteristics make this game different from many others: it uses real materials, and it uses culture scripting. 

The article closes with a brief discussion about what can be learned from it. This discussion will take international chains and chain problems as its point of departure.

Management gaming is a discipline with a history of over 25 years (for a tutorial book see e.g. Elgood, 1981. For a historical overview and current developments, see e.g. Crookall and Arai, 1995). It has a scientific journal (Simulation & Gaming) and a few professional societies (a.o. ISAGA, International Simulation and Gaming Association), but above all it has a very impressive basis in the curricula of management education the world over. This is due to the fact that management games are as close as one can get to approximating real business life in the classroom. They therefore allow the participants to acquire fairly realistic experience with the phenomena they study. This experience will serve them better than book knowledge. Another merit of management games is that they are very motivating: they reveal to the participants why some knowledge is relevant to them, because they need the knowledge to accomplish a task during the game.

Some management games relevant to food production chains are summarized below.

A prominent game about how Bull-whip or Forrester effects can be induced by delays in a food chain is THE BEER GAME (see Sterman, 1997, or Van Ackere, 1993). This game simulates a beer chain without using any real beer: the players use board game materials instead. Four players up to hundreds can play. Production teams consist of four sectors: Factory, Distributor, Wholesaler and Retailer. There are delays between the sectors. Customer demand is simulated by a deck of cards. Each team attempts to minimize total team costs. The game is played in a number of rounds that stand for one week each.

Because players have local knowledge only, severe chain problems occur. There are oscillations in inventory and production level that tend to get amplified as they move backwards through the chain, and production levels tend to lag behind demand levels. As a result, just one doubling of customer demand in the fourth week usually leads to waves of huge surpluses, alternating with huge deficits, of products throughout the chain. Moreover, players get quite excited and start blaming each other for the team’s poor performance. It is a great eye-opener for them when, as the game is debriefed, they discover that the huge fluctuations were nothing but the response of myopic actors to one small change in a system of which they cannot oversee the complexity.

The notion of a "chain" does not always do justice to the individual freedom and interests of its links. The game FOOD CHAIN (Thiagarajan, 1996) explores the relationship between different links in a chain. 20 to 50 players are divided into three groups: suppliers, retailers, and customers. Cards are traded for play money. The groups trade with each other, but they do not compete against each other. Each individual competes agains the other participants of his group. The suppliers and retailers must make as much money as they can while the customers must collect as many cards as they can. Prices are fixed. This game is useful for exploring issues of competition and collaboration in chains, both horizontally and vertically.

It is very hard to include cultural differences in a management game, because they are so deeply engrained in people’s minds. This holds in particular for national culture, which is "the way one was brought up", both consciously and unconsciously. Yet, Hofstede (1996), adapting an idea by Pedersen and Ivey (1993) has found that it is possible to use fictitious national cultures as elements in the scripts for players in a management game. Although most participants do not entirely succeed in internalizing the fictitious culture they play, they do run into typical cross-cultural misunderstandings and feelings of estrangement. In other words: the cultures are not real, but the culture clashes are.

Impersonating somebody else is implicit in all behavioural games. Elgood (1981, p. 56) states "Behavioural games explore the area of genuine misunderstanding between two people over what is meant, or what is intended, or the purpose with which the intention is formed". Fictitious cultures are a powerful way of creating situation in which such misunderstandings occur. Not surprisingly, many games about cultural differences exist. Yet, mixing culture differences with other content matter in a game is not done so often. The authors know of none in the area of chain management.

Several business games with scripts for fictitious national cultures have so far been created by Hofstede. The content matter of these games is international business. One game , THE WINDMILLS OF OUR MINDS (Hofstede, 1996), is about creating and negotiating a communication architecture for a new product/market combination in a multi-national enterprise. A small game, A TRADE MISSION (Hofstede 1997), has the participants negotiate a trade deal during an international trade meeting.

Because of technological developments, increased international competition, over-supply of food products and new consumer demands, food producing companies are forced to a change-over

from push (supply) oriented production to pull (demand) oriented production (Hughes, 1994). New demands are:

Globalization and consumer awareness lead to highly differentiated markets of demand and supply in which supply (or should we say demand?) chain cooperation can be an important means for companies to cope with the new challenges.

A fast and flexible international system of sourcing, production and selling is necessary to be able to meet these new demands. Food products, however, possess several characteristics which make the choice of where to do what in terms of purchasing, production, distribution, value adding and selling extremely difficult (Trienekens & Trienekens, 1993):

In international food supply chains the uncertainties in the supply of food products are increased by distances in space and time and by barriers erected by policies of nations. With regard to the latter, considerable differences between economic and social regulations still exist. The same applies to quality control and environmental issues.

The uncertainty under which international trade of food products takes place, combined with an inadequate amount of communication through the chain, can easily lead to so-called "Forrester" or "bull-whip" effects mentioned above in the context of THE BEER GAME. Because of uncertainties in supply and demand, planners in the supply chain tend to order or produce more than is actually needed when sales go up, and order or produce less than is actually needed when sales go down. In a supply chain, this uncertainty is reinforced upstream the chain because every planner experiences a larger deviation from normal sales than the planner preceding him.

To overcome the obstacles described above, a faster and more flexible exchange of products is essential, and so are flows of information and money between companies. For many companies, this means collaboration or merging into supply chains. To achieve supply chain collaboration, themes like the search for common strategies, trust and commitment, and contracting become key issues (Downey 1996).

In this respect, open communication structures between supply chain participants are essential. This underlines the importance of new information and communication technology opportunities. Important examples here are Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), the world wide Internet and new possibilities to track product flows via satellites.

Cultural differences between members in a chain do not constitute a chain problem in themselves, but they can aggravate a number of chain problems. The essence of cultural differences is that people from different cultures have different norms for proper behaviour. As a consequence, they often cannot predict each other’s behaviour, nor interpret its meaning. This leads to false expectations, to misunderstandings and to frustration when partners in a chain act in a way that would not be acceptable according one’s own value system.

All communication problems that can occur in chains might be aggravated by differences in culture. In particular, trust and the willingness to communicate can be expected to be vulnerable to cultural differences.

Hofstede (1991) has found a number of ‘dimensions of national culture’. These are (1) power distance between superior and inferiors, (2) individualism versus collectivism, (3) performance-orientation versus cooperation-orientation (also termed masculinity versus femininity), (4) long-term versus short-term orientation.

These dimensions can be brought to bear upon communication in chains. Different orientation towards them by partners in a chain can easily lead to misunderstandings, resulting in distrust.

For instance, some would perceive a difference between Germans and Dutch, in which Germans are more loyal in a trade relationship. We should add that others hold different views, and that we are not implying any statement of fact here. Having said this, the perceived difference may be reflected in the lower uncertainty avoidance and higher individualism of the Dutch. These characteristics make them typical traders, whereas the Germans are Fachleute, makers rather than traders.

Another cause of trouble resides in differences in power distance. A French manager, for instance, will expect to be treated with more égards than a Scandinavian counterpart is likely to show. Privileges for the powerful, which are part of the French way of life, are frowned upon by the egalitarian Nordics.

The most obvious reason for misunderstandings resides in diffences along the individualism - collectivism continuum. A collectivist will be very reluctant to say "no" to a trade partner, and will experience an individualist’s honesty in that regard as bluntness. The individualist, on the contrary, is likely to miss subtle negative messages from a collectivist, and will mistakenly assume a deal has been struck or is close to being struck.

In his keynote address at the 1996 edition of the Chain Management Conference, Downey (1996) noted "A unique corporate culture is required for successful partnerships - one based on interdependence, trust, open communications, and mutual benefits". Clearly, these attributes of successful partnerships are profoundly affected by national culture. In a supply chain, one link cannot always just force another to play by one’s own rules. It will take serious efforts on both sides of a cultural barrier to overcome communication problems that would endanger a successful partnership if they persisted. Playing an intercultural management game can be a valuable element in such an effort.

The Strawberry chain consists of four links, each of which is represented by several teams. Figure 1. gives a schematical floor plan of the game. The chain links are:

1. The providers, who unpack, clean and sort the raw materials and repack them for selling them to the bakers. They can sell to any of the bakers. Each provider has a different range of products. Each also has a different market strategy and culture.
2. The bakers, who buy materials from the providers of their choice, and process them into fruit treats of their own invention. Each team of bakers has its own market strategy and culture.
3. The retailers, who offer treats in various qualities and prices to the café customers. They also have different market strategies that fit their cultures. They can buy from any baker they like.
4. The customers, who sit in the café and use their starting capital to buy fruit treats. They will have enough currency for 1-4 treats per person. During the first part of the game, there will not be anything to eat yet. This gives the customers ample time to impersonate their fictitious culture. By the time the waiters (the retailers) arrive, the customers should be seasoned incarnations of their fictitious cultures.

Figure 1: Plan and chain structure of the Strawberry Game

The providers, bakers and retailers compete against their fellow teams for a business award. In each chain link, the winner is the team that has made the most profit. In addition, the game leaders will assign a culture award to the team that has most convincingly enacted its script. For the culture award, the customer teams are also eligible.

The game will take one hour from start to completion. During the first minutes, there will be a very brief introduction. Then, participants need to find their places and to spend some time memorizing and discussing their roles. After 15 minutes, the trading starts. All chain links begin simultaneously. Demand will be the main motor at first. It will be propagated back through the chain, where it will meet the supplies generated by the providers. The game ends when time is up. It would also end if all materials were used, or if the market was saturated. However, we do not expected that within the playing period, either circumstance will occur.

The main raw materials needed are:

These materials will be processed into three categories of patisserie: