Institu-City: An Interactive Leadership Simulation for Zoom

Institu-City is an interactive simulation game to help participants understand and work with complexity. It focuses specifically on understanding institutions and their impact in the context of social complexity. Institutions are the rules and norms that frame how actors engage with each other, and gives rise to the formal organising entities that determine behaviour in societal contexts.

Our intent in designing Institu-City was to be able to replicate what we have done countless times in face-to-face learning engagements in our leadership development work. Given the context of Covid-19, lockdowns and restrictions we needed to design an interactive simulation that would work on on-line platforms such Zoom, Teams etc. In addition, our participants hailed from multiple countries and thus lent itself to such a design. Below is a brief description of Institu-City:

Learning Objectives

a.     To understand and work with social complexity.

b.     To understand the impact of stakeholders on firm sustainability.

c.     To understand the nature of institutions.

d.     To understand the dynamic relationships between actors, institutions and organisations.

e.     To understand how to work in and influence other actors in institutional contexts to achieve productive outcomes.

f.      To consider how Institutional Analysis Frameworks may be applied in challenging contexts.

Game Objectives

a.     To engage in a series of negotiations between the various parties.

b.     To maximise one’s interests through the negotiations and decisions.

c.     To arrive at a decision on whether to proceed with a specific business operation or not.

Background to Institu-City Simulation

A multinational (MNC) mining company with a head-office in Europe wishes to set up a new mining operation in a community setting in a developing country. They plan the operation in a spatial area that falls partly under traditional government authority and partly under a formal provincial land authority.

There are two adjoining communities, 1) an impoverished community with high levels of social deprivation and 2) a rich community living in a very up-market suburb.

All stakeholders have to work within a regulatory and governance framework, in relation to the necessary laws, regulations, formal and informal regulations, etc. which is quite fragile. There are expectations from the community for jobs as well as proceeds from the operations. The regulators are under-capacitated.

After a series of engagements and negotiations with a whole host of stakeholders there will be a regulatory process that will determine whether the mining operations will be given permission to proceed or not. The process is explained by the facilitator after the negotiations have ended.

Brief description of the stakeholder groups in Institu-City:

Moneyflushcorp is a mining company with a Head Office in Europe and mining operations in several African countries who wish to set up the new mining operations.

Mixedbag National Congress (MNC) is the governing party. It is a broad church ranging from ardent market fundamentalists, pro-business neo-liberalists, and rabid communists, and every shade of ideology in between.

Dismal Party is the official opposition party, is very pro-business, highly funded by big business, with highly qualified and articulate politicians. They only have support from a small rich elite in the populace

Hand-to-Mouth Community is a very poor community, with very poor services, poor and ailing infrastructure, experiencing high levels of malnutrition, and high levels of HIV and tuberculous.

1% SuperRich is the adjoining rich community. They have high level contacts in business and some parts of government especially at national level.

Sensation News is a national and local news outlet that styles itself as an investigative journalistic endeavour, but in reality, is a tabloid that will sensationalise anything to increase sales.

Nogo NGO is a grassroots-based NGO with interests in land reform, economic development and social upliftment. It is scrambling for funding and has recently attempted to draw in corporate funding.

Unruly Activists are a bunch of young, highly educated professionals that see themselves as innovative GenZ who can solve the world’s problems.

Game Set-up

Set-up Phase (10 minutes)

Participants are welcomed in the Plenary Room. They are informed that they will be involved in an interactive simulation, and given the basic format of the game play, the rules and the props. They will be told that they will be sent to their respective institutional settings, and that they will then be given further briefing documents about the simulation and the other actors involved. They will not know in advance all of the details of the other actors. Each group will be given some information of some of the other actors and they will have to figure out the rest through their interactions and negotiations. In the set-up phase they are appraised about interactive simulations, the stage of the simulation and general information together with their objectives. The facilitator can take some basic questions without giving too much detailed information.

Simulation phase

Review Briefing Documents. Each group are sent to their respective virtual institutional settings and given their briefing documents. They are given 10 minutes to familiarise themselves with their situation, their goals and what they are trying to achieve. They may choose to formulate a strategy.

Actor engagements. They will have 30 minutes to have pre-engagement with other actors. They will inform the facilitator who they would like to meet in what order of priority. The facilitator will attempt to match them with their preference. There is no guarantee that they will get to meet all of their preferences.

Pre-Negotiations. After the initial actor engagements, they will have 15 minutes to prepare for their negotiations phase.

Negotiations. During this phase parties may engage and lobby with any other parties using whatever medium is available to them. There will be 5 negotiations rooms available to them. If these are full then they either have to stay in their own rooms or figure out how to work in plenary. Once this phase is over all parties will return to the plenary room for the Decision Making and Voting Round

Voting and Decision-making. The facilitator will open up the virtual voting system, procedure and instructions to vote. Thereafter the results will be published. Each team will be given a jubilation or defeat time for 20 seconds.

Debrief. After a short break the participants will reconvene in the main room for the debriefing.

The simulation game may be used in a variety of learning contexts including the following:

• Ethical Leadership
• Business Sustainability
• Development Studies
• Institutional Analysis
• Social Complexity
• Negotiations and Advocacy
• Governance and Political Economy

Institu-City may be run for professionals in business and government, executive leadership development and MBA primes and in graduate courses in other disciplines.

Institu-City comes with a Participant Guide, Facilitator Guide, List of Materials, and Debriefing Instructions for different contexts and topics. If you have a group of participants that you wish to immerse in highly interactive learning encounter that develops their leadership ability, contact us to facilitate an exciting session of Institu-City for your organisation. Your participants may be located anywhere in the world.

Enquiries: [email protected]