Management competition final comes to SAR

The largest Strategy and Management Competition in the world is taking place in Macau for the fifth time and runs until April 20.
“The event this year comes back to Macau, bringing together 150 participants hailing from the business sector or university students from 25 countries and regions. Lately, there have been a lot of student applications, but the team can be mixed – managers with students – competing in a business simulator competition for three consecutive days”, Sasa Choi, Macau Business Association (AGM) Senior Executive officer, told Business Daily.
The competition was created in 1980 by Portuguese simulator and model company SDG in partnership with weekly Portuguese newspaper EXPRESSO and the Macau edition is hosted by AGM – a non-profit making organisation that promotes the principles and practice of modern management.
Additional sponsors include CTM and Banco Nacional Ultramarino (BNU).
‘Strong Fighter’
“This year’s Macau representatives are a team called ‘Strong Fighter’ – comprising five students from the Macau University of Science and Technology (MUST), who won the Macau qualification in January this year.
Macau placed second in last year’s Global Challenge held in Prague (Czech Republic) losing to Russia, but it won the competition in 2007,” said Ms. Choi.
In recent years the winning team of the international editions have hailed from Eastern Europe especially Russia and the Ukraine. The People’s Republic of China has also been crowned winner several times, Ms. Choi noted. The next Global Management Challenge will take place in Qatar in 2017.
To reach the international chapter each participating team – amounting to a total of 500,000 participants internationally – must first win the Global Challenge competition in their respective country. The winning teams will attend the 2016 Macau final, where participants will be separated into four groups of up to eight teams. The International Final comprises two rounds, with the semi-final yesterday narrowing the field to eight teams and today’s final seeing all teams compete, until the two teams with the best investment performance qualify for the final round.
The prize won’t be a monetary one but a certification awarded to the best three teams.
Simulated reality
The rules of the strategy and management competition mandate that participants have to take charge of a simulated company and manage different aspects of a simulated business environment. Teams must make management decisions based upon a simulated company history and the world financial situation in the previous five years. It then has to outline a corporate strategy, launch its strategy by making functional decisions in different areas of the company – such as marketing, production, human resources and finance.
It then submits its decision sheet to an online simulator – designed by Edit 515 Limited – which updates to reflect real world trading conditions and business risks. The aim is to present competitors with realistic and complex business scenarios including challenges and problems.
The system analyses and compares the teams’ decisions and produces a management report for each team, showing detailed results in financial and operational terms.
This process is repeated over five developing decision periods during the competition, simulating a year and a quarter of the companies’ activities.