Strategy essentials: organizational simulators

Purpose – The aim of this article is to: provide an overview of the role of organizational simulators as essential tools to assess, at early stages of the planning phase, organizational objectives and strategy; propose recommendations on how to advance the subject area in terms of research and development; demonstrate that aeronautical concepts can be applied in the organizational context. Design/methodology/approach – The article refers concepts and theories related with the subject and presents a methodology for social investigation, which was used in this research. Findings – Organizational simulators have a fundamental role in organizational self-awareness because they help to control the organization's vital parameters, in a proactive manner, considering the creation of different scenarios that allow, beforehand, a predictive assessment. Research limitations/implications – The research provides empirical evidence of use in the operational domain of the Portuguese Air Force and also an example of the valuable collaboration between real operations use and academia research. It also offers an insight, by using the metaphor “Flying the Organization”, on how flying concepts can be applied in the organizational context. Practical implications – The research lab was done using Microsoft Excel in what was related to the simulator development. All relevant data was gathered from organization's information systems (IS) and inserted into Microsoft Excel. Future implementations should be integrated with the organization's IS. Originality/value – This article contributes to the “state of art” of organizational simulators by providing a real case and provides both the entrepreneurial and academia communities for conducting future actions within this subject. The article also provides value to organizational management actors on how organizational simulators can be applied.