Teaching externalities and stakeholder perspectives

Teaching Business & Economics, Spring 2006 by Jones, Simon

Economics syllabuses at both GCSE and A level require students to understand externalities, and to be aware of the concept of stakeholders. Business studies also requires some knowledge and understanding of externalities and stakeholders at A level, and how social, political, environmental and legal issues impact on a business.

This article presents an alternative way to help students understand externalities, and the aims and objectives of economic actors. It describes a game that enables students to gain some understanding of planning issues and develops key skills, including communication and ICT It provides a vehicle to involve the local community if desired.

The game can be used with business or economics students, as well as those following the joint approach. It could also be relevant to aspects of enterprise education. It has been used successfully from Years 10 to 13 and always engages students. Teachers can relate the lessons learned to specific course requirements as explained later.

These pages provide the outline for the game. It could be used as a case study; briefing sheets are to be found on the EBEA members-only website. Alternatively the word files can be adapted to suit a local situation.

THE SCENARIO

The scenario is based on the premise that a major company (in this case J Sainsbury pic) wishes to build a superstore on one of the school's fields. The case enables development of understanding of competing aims of separate groups and the methods of resolution.

Students are divided into six groups, representing:

* school governors/LEA

* neighbouring residents

* local traders

* shareholders of the company (represented by managers)

* local council (it could be a parish or neighbourhood committee depending on your area)

* county council (the highways authority).

What especially interests the students is to include a map of the school. (This should be available from your administrative office; if not try one of the internet map providers at a high scale, or blow up and copy from an A-Z road map.) You need to indicate which playing field will be lost for the development. The county council group will need at least an A3-sized map to be able to draw in roads, roundabouts, fences, etc.

SETTING UP THE EXERCISE

Each group are given detailed briefings (for examples, go to www.ebea.org.uk and follow the links to "members only" and "journal links"). You can then either instruct the groups simply to prepare a presentation and speeches for a planning inquiry - if, for example, you only want to spend two hours on the game - or you can ask them to carry out several tasks such as prepare a presentation, letter or leaflet to a target audience, or draw a plan for the development. Of course, you could set some of the ancillary tasks as homework.

Normally, the teacher will act as the "planning inspector", but to further enrich the experience you could invite in a planning officer or experienced local councillor to undertake this role and contribute to the plenary. Go on your local council's website to get names and numbers. Likewise, you could ask a friendly governor to come in and take part.

Typically, you will allow up to 10 minutes for each group's presentation. They could assist their case by using posters, flip-charts, whiteboards, or all those irritating bells and whistles of PowerPoint (although this may require added time in preparation, plus of course, the appropriate ITC equipment).

You will need to allow 30-40 minutes for preparation time, so in a one hour lesson you are unlikely to be able to have all of the presentations.

THE PLANNING INQUIRY

It is worthwhile explaining to the students that planning inquiries are like a court hearing, although they are usually less formal - lawyers don't wear wigs and there is no swearing on a Bible. However, there are sometimes big sums at stake, so in the real world corporations employ barristers and planning experts to help present their cases and cross-examine witnesses.

Allow approximately 10 minutes for each group, and encourage questions from the other students at the end of each presentation. You can also probe a group's understanding by asking your own questions too.

The usual order is to start with the developers, followed by the local town council, school governors, neighbours, traders and finally the county council, but the order does not matter too much.

Figure 1 (page 18) summarises some of the issues and discussion points that are likely to arise out of the game. It draws on the experience of playing the game at our school, which has quite a lot of land left and is in a small rural town with just one other superstore (Tesco) a couple of miles away. However, the game can easily be adapted to the circumstances of other schools.

LEARNING AND DISCUSSION POINTS

A very good follow-up is to issue the students with a table like Figure 1, but without data in the second and third columns, and then either complete this through class discussion, or set as homework for a brighter class.

Economics groups can also be set a simple cost-benefit analysis to calculate the net social cost or benefit of the project. You'll need to make up costs and benefits figures for factors such as the extra costs of litter collection and road maintenance. Economics groups can also debate the local multiplier effect: it's not simple, particularly if small shops close as a result of the competition.