When Reflection Can Still Change Action: Enactability and Managerial Judgement in Business Simulations

Business simulations are widely used to develop managerial judgement, yet formal reflection is often concentrated after play concludes. This paper argues that reflective placement matters differently across three focal dimensions of judgement: analytical, ethical, and identity-related. Analytical learning is comparatively portable because revised causal models can often be retained and applied later. Ethical and identity development, by contrast, are more enactment-dependent because their value is strengthened when learners can act on revised reasoning or self-understanding while consequential action remains possible. The proposed mechanism is enactability: the extent to which reflection can still feed into action under continuing stakes. The central claim is comparative rather than absolute. Holding reflective prompts, facilitation, and time-on-task as constant as practicable, moving reflection from a terminal debrief into the interval between consequential decisions should yield larger incremental gains for ethical and identity judgement than for analytical judgement. The paper treats portability and enactment-dependence as relative properties, names the deliberately designed interval the Critical Pause, specifies boundary conditions and design implications, and derives falsifiable propositions for future empirical testing.