Factors Affecting Prospective Managers To Apply Gamification In An Organization

1. Abstract

Managers are worked with productivity to increasing the engagement levels of key stakeholders, such as customers and employees. Gamification understood the use of chosen game mechanism for motivating actors in non-game contexts, is increasingly popular and has become one of the “hot topics” of managerial practice and science. The purpose of this article is to identify modern views on the gamification of business. The paper mainly focuses on the theoretical aspects of the application of gamification in different sectors of economy, as well as on the best practices of application of gaming techniques.

2. Introduction

Recently organizations are employing gamification as an approach to improve work performance. Gamification is an advanced work-incorporated method which emphases on the related social environment of the workplace.

A series of factors of both objective and subjective nature influence the global economy. Under their influence, the financial and economic situation has become more complicated and even worse in many countries of the world. In the current crisis conditions, dynamically changing demand for goods and services, an enterprise competitiveness is ensured by its investment, image, and, first of all, by its human resources advantages. The economic crisis, high tax burden of business, lack of highly professional staff, insufficient level of accessibility to basic social benefits and services for people determine the necessity to look for new strategies and mechanisms for ensuring the competitiveness of business processes, development of human resources, creating the effective motivation system [1].

The software industry is one of the most important industries in the world [ColomoPalacios, Fernandes, et al. [ 2]. Thus, in order to meet the increasing software needs, companies around the globe have made a tremendous effort in SPI. Although knowledge management (KM) is intensively studied in many disciplines like psychology, economics, and social sciences (Wiig 2000), practitioners are still struggling in managing what they know. In particular, information systems (IS) projects may benefit from a sophisticated KM (Reich et al. 2008), since more than 60 percent of IS projects are challenged or even cancelled (Standish Group International 2013) [3].

In recent years, technology has been increasingly harnessed for motivating people and providing support toward various individually and collectively beneficial behaviors. Perhaps the most popular development in this area has been gamification, which refers to technologies that attempt to promote intrinsic motivations toward various activities, commonly, by employing design characteristic to games (Deterding, Dixon, Khaled, & Nacke, 2011; Hamari, Huotari, & Tolvanen, 2015; Huotari & Hamari, 2012). Typical elements in gamification include, for example, points, leaderboards, achievements, feedback, clear goals and narrative (see Hamari, Koivisto, & Pakkanen 2014; Hamari, Koivisto, & Sarsa, 2014 for reviews of gamification and persuasion mechanics in related research).[4]

Definitions of gamification (Deterding et al., 2011; Hamari et al., 2015; Huotari & Hamari, 2012) focus on the term “gamefulness”, which implies thatthe main defining factor of gamification pertains to, in a similar manner as games,the self-purposeful nature of activities. While gamification design, therefore, can be characterized as aiming for self-purposeful and hedonistic use, the ultimate goals of gamification are commonly related to utilitarian ends; i.e. gamification aims to support extrinsic and valuable outcomes outside the gamification system.

1.1 Three Factors Affecting That How Gamification Help Organization

• (a) Clearly Identify the Business Objectives

Instead of asking “How can we leverage gamification in our organization?” begin with clearly defined business objectives and an analysis of the suitability of gamification to achieve those business objectives.

• (b) Think of the Audience as players

Slapping some meaningless points, badges and leaders’ boards into your sales campaign or marketing strategy does not mean that you will be able to get people to do meaningful incentives.

• (c) Design for Player-Centricity

The sweet spot for gamification is where the business objectives and player objectives overlap. Gamified applications must be designed to motivate players to achieve their goals and not just the goals of the organization.

1.2 How Gamification can Motivate People

Basically, there are two types of motivators can be used in gamification, that cause people to take action: Extrinsic and Intrinsic.

• (a) Extrinsic

Something for external rewards, such as points, badges, prizes, dashboard arrangement, status, money, praise or anything else tangible.

• (b) Intrinsic motivation

On the other hand, drives behaviors that lead to internal rewards, such as achievement, mastery, adventure, enjoyment and purpose.

2 Literature Review

The term “gamification” was developed to stress that certain techniques could be

transferred from entertainment-type games to other areas of human functioning, where they could be used to facilitate activities. The most frequently cited definition of gamification is considered to be (Seaborn & Fels, 2015; Cardador et al., 2016) “using elements of games in contexts other than a game context” (Deterding et al., 2011). The extensive literature of the subject also emphasizes that, though a commonly accepted, precise definition is lacking, gamification is generally considered to be an activity in which certain solutions characteristic of entertainment games are transferred to other areas of social reality, in which they are used to encourage people to realize tasks designed for them (Hamari et al., 2014; Seaborn & Fels, 2015; Cardador et al., 2016).[5]

In reality, the reasons behind an interest in playing are wider than just the wish to gather points, a good example of which are games based on the drawing (with a strong random component) (Dale, 2014; Balcerak & Woźniak, 2014). An illustrative and frequently cited typology divides players into four groups: needing achievement; needing to understand the mechanisms of the world in which the game is played; needing to make contact with others; and needing to influence others (Wożniak, 2015a, b). The work (Hamari & Tuunanen, 2014) presents several other typologies. It is obvious that different needs may motivate the player to play, and the content of the game, acceptable for some players, may be inadequate for others.

The question whether gamification may be applied to all areas of business, and what the long-term social effects of such uses are, is widely discussed in the literature.

Gamification is the use of game elements in non-game contexts [Deterding, Khaled, et al. 11][6]. to modify and influence the behaviour of people [Werbach and Hunter 12].[6]. It only amplifies the desire to compromise based on behavioral or psychological propensities that have existed in human beings from conception [Mittelmark and Riccio 12][6].

References

1. Balcerak, A. (2015). Grywalizacja jako moda w zarządzaniu. Zarządzanie ZasobamiLudzkimi, 2 (103)/15, 65-75
2. Balcerak, A., and Woźniak, J. (2014). Metody symulacyjne w szkoleniach. Sopot: GWP.
3. Bratianu, C. (2013). The triple helix of organizational knowledge, Management Dynamics in the Knowledge Economy, 1(2), 207-220.
4. Cardador, M.T. Northcraft, G.B., and Whicker, J. 2016 (in press). A theory of work gamification: Something old, something new, something borrowed, something cool? Human Resource Management Review http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2016.09.014
5. Deterding, S., Dixon, D. Khaled, R., and Nacke, L. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: Defining “gamification”, MindTrek ’11 Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments.
6. [Deterding, Khaled, et al. 11] Deterding, S., Khaled, R., Nacke, L., Dixon, D.: ‘Gamification:Toward a definition’; CHI 2011 Gamification Workshop Proceedings; (2011), 12–15.