Towards a Code of Ethics for Gamification at Enterprise

Gamification is an emerging technique which utilises the “fun the- ory” mainly to motivate people to change their perception and attitude towards certain subjects. Within enterprises, gamification is used to motivate employees to do their tasks more efficiently and perhaps more enjoyably and sometimes to increase their feeling of being members of the enterprise as a community. While the literature has often emphasised the positive side of gamification, mainly from economic and business perspectives, little emphasis has been paid to the ethical use of gamification within enterprises. In this paper we report an empirical re- search to explore the ethical aspects of using gamification. We follow a mixed methods approach involving participants who are gamification experts, employ- ees and managers. Our findings show that, for gamification, there is a fine line between being a positive tool to motivate employees and being a source of ten- sion and pressure which could then affect the social and mental well-being within the workplace. This paper will evaluate that dual effect and clarify that fine line

The ethics of gamification in a marketing context

Gamification is an increasingly common marketing tool. Yet, to date, there has been little examination of its ethical implications. In light of the potential implications of this type of stealth marketing for consumer welfare, this paper discusses the ethical dilemmas raised by the use of gamified approaches to marketing. The paper draws on different schools of ethics to examine gamification as an overall system, as well as its constituent parts. This discussion leads to a rationale and suggestions for how gamification could be regulated and/or controlled by more informal codes of conduct. The paper ends by outlining a practical framework which businesses can use to evaluate the potential ethical implications raised by their own gamified marketing techniques

How gamification influences employees to be more productive: a meta-analysis

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies ManagementIn an increasingly competitive environment, companies are seeking to find competitive advantages, through new ways of working. Gamification has showed some proofs that can have an impact in performance in enterprise information systems context. Especially after a pandemic context and during a global crisis, finding motivation and engagement, when people find themselves apart from each other, can be a true challenge. The purpose of this work is to analyse the gamification impact on employees’ performance and productivity, relating employees’ motivation and engagement with the gamification implementation in enterprises. A meta-analysis was performed from previous quantitative studies connected to gamification implementation in enterprises. A total of 20 articles from the last 7 years were used as input for the meta-analysis. Strong constructs were found: behavioural intention, engagement, gamification consent, intrinsic motivation, enjoyment, performance. A motivated and satisfied employee is more productive in the workplace, therefore the research carried out provides a model that supports its main purpose: gamification influences employees’ engagement and performance

Platforming Gamification as a Means of Engagement in Employee Recruitment and Onboarding

Gamification, generally understood as the application of game elements and design concepts in non-game contexts, is a field of academic study and multibillion-dollar business tool whose popularity is growing as a means of employee engagement, education and training, and talent selection. While there are companies that attempt to gamify separate processes within the employee life cycle, no company exists that gamifies the stages surrounding talent selection: attraction and recruitment of applicants and onboarding of final candidates. To this end, this thesis proposes a software and consulting company, GameON Business Solutions, that will work with small and medium enterprises to expand and diversify the talent pool and prepare new employees for working at the company

Gamification Risks to Enterprise Teamwork: Taxonomy, Management Strategies and Modalities of Application

Gamification corresponds to the use of game elements to encourage certain attitudes and behaviours in a serious context. When applied to enterprise teamwork, gamification can lead to negative side-effects which compromise its benefits. For example, applying competitive elements such as leaderboard may lead to clustering amongst team members and encourage adverse work ethics such as intimidation and pressure. Despite the recognition of the problem in the literature, the research on concretising such gamification risks is scarce. There is also a lack of methods to identify gamification risks and their management strategies. In this paper, we conduct a multi-stage qualitative research and develop taxonomy of risks, risk factors and risk management strategies. We also identify the modalities of application of these strategies, including who should be involved and how. Finally, we provide a checklist to help the risk identification process as a first step towards a comprehensive method for eliciting and managing gamification risks to teamwork within enterprises

Conceptualising Gamification Risks to Teamwork within Enterprise

Gamification in businesses refers to the use of technology-assisted solutions to boost or change staff attitude, perception and behaviour, in relation to certain business goals and tasks, individually or collectively. Previous research indicated that gamification techniques can introduce risks to the business environment, and not only fail to make a positive change, but also raise concerns in relation to ethics, quality of work, and well-being at a workplace. Although the problem is already recognised in principle, there is still a need to clarify and concretise those risks, their factors and their relation to the gamification dynamics and mechanics. To address this, we conducted multi-staged empirical research, including two months’ observation and interview study, in two large-scale businesses using gamification in their workplace. In this paper, we focus on gamification risks related to teamwork within the enterprise. We outline various risk mitigation strategies and map them to primary types of gamification risks. By accomplishing such conceptualisation, we pave the way towards methods to model, detect and predict gamification risks on teamwork and recommend and design practices and strategies to tackle them

More than Just a Game: Ethical Issues in Gamification

Gamification is the use of elements and techniques from video game design in non-game contexts. Amid the rapid growth of this practice, normative questions have been under-explored. The primary goal of this article is to develop a normatively sophisticated and descriptively rich account for appropriately addressing major ethical considerations associated with gamification. The framework suggests that practitioners and designers should be precautious about, primarily, but not limited to, whether or not their use of gamification practices: (1) takes unfair advantage of workers (e.g., exploitation); (2) infringes any involved workers’ or customers’ autonomy (e.g., manipulation); (3) intentionally or unintentionally harms workers and other involved parties; or (4) has a negative effect on the moral character of involved parties

Unethical Gamification: A Literature Review

Gamification has become a mainstay approach in designing engaging systems, practices, and cultures across practically all walks of human life. However, as gamification mainly attempts to affect individual psychological states, motivations, attitudes, and behaviors, conscious consideration of ethical aspects, as well as underlying values and premises, is very much warranted. However, gamification research and practice have sprung up rather rapidly and myopically as boosted by the contemporary hype related to technology and games, which has led to the relative dismissal of ethical considerations in relation to gamification. In order to map these considerations and the current state of the discussion in gamification literature, we systematically reviewed research related to ethics, and particularly, possible identified and discussed harms of gamification. The corpus reveals that psychological distress, exploitation, lack of performance, and privacy issues are the most commonly contemplated possible harms, with different frequencies based on the game elements, types, and contexts

How to Engineer Gamification: The Consensus, the Best Practice and the Grey Areas.

Gamification typically refers to the use of game elements in a business context in order to change users’ behaviors, mainly increasing motivation and engagement, towards a certain task or a strategic objective. Gamification has received a good deal of emphasis in both academia and industry across various disciplines, e.g., psychology and human computer interaction, and application areas, e.g. education and marketing. Despite the increasing interest, we still need a unified and holistic picture of how to engineer gamification including: the meaning of the term; its development process; the stakeholders and disciplines which need to be involved in it; and the concerns and risks an ad-hoc design could raise for both businesses and users. To address this need, this paper reports on a review of the literature on a range of gamification techniques and applications, followed by empirical research which involved collecting expert opinions using qualitative and quantitative methods. Based on the results of this research,we provide a body of knowledge about gamification and highlight good practice principles and areas of gamification that are debatable and require further investigation

Ethical Challenges in Gamified Education Research and Development: An Umbrella Review and Potential Directions

Gamification is a technological, economic, cultural, and societal development toward promoting a more game-like reality. As this emergent phenomenon has been gradually consolidated into our daily lives, especially in educational settings, many scholars and practitioners face a major challenge ahead: how to understand and mitigate the unethical impacts of gamification when researching and developing such educational technologies? Thus, this study explores ethical challenges in gamified educational applications and proposes potential solutions to address them based on an umbrella review. After analysing secondary studies, this study details and proposes recommendations on addressing some ethical challenges in gamified education, such as power dynamics and paternalism, lack of voluntarity and confidentiality, cognitive manipulation, and social comparison. Research and development decision-making processes affected by such challenges are also elaborated, and potential actions to mitigate their effects in gamification planning, conducting and communication are further introduced. Thus, this chapter provides an understanding of ethical challenges posed by the literature in gamified education and a set of guidelines for future research and development.Comment: This is a preprint of the following work: Klock, Santana and Hamari. Ethical Challenges in Gamified Education Research and Development. Gamification Design for Educational Contexts, 2023, Springer, reproduced with permission of Springer. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31949-5_