Expanding the magic circle – gamification as a marketplace icon

ABSTRACT

This article explores the gamification trend sweeping the globe promising increased engagement and motivation, in practically any industry, context and culture, based on a stratagem of “game design elements in non-game contexts,” which is its most quoted definition [Deterding, Sebastian, Miguel Sicart, Lennart Nacke, Kenton O'Hara, and Dan Dixon. 2011. “Gamification – Using Game-Design Elements in Non-Gaming Contexts.” Paper presented at the CHI EA “11 proceedings of the 2011 annual conference extended abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Vancouver, BC, May 7–12.]. The rise of gamification as marketplace icon is examined and particularly claims that position gamification as the manifestation of a wider societal transformation into playful societies – a “ludic turn.” Many of these grandiose statements are the result of ahistoricity and ambiguity regarding the definition of gamification. Based on game philosophy, game studies and gamification research this article posits gamification as an emergent perspective, as distinct conceptualisation, on the rule-driven organisation of sociotechnical management systems that reference “games.” Of particular importance is the role of rules. Examples such as Frequent Flyer Programmes and Foursquare are analysed according to the player/consumer positions they bestow, which are explored from participatory, co-creational, critical and game philosophical perspectives. Conclusively, a “gameful” perspective of rule-generated goal-oriented behaviour, or “playful” perspective of instinctive and limitless fun, shed two challenging perspectives on the interpretation of gamification in the marketplace.     

Can gamification increases consumers’ engagement in fitness apps? The moderating role of commensurability of the game elements

Many app firms have adopted gamification, aiming at making consumers more engaging and loyal. Given the ambivalent evidence on the effectiveness of gamification, this study proposes that the effectiveness of gamification is moderated by the types of game elements, i.e., commensurate and incommensurate. Commensurate elements, such as points, are directly associated with performances such as step counts, and may be perceived by consumers as external incentives to their efforts; whereas incommensurate elements, such as “likes”, are not directly related to performances, and may be considered as avenues to satisfy psychological needs, leading to stronger intrinsic motivation. Results from a longitudinal field study confirm that compared with apps using commensurate elements, apps using incommensurate elements can better help increase intrinsic motivation and further enhance engagement and loyalty.     

Does educational gamification improve students’ motivation? If so,which game elements work best?

Educational gamification is a growing field. The authors answer the following important questions: (a) To what degree does educational gamification, in general, increase students' perceived motivation in learning? (b) To what degree do specific game elements impact perceived motivation in learning? and (c) Are the benefits of gamification limited to or enhanced in participants with specific demographic characteristics? A survey of organizational behavior students' perceptions (n?=?124) investigated how participating in a gamified course motivated students overall and examined the individual effect of specific game elements. Of the participants, 67.7% reported that the gamified course was more or much more motivating than a traditional course. Correlational data indicated that being a member of any measured demographic (e.g., gender, age, student status) was not a barrier to finding gamification motivating.     

The Ethical and Economic Case Against Sweatshop Labor: A Critical Assessment

During the last decade, scholarly criticism of sweatshops has grown increasingly sophisticated. This article reviews the new moral and economic foundations of these criticisms and argues that they are flawed. It seeks to advance the debate over sweatshops by noting the extent to which the case for sweatshops does, and does not, depend on the existence of competitive markets. It attempts to more carefully distinguish between different ways in which various parties might seek to modify sweatshop behavior, and to point out that there is more room for consensus regarding some of these methods than has previously been recognized. It addresses the question of when sweatshops are justified in violating local labor laws. And it assesses the relevance of recent literature on coercion and exploitation as it applies to sweatshop labor. It concludes with a list of challenges that critics of sweatshops must meet to productively advance the debate.     

Game on: Engaging customers and employees through gamification

Managers are frequently tasked with increasing the engagement levels of key stakeholders, such as customers and employees. Gamification—defined as the application of game design principles to change behavior in non-gaming contexts—is a tool that, if crafted and implemented properly, can increase engagement. In this article we discuss how gamification can aid customer and employee engagement, and delineate between four different types of customers and employees who act as ‘players’ in gamified experiences. We include illustrative examples of gamification and conclude by presenting five lessons for managers who wish to utilize gamification.     

Value dimensions of gamification and their influence on brand loyalty and word-of-mouth: Relationships and combinations with satisfaction and brand love

This study examined the influence of different value dimensions of gamification on two important marketing outcomes, brand loyalty and word-of-mouth (WOM), using a mixed methods approach. A fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fs/QCA) is employed alongside structural equation modeling (SEM). These methods showcase nuances that contribute to the understanding of the effects of different value dimensions. Although the SEM results stress the mediating role of brand love, the fs/QCA results indicate that brand love is a core condition for brand loyalty, but it might be indifferent to obtaining positive WOM. Different paths can be sufficient to produce the outcomes of interest. The value dimensions of gamification can be substitutes, contingent on the presence of other conditions, thereby providing a novel perspective. These findings advance our knowledge of the functioning of gamification and can serve as a guide for practitioners seeking to employ gamification experiences to alter consumers' behavior.     

Hook vs. hope: How to enhance customer engagement through gamification

Many digital service providers have adopted gamification to promote customer engagement. Critical questions, however, remain about the most effective way to enhance customer engagement and increase sales by applying gamification. With a research design that combines qualitative and quantitative methods, including the use of objective sales data from a large field study and replication of the findings across different contexts, this study explores how gamification fosters customer engagement. Both field study results and a simulation study reveal gamification principles (i.e., social interaction, sense of control, goals, progress tracking, rewards, and prompts) that promote hope and consequently increase customer engagement and digital sales. Furthermore, we find that hope is more strongly associated with customer engagement than the psychological condition of compulsion, which even exerts a negative impact. This research thus explores how gamification creates value for customers and provides actionable insights for managers to foster hope through gamification as opposed to get customers hooked.     

Gamification of employee training and development

Gamification has become increasingly common in employee training. Simultaneously, our scientific understanding of gamified learning has grown. However, there are few resources that provide specific recommendations for science‐based gamification in employee training to address the research–practice gap. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to describe our current scientific understanding of gamification as it can be used to realistically improve web‐based employee training. First, because gamification is commonly misunderstood, we explain what gamification is in the context of training. Second, because gamification is commonly misapplied, research on the effectiveness of gamified learning as related to training design is reviewed. Finally, to provide a clear roadmap for training design, we describe a formal process for gamifying web‐based training in a scientifically supported way.     

All that glitters is not gold: An investigation into the undesired effects of gamification and how to mitigate them through gamification design

Although gamification has received considerable attention from both researchers and practitioners, its influence on consumers remains ambiguous. This paper proposes that a negative process through decreased attention and a positive process through increased enjoyment explain the effects of gamification on different outcome variables. Study 1 examines these two processes and gamification’s downstream consequences on purchase intention and product information recognition. For purchase intention, the two processes operate in parallel and produce a null effect of gamification. For product information recognition, only the negative process emerges, resulting in a negative effect of gamification. Studies 2 and 3 focus on the negative effect of gamification on product information recognition and show that the negative effect disappears in gamification designs that link the game elements with meaningful information about the product (Study 2) or make consumers aware of the distraction potential of game elements (Study 3). The studies’ findings provide managerial insights into why not all gamification endeavors yield the desired results; they also specify two boundary conditions (i.e., meaningfulness and disclosure) that may help managers avoid potentially detrimental effects of gamification.     

Editorial: Special Issue on the Impact of Business Ethics on Public Life

Even though management scholars have offered several views on the process of corporate sustainability, these efforts have focused mainly on the technical aspects of sustainability while omitting the fundamental role played by individual moral competences. Therefore, previous work offers an incomplete and somewhat reductionist view of corporate sustainability. In this article, we develop a holistic framework of corporate sustainability in which both the moral and technical aspects of sustainability are considered. We do so by integrating the ethical, normative perspective of the Catholic social teaching (CST) with the competitive view of the natural resource-based view. This framework highlights the importance of CST principles and ideas in developing executive moral competences such as moral sensitivity and awareness, and moral cognition and motivation. Moral competences, in turn, influence the organizational selection of environmental strategies, giving leaders the intrinsic motivation to promote both a longer-term stance on corporate sustainability efforts and a relentless search for greener business models. Such strategies move the firm closer towards achieving environmental sustainability. Hence, by bridging the individual, normative-ethical with the organizational, implementational levels of corporate sustainability, our framework provides a more realistic, coherent, and complete perspective on the complex process of achieving corporate sustainability.     

Promoting Stewardship Behavior in Organizations: A Leadership Model

This article explores the relational and motivational leadership behaviors that may promote stewardship in organizations. I conceptualize stewardship as an outcome of leadership behaviors that promote a sense of personal responsibility in followers for the long-term wellbeing of the organization and society. Building upon the themes presented in the stewardship literature, such as identification and intrinsic motivation, and drawing from other research streams to include factors such as interpersonal and institutional trust and moral courage, I posit that leaders foster stewardship in their followers through various relational, motivational, and contextually supportive leadership behaviors.     

Religiosity and Moral Identity: The Mediating Role of Self-Control

The ethics literature has identified moral motivation as a factor in ethical decision-making. Furthermore, moral identity has been identified as a source of moral motivation. In the current study, we examine religiosity as an antecedent to moral identity and examine the mediating role of self-control in this relationship. We find that intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions of religiosity have different direct and indirect effects on the internalization and symbolization dimensions of moral identity. Specifically, intrinsic religiosity plays a role in counterbalancing the negative impact of extrinsic religiosity on the internalization of moral identity. Further, intrinsic religiosity also counterbalances the negative and indirect impact of extrinsic religiosity on symbolization of moral identity via self-control. Lastly, self-control does not play a mediating role in the impact of religiosity on the internalization dimension of moral identity. We conclude that this study presents important findings that advance our understanding of the antecedents of moral identity, and that these results may have implications for the understanding of ethical decision-making.     

Friendships of Virtue,Pursuit of the Moral Community,and the Ends of Business

It is argued here that business firms can and do provide an incubator that enables the Aristotelian category of friendships of advantage to develop into friendships of virtue. This contradicts other literature that views acquaintances of utility as the business norm, and expresses pessimism concerning more advanced virtuous development of friendship within the business firm. It is argued here, however, that this virtuous development is integral to the Kantian social aim of pursuing a moral community, an aim which declares the appropriate moral motivation for business, and that certainly should incorporate a role for developing virtuous relations as a component of that pursuit. An atmosphere that encourages the development of relations of virtue is feasible, exists in real business, and is optimal for pursuit of moral business communities.     

Agents or Stewards? Linking Managerial Behavior and Moral Development

The goal of this paper is to connect managerial behavior on the “agent-steward” scale to managerial moral development and motivation. I introduce agent- and steward-like behavior: the former is self-serving while the latter is others-serving. I suggest that managerial moral development and motivation may be two of the factors that may predict the tendency of managers to behave in a self-serving way (like agents) or to serve the interests of the organization (like stewards). Managers at low levels of moral development are more likely to behave like agents, while managers at higher levels of moral development are more likely to behave like stewards. I also argue that managers at the highest level of moral development may serve the interests of people other than the firm’s owners and thereby transfer wealth from the firm’s owners to third parties. Moral motivation is likely to be a factor that moderates the proposed relationships. Finally, I develop propositions that address the role of material incentives in controlling behavior of managers at different levels of moral development.     

利益相关者需求有助于企业开展社会责任战略吗？--一项三维交互研究

本文通过探讨利益相关者需求对企业社会责任战略的作用机制,分析管理者道德动机和道德滑坡对二者关系的调节效应,对企业实施社会责任战略的机理进行系统性论证。研究结果表明：利益相关者需求对企业社会责任战略具有正向的推动作用;道德动机和道德滑坡对利益相关者需求与企业社会责任战略的关系具有正向调节效应,道德滑坡的程度负向影响管理者道德动机对利益相关者需求与企业社会责任战略关系的正向调节作用。     

马克思与罗宾逊的剥削理论范式比较研究

琼·罗宾逊的剥削理论以要素分配论为基础;马克思的剥削理论是以劳动价值论和剩余价值论为基础;建立在劳动价值理论基础上的马克思主义关于剥削的理论,是对我国是否存在剥削问题进行解释的基础;我国社会主义条件下剥削现象的消亡是一个漫长的历史过程。     

Karma-Yoga: The Indian Model of Moral Development

A comprehensive model of moral development must encompass moral sensitivity, moral reasoning, moral motivation, and moral character. Western models of moral development have often failed to show validity outside the culture of their origin. We propose Karma-Yoga, the technique of intelligent action discussed in the Bhagawad Gita as an Indian model for moral development. Karma-Yoga is conceptualized as made up of three dimensions viz. duty-orientation, indifference to rewards, and equanimity. Based on survey results from 459 respondents from two large Indian organizations, we show that the dimensions of Karma-Yoga are related to moral sensitivity, moral motivation, and moral character.     

Mixed Motives and Ethical Decisions in Business

Discerning the motives that lead businesspeople to make ethical decisions in economic contexts is important, for it aids the moral evaluation of such decisions. But conventional economic theory has for too long assumed an egoist model of motivation, to which many contrast an altruist view of ethical choices. The result is to see business decision making as implying dilemmas. On the other hand, we argue, if one assumes multiple motives, economic and ethical, in ordinary business decisions, a more fruitful model of ethical motivation in such decisions emerges. In this paper multiple motives are assumed to be the norm in a world of large organizations, complex decisions and stakeholder management. An example of a technology acquisition decision, with environmental overtones is presented in illustration of this approach. A method for discerning motives, primarily in terms of behavioural efficacy is presented. On this basis a two step approach to morally evaluating mixed motives in business decisions is proposed. First, the fit of motives with substantive ethical values should be ascertained, and then the efficacy of moral motives in yielding ethical behaviour and outcomes should be determined. This approach, we conclude, offers a much more concrete model of the actual role of moral motives in business decision making. It also signals the importance of moral learning in organizations.     

我国人力资源配置和劳动力市场建设

人力资源配置是人力资源开发和利用的关键,完善劳动力市场对优化人力资源配置至关重要。所以必须从我国目前人力资源配置的状况出发,来探索劳动力市场在人力资源配置中的作用,从中找出目前劳动力市场存在的主要问题,并制定出相应的政策。从而为优化我国人力资源配置、培育和发展劳动力市场提供参考。     

Plane Truth: A Qualitative Study of Employee Dishonesty in the Airline Industry

Interviews with flight attendants are analyzed to refine a person-situation model of organizational dishonesty. The refined model suggests that organizational characteristics have direct and indirect (through flight characteristics) effects on likelihood of dishonesty, type of dishonesty, and motivation for dishonesty. The interviews confirm the existence of three motivations for dishonesty in customer service interactions. In addition to the three motivations originally modeled (enrichment, altruism, and revenge), flight attendants demonstrated a fourth: enforce personal moral codes, and a fifth: habituation. The article discusses the implications of the habituation motivation for organizations which encourage benevolent dishonesty, because they accustom employees to saying things they know not to be true.