Conceptualizing the Role of Gamification in Contemporary Enterprises

Nowadays, gamification is used to improve the enterprises’ relationship with customers and employees. Employee engagement as one of the significant achievements of gamification is a major factor for increasing organizational productivity. In this paper we try to theorize the role of gamification in the enterprises from the employee perspective. The main objective of this research is to identify the major role of gamification as a new facilitating technology and organizational capability through examining the nomological network of influences. We highlight the strong interactions among three organizational capabilities in the form of mechanic options, dynamics, and positive emotions and their mediating role between gamification competence and enterprise’s performance. Using a mixed method through expert interviews and questionnaires, we determined the proposed model and localized it to a 1,000-member banking organization. The proposed conceptual model shows that from a gamification standpoint, what factors and how they can cause and increase the employee engagement and thereby improve the organizational performance and capabilities. Using a mixed method, we have shown that there is a statistically significant improvement with positive emotion and that a good feeling of employees toward the system will have a positive impact on their preference for their work. This paper forwards an important debate on the conceptualizing the role of gamification in contemporary enterprises performance by applying gamified approaches, which contributes to literature on internal and enterprise gamification.