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, about the individual or collective goals and tasks. Previous research indicated that gamification techniques could introduce risks to the business environment, and not only fail to make a positive change, but also raise concerns about ethics, quality of work, and well-being in 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. In this paper, we focus on gamification risks related to teamwork within the enterprise. To address this, we conducted three-stage empirical research in two large-scale businesses using gamification in their workplace, including two months’ observation and interview study. 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 design practices and strategies to tackle them.