Paper Title: Modern Views on the Gamification of Business

Authors: Mikhail Vasilievich Vinichenko, Alexander Vasilievich Melnichuk, Andrei Vladimirovich Kirillov, Sergey Anatolyevich

Summary of the research paper content

New provisions and approaches to the gamification of various areas are being developed permanently in Russia and abroad to find solutions for the series of factors of both objective and subjective nature that influence the global economy. Mainly in the current crisis conditions, dynamically changing demand for goods and services and enterprise competitiveness can’t be ensured unless new ways are found to develop its investment, image, and, first of all, its human resources advantages.

Sociological and Statistical methods were employed in order to identify the nature of views on the gamification of business. The research was conducted in Moscow for nine months in 2015-2016 over two stages. The age range of participants in the research was 22-50 years old, with an emphasis shift towards 22-35 years old.

64.6% of respondents heard about gamification, and only 18.9% of the companies had employed gaming techniques. 32.6% agreed that gamification’s primary objective in organizations’ activities is to increase employees’ motivation, and 31.7% chose it to create a social and psychological climate. Only 5.6% of participants indicated that gamification creates the organization’s image as a progressive and innovative one.

Gamification aims to improve staff motivation and create a favorable social and psychological climate in the organization that will facilitate the creativity and initiative of employees. Gamification of business processes and staff activities is a modern advanced technology for activating staff’s creative potential and effective use of human resources. Creativity, freedom, and a friendly working atmosphere are highlighted as the main conditions for the effective application of gaming techniques.

Quality of the Research

The research question is stated clearly in the last paragraph of the introduction as follows: “the question of how important the gamification is for various social categories that participate in labour activities or undergo training in the Moscow Region has not been discussed yet. This has become the subject of this research.”

The work objective is to provide for the first time an analysis of the situation in the Moscow region with regards to the gamification of business. The results obtained during the research are used to identify categories of social groups that, besides employees, can be subjected to direct incentive motivation using game design techniques.

Gamification is an interesting topic as it is the new marketer’s secret weapon. It is a way of motivating employees to work harder and more innovative and make customers more engaged with the business. Research has shown that gamification can increase productivity and business performance efficiency. In addition, it helps companies to improve their marketing strategy and customer engagement (Çeker & Özdaml, 2017).

Gamification is one of the most popular words in the IT business nowadays. It has become a world-fashionable trend among users of different products for several years. However, it can be found that scientific literature on this subject is not enough; many types of research are not practical, some researches are rather theoretical. This research has been done with the aim to reveal the main disciplines of gamification implementations in Moscow region business companies based on interviews with employees conducted between 2015-2016.

In “Modern Views on the Gamification of Business” journal, the background research focuses on the evolution of gamification and how it can be used to improve a variety of business functions. It applies the lessons from several case studies from different sectors and grabs examples of how some researchers like Kevin Werbach, Dan Hunter, Gabe Zichermann, and Joselin Linder emphasize their suggestions on what gamification is to demonstrate the business benefit that can be achieved from encouraging more participation from employees using some simple gamification techniques.

“Modern Views on the Gamification of Business” is a well-written paper that discusses the authors’ views and opinions, taking into consideration acknowledging their references and theoretical resources and using citations.

The Research Method

General scientific methods have been comprehensively employed to identify the nature of views on the gamification of business.

The research depends on two main methods. The first method is sociological methods which include observation, surveys, interviews, and questionnaires that are used to determine attitudes towards the social phenomena related to gamification at work. The second method is statistical methods to analyze received data in order to understand the conclusions which provide better solutions to solve problems related to gamification in the business.

The research was conducted in Moscow for nine months in 2015-2016 in two stages. The age of research participants in the final stage was 22-50 years old, with a shift of 22-35 years old participants.

The research method aims to present the nature views and attitudes towards Gamification of Business in the Moscow Region, so it is considered as qualitative research, which is defined as “the study of the nature of phenomena and is especially appropriate for answering questions of why something is (not) observed, assessing complex multi-component interventions, and focusing on intervention improvement” (Busetto et al., 2020). Therefore, the methods that researchers are using to determine the nature of opinions about gamification and attitudes towards the topic of gamification at work according to social status, education, age of respondents are all relevant to the research question. 

In addition, the research is conducted in the Moscow region and covered a wide range of different groups where the focus was on specialists and clerks who are the most relevant groups to this topic. The research methods are adequately described. In the sociological methods, the researchers used four types of tools that are observation, surveys, interviews, and questionnaires. While in statistical methods, they were querying participants’ opinions by using a special questionnaire form in Google Forms Application and then providing profound analysis.

The research was conducted in Moscow for nine months in 2015-2016 in two stages. The researchers took into account that the study sample has to be divided according to a set of criteria such as age, gender, and income level.

However, the researchers did not describe the sample size and their educational level, especially when conducted in the first stage among organizations’ employees and high school students.

In analyzing the data received from the interviews and the questionnaire, the researchers relied on two methods: quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis.  For the analysis to be successful and correct, it needs to organize, process, and present this data in a specific context to make it useful (Data analysis in research, n.d.). This is what the researchers showed well in the results and discussions sections. The results section included the classification of the received data according to the categories and questions are asked in the questionnaire and were presented in the form of charts, while these results were illustrated through the discussions to come up with a clear understanding of these models and thus conclusions about the nature of views raised regarding gamification in business.

From all the above, it seems that most of the conclusions presented are supported by providing the results and their understanding and justifications in the discussions section. However, the research needs to be backed by more data such as a list of questions that have been asked in the questionnaire, the methods of choosing questions of the interviews at the first stage, the number of people who have been interviewed, and what were the indicators that the researchers relied on to identify the questionnaire questions for the second stage.

Quality of Presentation

Although the research paper is considered well-structured as it consists of the main components of the formal scientific research paper, which are the introduction, methods, results, and discussion (Perneger & Hudelson, 2004), however, the presentation of the research was not delivered in an appealing manner to the reader. The researchers were able to enrich the content with a set of images that illustrate the concept of gamification in general. They could also have replaced some figures with infographics since the descriptions in some figures are not clear, and some of them are incomplete. In addition, there are many linguistic and grammatical mistakes, especially in the use of apostrophes, numbers’ parentheses, and writing percentages.

Moreover, the research should have been subjected to more careful review and scrutiny, as in Figure (5) in the original study, two results are bearing the same name (Prizes) in that one of them, which has a value of 21.4%, is in fact (virtual money and virtual badges).

Regarding symbols, terms, and concepts, all are adequately defined. However, the definition of the gamification concept is missed in general. On the other hand, the authors should have added additional figures regarding the sample size and respondents’ classification and gender.

Descriptions in some figures are not clear

Two results are bearing the same name (Prizes)

Conclusion

In general, the research provides an informative overview of gamification in different areas of business. The topic is well covered and studied. There was a good usage of research methods and analytics, and finally, the results and conclusion are linked to analysis. However, the overall presentation can be enhanced.

References

  • Busetto, L., Wick, W., & Gumbinger, C. (2020). How to use and assess qualitative research  methods. Neurological Research and practice, 2, 1-10.
  • Çeker, E., & Özdaml, F. (2017). What” Gamification” Is and What It’s Not. European Journal of  Contemporary Education, 6(2), 221-228.
  • Data analysis in research. (n.d.). Data analysis in research: Why data, types of data, data analysis in qualitative and quantitative research. Retrieved 18 November 2021, from Question Pro: https://www.questionpro.com/blog/data-analysis-in-research/
  • Perneger, T. V., & Hudelson, P. M. (2004). Writing a research article: advice to beginners. International journal for quality in health care, 16(3), 191-192.
  • Vinichenko, M. V., Melnichuk, A. V., Kirillov, A. V., Makushkin, S. A., & Melnichuk, Y. A. (2016). Modern views on the gamification of business. The Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce, 21.