{"id":174,"date":"2018-10-01T12:35:24","date_gmt":"2018-10-01T12:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogg.sh.se\/game_research\/?p=174"},"modified":"2018-10-01T12:37:53","modified_gmt":"2018-10-01T12:37:53","slug":"gamifying-the-perfect-employee-a-zombie-in-the-organisation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogg.sh.se\/game_research\/research\/gamifying-the-perfect-employee-a-zombie-in-the-organisation\/","title":{"rendered":"Gamifying the perfect employee \u2013 A zombie in the organisation?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

The paper “Gamifying the perfect employee \u2013 A zombie in the organisation?<\/em>”
\nby Mikolaj Dymek was presented at the 36th Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism and the 7th Australasian Caucus of the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism conference, August 17-20 2018, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan<\/a><\/p>\n

This paper explores\u00a0zombies as a rewarding avenue of inquiry\u00a0on the notion of so-called gamification within organisational settings, and in particular as analogy for its users and players \u2013 the organisational strive to mold the \u201cperfect employee\u201d transmutes its characteristics into that of the zombie. The analysis centres on implicit and explicit conceptualisations of gamification players\/users (Hibbert, 2003; Ayllon and Azrin, 1968; Kazdin and Bootzin, 1972; Asplund, 1987) in gameful\/playful systems such as organisations (Huotari and Hamari, 2017), as a departure point, to propose that many assumptions of players\/users are based\u00a0on generalisations that reduce the nature of the player\/user\u00a0to the point of dehumanised subjects with\u00a0voracious and simplistic\u00a0driving forces, which\u00a0lends itself to analogies of \u201czombification\u201d of users.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Academic critique of gamification is extensive \u2013 and the frequent analogy of zombification is a pop cultural trope that this paper explores and applies as an rewarding avenue of inquiry. However, the paper stresses that frequently laudatory gamification researchers and practitioners are fully aware of this trend’s shortcoming \u2013 as are the millions of (semi-)active participants. How do we reconcile this growing divide between the practitioners\/academic proponents of gamification, and the opposing academic criticism with accompanying “zombification” arguments?<\/p>\n

This paper turns to the the very use of “analogies as interpretive venues of sensemaking” within management, film, media, literary \u2013 and game studies \u2013 by claiming there’s a certain level of fatigue. What does “gamification as zombification” mean<\/em> \u2013 beyond the analogy? A hypothesis of “slippery chrome referents” is presented \u2013 “objects\/referents without delineated signifieds\/concepts, or definitions, but simultaneously a
\nprofound source of cascading meaning and sensemaking”, which is eminently applicable on the notion of gamification. This is a notion that lacks consensus regarding theoretical empirical definition, is heavily criticised \u2013 but still<\/em> attracts believers, proponents and millions of participants.<\/p>\n

Is there a zombie in the organisation then? It’s certainly not the employee, not
\ngamification trend as such, but the “slippery chrome
\nreferents\u201d (such as gamification)!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The paper “Gamifying the perfect employee \u2013 A zombie in the organisation?” by Mikolaj Dymek was presented at the 36th Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism and the 7th Australasian Caucus of the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism conference, August 17-20 2018, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan This paper explores\u00a0zombies as a rewarding avenue of inquiry\u00a0on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[13,12,14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogg.sh.se\/game_research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogg.sh.se\/game_research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogg.sh.se\/game_research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogg.sh.se\/game_research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogg.sh.se\/game_research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogg.sh.se\/game_research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogg.sh.se\/game_research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogg.sh.se\/game_research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogg.sh.se\/game_research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogg.sh.se\/game_research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}