Gamification of Workplace Activities - Smart Information Systems: Computational Intelligence for Real-Life Applications - page 244

it. Fourteen subjects said that they have very little knowledge about it while four
subjects were not familiar with it at all. We conclude from these responses that there
is a general awareness of gamification principles (especially among those colleagues
who closely work with the authors of this paper), while many lack further details to
describe these principles.
In the following question Q 3 (“motivation”), we were further interested in their
own attitude toward gamification. Therefore, we asked them to judge whether gami-
fication would motivate them to participate even more in enterprise systems. In order
to guarantee that all subjects had the same understanding of gamification, we also
provided a brief definition (as stated on Wikipedia) that should help to better under-
stand this question. 43% of all participants stated that they were undecided on how to
judge this statement. 34% of them agreed to this statement while 22% disagreed (9)
or strongly disagreed (3). Although only a few more than those who disagree tends
to agree with this statement. With 43% answered undecided it is evident that the
subjects are not very convinced of the role of gamification in an enterprise environ-
ment. This goes in line with Q 2 which indicates that the subjects are not too familiar
with the concept.
In the next question ( Q 4 : “positive effects”), we asked the participants to state
whether game mechanics like points, badges, and leaderboards have a positive effect
on the enterprise and its staff. While 33.9% were undecided, a majority of over 50%
either agree (26) or strongly agree (1) with this statement. Only eight participants
disagreed (4) or strongly disagreed (4). This distribution of judgements seems to indi-
cate that the majority of participants have a rather positive perception of gamification
principles.
In the last question ( Q 5 : “negative effects”), we wanted to know whether the
participants believe that there are negative effects on the enterprise and its staff caused
by game mechanics like points, badges, and leaderboards. Here, a clear preference
can not be observed. 49% of all subjects were undecided, 22.6% either agreed or
disagreed with this statement while only 2 participants strongly agreed with it.
Summarizing, in this section, we aimed to evaluate whether gamification is seen
positively or negatively within an enterprise context. The analysis of our online
questionnaire revealed that although many participants of the study are (to some
extent) familiar with gamification and are convinced that it can have a positive effect
on an enterprise and its staff, they are not convinced that it can serve as intrinsic
motivation for themselves to contribute more on enterprise systems. Addressing this
question further, we present a gamified enterprise tagging system in the next section
which shall shed further light on the difference between the perceived and the actual
role of gamification on users' behavior in an enterprise setting.
9.3.2 Gamified Enterprise Tagging
Following our first research question on employees' perception of gamification, we
were further interested in comparing this perceived role with users' actual interaction