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Gamification in Education and Business pp 553–568Cite as

How to Avoid the Dark Side of Gamification: Ten Business Scenarios and Their Unintended Consequences

Abstract

The problems that may arise from gamification have been largely ignored by researchers and practitioners alike. At the same time, use of gamification in recruitment, onboarding, training, and performance management are on the rise in organizations as businesses turn toward technology to meet their objectives. This chapter investigates drawbacks of using elements of games in each of these applications through a series of scenarios describing different gamified interventions. For each scenario, a discussion follows regarding potential problems with the intervention, how psychological science may explain this, how these errors can be avoided, as well as future directions for gamification research. Employee motivation is noted as a critical concern in gamification, and classic theories of motivation are utilized to help explain why some interventions may fail to motivate desired behavior. For training design, a popular area for gamification, practitioners are urged to consider the intended training outcomes before designing a training program with gaming elements.

Keywords

  • Case study
  • Motivation
  • Gamification
  • Employees
  • Organizations
  • Management

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA

    Rachel C. Callan & Richard N. Landers

  2. University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL, USA

    Kristina N. Bauer

Authors
  1. Rachel C. Callan
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  2. Kristina N. Bauer
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  3. Richard N. Landers
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rachel C. Callan .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Systems, Curtin University, Bentley, West Australia, Australia

    Torsten Reiners

  2. Dept. of Business Information Systems, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand

    Lincoln C. Wood

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Callan, R.C., Bauer, K.N., Landers, R.N. (2015). How to Avoid the Dark Side of Gamification: Ten Business Scenarios and Their Unintended Consequences. In: Reiners, T., Wood, L. (eds) Gamification in Education and Business. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10208-5_28

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