Understanding Context: Exploring the Potential of Conceptual Tools from Gamification

This paper argues that the next step towards more contextualized theorization in management disciplines is to identify methodological tools for uncovering the explanatory factors from context that drive and influence human behavior. For these ends, we explain – and empirically illustrate – how conceptual tools from gamification research provide useful lenses for mapping out gameful motivational affordances (GMAs) that are embedded in organizational contexts shaping the motivational drivers, behaviors, and perceptions of those involved. First, we show how social GMAs explain how social relationships satisfy actors’ innate need for relatedness thus enhancing their motivation. Second, we explicate how achievement and progression GMAs reveal the ways in which experiences of advancement, success, and mastery satisfy actors’ innate need for competence thus increasing their motivation. Third, we consider how immersive GMAs allow us to explore how role adaptation relates to the innate need for autonomy and enhanced motivation. Our work advances management scholarship by (1) clarifying the roles of individual agency and context in shaping organizational behavior, (2) specifying the existing theories and their boundary conditions, and (3) advancing the integration of management research and gamification research at a more general level.