Designing gamification to guide competitive and cooperative behavior in teamwork

Abstract

Teamwork and team performance are increasingly important in business organizations. New types of teams are invented to increase effectiveness at work. Ideally a team works towards the optimal outcome, which is achieved when the individual goal of each team member effectively contributes to the collective team goal. However, in practice, individual concerns may lead to sub-optimal teamwork outcomes due to conflicts and group dynamics (e.g., because of hidden agendas). These individual concerns and the resulting behavior tend to be implicit, resulting in a chaotic process and sub-optimal outcomes. In order to deliver optimal outcomes the collaboration between team members needs to be improved. Structuring the process and aligning individual goals with collective goals through gamification may achieve this. In this chapter a framework for gamification of teamwork is introduced and illustrated by real-life cases from industry.