Tobias Michael Scholz

Universitetet i Agder | UIA · Department of Information- and Communication Technology (ICT)

Negative online behaviors, such as toxicity, continue being issues in several popular multiplayer online games. Related research suggests that there are individual differences in how players understand the concept, and that various interconnected variables are relevant in understanding the emergence of toxicity. To explore this topic further, in th...

Esports, or competitive video gaming competitions, bring together aspects of sports, business, leisure, technology, and digital media, appealing to academics across multiple disciplines. Yet, esports scholarship remains highly fragmented, with scholars operating within traditional academic silos and forgoing opportunities to build on esports' inter...

Aims: The aim of the paper is to explore emerging themes, which support the development of a sustainable esports industry. Methods and results: This study is based on a workshop methodology, which aims to identify and explore topics perceived as most pertinent by individuals with an intimate understanding of the dynamics of the esports context. Tw...

1. Introduction Nowadays, video games and more specifically eSports (we follow a wide definition understanding eSports as the competitive play of video games, which is present in every game that uses points to differentiate between players) can be considered the fastest growing entertainment market and one of the fundamental pillars of digital cult...

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted – across intricate borders, different geographies, and legal jurisdictions – that there is only so much that can be done in the way of governance to tackle the challenge posed by a virus. The pandemic is a global problem, one which has affected almost every country in significant and seldom-felt ways. Governmen...

In den letzten Jahren war ein exponentielles Wachstum im E-Sport zu erkennen: der E-Sport entwickelte sich von einem Nischenphänomen zu einem Massenphänomen. Gerade der Fokus auf eine junge, digitale und globale Zielgruppe macht den E-Sport auch für die Medienbranche interessant. Neben den lukrativen Vermarktungsmöglichkeiten ist der E-Sport weiter...

p> Much of the reporting of the tracing apps, tracking programmes, and privacy concerns during the developmental processes and the initial stages of the Covid-19 pandemic have focussed on pitting digital rights and privacy against public health interests. Undoubtedly, there is best practice in establishing a tracing app to respond to Covid-19 whi...

This editorial gives a short preface to the eSports industry and why this industry is unusual for media management research – thereby describing the eSports ecosystem based on the stakeholders involved, the fundamental characteristics, and the governing principles of the industry. Then the three papers in this special issue are introduced. These pa...

Driven by significant innovations in manufacturing on the edge of a ‘second machine age', automation will play a pivotal role in turning the world of work upside down. Digitized manufacturing is fundamentally changing relations between human and machine. The expected symbiosis has not yet been systematically organized, since human resource manageme...

The sixth edition of the eSports yearbook focuses on the recent developments in the scene. Especially with the ongoing professionalization, there is an increase in academic research observable. The topics range from governance and institutionalization of the eSports industry to the continuing professionalization of companies involved in the industr...

Based on the long eSports history and the interaction of the stakeholders, it becomes evident that eSports follows certain principles, although they are unwritten, and reviewing the management decisions in the past reveals these principles. These principles are derived and institutionalized over time and show self-governance within eSports. The roo...

The eSports industry is a highly complex environment that is continually evolving. Based on this innovativeness, there are groundbreaking changes that disrupt the industry every five years or so. Furthermore, many external stakeholders invest in eSports, creating a potential bubble, due to an overheated market. Such a development may result in a co...

The eSports industry is highly volatile and in the midst of exponential growth; however, it becomes evident that a common understanding influences the eSports industry. The focus is on a value integration toward the audience and doing business around this audience. Furthermore, there are three existing rules: coopetition, co-destiny, and convergenc...

The global phenomenon of eSports has experienced exponential growth in recent years, gaining interest from the media, sports and technology industries. Being born digital, global and agile, competitive gaming appeals to a young and emerging audience, and therefore the management of businesses within the eSports industry requires a unique strategy....

The world of eSports or competitive gaming has grown exponentially in recent years; however, the industry itself is not as young as many believe. There are many similarities with traditional sports and media businesses, but there are many differences, too, in the eSports industry. With the absence of a standardized governance structure, eSports is...

The eSports industry is a multifaceted industry involving many different stakeholders, all of them contributing to the value chain or the value integration of the audience that is experiencing the various eSports products. Notably, the long-term stakeholders in eSports are highly intertwined and interconnected, creating a business around the audien...

The phenomenon of eSports is not a recent development, despite popular opinion being that it emerged just in the last years. The roots of competitive gaming in fact date back to the beginning of computers. Since then, eSports has been part of the evolution of computers and first rose to popularity in the arcade era. With the internet, the current i...

Despite the recent surge in digitization, organizations still struggle with utilizing international virtual teams. Such teams still tend to follow the concept of top-down planning and are, therefore, controlled by some sort of headquarter. In the context of multiplayer games, however, we observe a more self-organized way of establishing teams, whic...

As media companies continue to struggle on the ever-changing global and digital market, they often fail to be simultaneously innovative and entrepreneurial. As though intuitively knowing that they are still not on the right track, a growing number of media companies has been observed to approach eSports companies, intending to invest in innovative...

This year's issue contains several articles about eSports. This time there are more research articles included. The topics range from research about eSports spectatorship, the informal roles in Counter-Strike Teams, a potential reverse gamification effect, the chances of eSports being an Olympic discipline, the connection between League of Legend t...

Big data are changing the way we work as companies face an increasing amount of data. Rather than replacing a human workforce or making decisions obsolete, big data are going to pose an immense innovating force to those employees capable of utilizing them. This book intends to first convey a theoretical understanding of big data. It then tackles th...

Media companies are still struggling with the challenge of positioning themselves on the global and digital market. They are often failing of be entrepreneurial and innovative at the same time. The concept of entrepreneurial innovation is therefore tting, however, this type of person is scarce. Currently, the eld of eSports and competitive gaming i...

Becoming immersed in a world where our perception of reality is highly mediated allows for the creation of an audiovisual lexicon that expands over many platforms and times. In this context we might observe the case of video games which, as a medium, does not limit themselves to the creation of puzzles to be solved, to pretend participation in the...

Although complex systems have been part of organizational studies for several decades, research have only shifted significantly in recent years. This paper is based on existent work on complex systems and particularly on the research about power-law distributions. Through this research stream, we propose that organizational change becomes more expl...

Organizations act in increasingly dynamic environments. In order to sustain and achieve competitive advantage under that condition, it becomes essential to tread a path of dynamization. However, what exactly is dynamization? Does it evolve automatically according to the changing environment or has it to be shaped intentionally? In this paper, we wi...

Typically, performance measurement systems in faculties are dominated by standard parameters of external stakeholders, even though faculties have highly specific contextual factors. Therefore, the faculty's steering requirements are often not met. Furthermore, there is an increasing amount of data available (big data). Deans could use them in order...

In Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs) and virtual worlds, the idea of authors seems to have 'died' or been 'wiped out,' at least from the perspective of users. The concept of authorship does not receive adequate attention or recognition in MMOs and online games in particular appear to deprive authors of their rights, both legally and morally...

Is context a way of grasping modern phenomena? Recently research is focus- ing on the understanding of the context of problems. Thereby stating that contex- tualization helps to improve the accuracy and robustness of those research models. But it also leads to an increase of complexity and variety. In an industry like the video game industry that a...

This year’s issue contains articles about many major eSports topics in 2011 and 2012, StarCraft II for example. Manuel Schenkhuizen wrote a Manifesto. Henry Harris wrote a detailed story about Team Fortress 2. Aman Parmar and Ángel Quintina chose topics that focus on India and Spain. Marc-Andre Messier looks at Quake and Terrence Wong gives an insi...

Videospiele sind Teil der heutigen Gesellschaft geworden und dadurch ha- ben sie auch Einfluss auf die heutige Arbeitswelt. In dieser Arbeit wird auf- gezeigt dass die Erfahrungen in Videospielen eine Möglichkeit für das Perso- nalmanagement sein könnte Wettbewerbsvorteile zu generieren. Vor allem wegen den vorhandenen Parallelen zwischen beiden As...

Although complex systems have been part of organizational studies for several decades, they have witnessed significant changes in recent years. This research builds on existent work on complex systems by focusing on the shift toward power-law distributions. Evidentially, HRM is highly nested in those complex systems. Due to the advancements in the...

As part of corporate Human Resource Management, the configuration of the workforce becomes more and more challenging since an increase of non-permanent, temporary, timely restricted labour can be observed, the so-called 'atypical employment'. At the same time, advancements in electronic HRM are promising a better handling of operative, but also of...

Although talent management is a relatively new research stream, it has already witnessed several changes. This research builds on extant work on talent management by focusing on the national culture of team members and finds that national culture, and especially cultural diversity, influences performance. The idea is tested in the video game indust...

Although complex systems are part of organizational studies for several decades, they have witnessed significant changes in recent years. This research builds on existent work on complex systems by focusing on the shift toward power-law distributions. By using theories of complex systems, organizational change is shifting towards a stable environme...

Broadcasting is in a phase of change, with new technologies and new contestants companies are facing an increased competition. One emerging stream of broadcasting is Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) and competitive gaming (eSports) scene is resting upon that technology. On the case of eSports the possibilities of IPTV can be revealed and further...

Social networks are everywhere and influence an organization intensively. Through intensification of interaction in the recent years it became essential to look into the social networks from the lens of Human Resource Management. This paper develops a fitting model for the inclusion of social networks through the usage of the concept of path depend...

In this paper I want to research World of Warcraft (WoW) with the lens from HRM and what HRM can learn from WoW. Using the method of cognitive ethnography (Hutchins, 1995) I combine my experiences from over six years of playing the game as well as observing the devel- opment to the current date. Based on previous research (Scholz, 2010) I already d...

Human Resources consistently evolved to adapt to new competitive situation. Currently another change is imminent and there are several options at hand. One potential step is stated in this paper. In combination with research in social networks human resources can become more involved into the organization as a broker. Through this broker role it wi...

In sports there are always teams and players standing in a crisis, it seems that the next crisis is always imminent. In this paper we want to analyze a current crisis of the German football and thereby compare the situation with the organizational ecocycle model. This model will describe the situation of Kaiserslautern and shows that the model can...

This year’s issue contains articles about many major eSports topics in 2010, StarCraft II for example. Jasper Mah and Colin Webster chose topics that focus on Asia and South Africa. And we are proud to present you some beautiful eSports and gaming art in the eSports Yearbook for the very first time, as art is a very important cultural area in eSpor...

Talent management consists for potential talents, trains them and keeps them at a company, however in a globalized world the cultural factor is disregarded. Talents will be appraised on grades and experience, but not on their cultural background. By integrating the cultural background and the cultural intelligence into talent management, it should...

Team performance is affected by cultural values; in this paper we propose that cultural differences have different influences in distinct job-fields. The implications are based upon a survey of software development teams in the game software industry. We focus on the game software industry as it represents an under-researched field, and the game so...

Current Leadership faces severe problems, since the workforce is changing and it becomes more complicated to motivate employees. Therefore this paper looks into how video games are handling the topic of leadership. Gaming is part of the modern media world and as research indicates it gives insights into leadership of future organizations. In this p...