Preconceptions towards gamifying work: A thematic analysis of responses of a maritime logistics organization

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Preconceptions towards gamifying work
A thematic analysis of responses of a maritime logistics organization
Eetu Wallius*
Gamication Group, Tampere University
eetu.wallius@tuni.
Ana, C.T., Klock
Gamication Group, Tampere University
ana.tomeklock@tuni.
Vilhelmiina Eronen
Gamication Group, Tampere University
vilhelmiina.eronen@gmail.com
Juho Hamari
Gamication Group, Tampere University
juho.hamari@tuni.
ABSTRACT
While research is increasingly investigating gamication in oc-
cupational environments, little in-depth analyses focus on under-
standing employees’ perceptions of gamied work. To address this
gap, this paper presents a thematic analysis drawing on ten in-
terviews among maritime port employees to elaborate on their
preconceptions towards work gamication. By oering contextual-
ized insights, our results detail how competition-based gamication,
as well as those highlighting individual performance, are perceived
as detrimental for the collaborative pursuit of work, while raising
concerns related to organizational outcomes, such as safety and
work quality. Moreover, employees believed there is a boundary
between work and play which could be dicult to breach, while
inherent qualities were perceived as the main motivational char-
acteristics of work. Our results highlight how gamication at a
workplace should not contradict or undermine organizational val-
ues, especially teamwork, but conform to them in order to enhance
occupational well-being and uency. Moreover, gamication should
enhance intrinsically motivating aspects of work instead of entirely
altering how the work is perceived.
CCS CONCEPTS
•Human-centered computing;
KEYWORDS
Gamication, work, logistics, motivation, preconceptions
ACM Reference Format:
Eetu Wallius*, Ana, C.T., Klock, Vilhelmiina Eronen, and Juho Hamari. 2021.
Preconceptions towards gamifying work: A thematic analysis of responses
of a maritime logistics organization. In Academic Mindtrek 2021 (Mindtrek
’21), June 01–03, 2021, Tampere/Virtual, Finland. ACM, New York, NY, USA,
6 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3464327.3464368
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https://doi.org/10.1145/3464327.3464368
1 INTRODUCTION
Managers and researchers have become increasingly interested in
understanding how organizations can benet from gamifying their
occupational environments. Commonly referred to as the trans-
formation of environments traditionally not perceived as games,
gamication aims to provide similar benets while promoting be-
haviour change towards, for example, productivity, creativity, and
sustainability [
9
,
11
,
14
]. Gamication aords gameful experiences
through various resources: avatars, narrative or role-play could
generate a feeling of immersion, whereas badges and leaderboards
might oer a sense of progression and achievement [14].
In work-oor operations, these gameful experiences have been
mainly harnessed to improve eciency as well as outcomes related
to employee compliance and competence [
25
]. For instance, gam-
ifying work tasks can increase motivation and thereby enhance
eectiveness by providing suitable feedback (e.g., points, progress
visualization) that allows employees to monitor their performance
and compare it with their colleagues’ or company standards [
6
].
Gamication at the workplace is also applicable to the onboard-
ing and training processes due to its capability to create engaging
experiences that lead to improved learning [
10
,
17
]. Moreover, as
some work-oor operations are characterized by monotonous and
repetitive tasks, gamication is a promising tool for improving em-
ployee engagement [
13
]. An example from the production domain
is the solution proposed by Korn [
16
], which reframed repetitive
assembly tasks to resemble the classic game of Tetris to increase
work motivation.
Despite its potential benets, the eects of gamication in occu-
pational environments are not comprehensively understood. The
nascent body of research on work gamication lacks studies seeking
to understand employees’ attitudes and insights related to gam-
ifying their practices and tasks [
25
]. Whereas experimental and
other quantitative studies provide some evidence regarding short-
term eects of gamication on outcomes that benet companies
(e.g., eciency, productivity or engagement [
5
,
15
]), they can not
broadly capture employee perceptions related to work gamication,
or the emergent organizational eects gamication might induce.
This shortcoming hinders scholars and practitioners from consid-
ering the complexities of work gamication which has, thus far,
been mainly regarded as an instrumental, technology-driven tool
for enhancing eciency [
25
]. At worst, gamication hinders oc-
cupational well-being and intrinsic need satisfaction, especially if
associated with social pressure or punishment avoidance [
12
,
19
].
Consequently, the most vocal critics of gamication have labelled

Mindtrek ’21, June 01–03, 2021, Tampere/Virtual, Finland Eetu Wallius et al.
it as exploitation due to the idea of it replacing material incentives
with ctional ones, and not beneting the employees [
1
,
20
]. Fur-
ther in-depth qualitative research is thus needed to understand
employee attitudes and insights towards gamication to avoid the
risks on well-being and understand the diverse emergent eects
gamication can have in an organizational context.
To contribute to the current corpus of gamied labour, this paper
aims to understand what are the motivational characteristics of
work-oor operations (
RQ1
) and how do work-oor employees
preconceive gamifying their organization, practices, and systems
(
RQ2
). We seek to answer these research questions by presenting
the results of a thematic analysis drawing on ten in-depth inter-
views with maritime port employees working in a company with
no ongoing gamication design. Section 2 describes the method-
ology, including data collection through interviews and reexive
thematic analysis of the data, section 3 describes the results, and
section 4 provides a discussion of these results. Section 5 presents
the limitations of our study, while conclusions are presented in
section 6.
2 MATERIALS AND METHODS
2.1 Participants
Ten employees working in a maritime port in Western Finland were
interviewed in April-June of 2020. We contacted the company in
which the interviewees work, and company representatives con-
ducted the recruitment of individual participants. Maritime port
workers were chosen for this study due to the central role port op-
erations play in the global economy [
7
], and due to the various job
descriptions it includes - ranging from planning and management
tasks to the prototypical blue-collar work of cargo handling [18].
All interviewees were representatives of a single port operator
company, which provides services such as cargo handling, ware-
housing, freight forwarding and shipping. The interviewees formed
a heterogeneous group in terms of age, education level, and job
description. Four interviewees identied themselves as female, and
six as male. Their ages ranged between 33 and 57 years old, and
they had been working at the port between 6 and 33 years, having
on average 19 years of maritime logistics work experience. Three
interviewees had a higher education degree.
2.2 Data collection
A semi-structured interview method was used, and each participant
was interviewed individually by a single researcher. The interviews
were conducted by telephone due to the COVID-19 pandemic and
related travel and visit restrictions. Prior to beginning the inter-
views, the participants’ voluntariness and anonymity were stated,
and the interviewer provided a brief denition of gamication (i.e.,
the use of game features and functions in contexts outside of games
[
9
]) as well as information about the purpose of the interview. Be-
sides understanding employee attitudes, the interviews aimed to
elicit requirements for future gamication design. Therefore, the
interviews covered a broad set of topics, such as the gaming habits,
work motivations, technology usage at work and leisure settings,
perceptions and attitudes towards dierent types of motivational
aordances (e.g., competition, cooperation, role-play, lotteries and
performance visualization) and corporate training experiences.
The semi-structured interview method was chosen as it is useful
in collecting information about the values, ideologies, and norms of
an organization’s members [
23
]. Although a loose interview guide
was developed and iteratively revised between interview sessions,
the discussions were given an opportunity to proceed in various
ways, depending on the ow of the conversation. Nine interviews
were recorded, lasting between 33 and 60 minutes, and transcribed
into Finnish. Due to the interviewee’s request, one interview was
not recorded, and the interviewer made written notes during the
interview instead.
2.3 Data analysis
Following the guidelines of Braun & Clarke, we conducted a re-
exive thematic analysis of the transcribed data [
4
]. The analysis
was an iterative process that comprises: i) reading the interview
transcriptions and generating codes by labelling meaningful data
extracts; ii) creating themes (i.e., meaningful patterns within the
data) based on the generated codes; and iii) reviewing the themes,
codes, and the coded data extracts included in these themes.
The reexive thematic analysis emphasizes the role of the re-
searcher and their perspectives, and therefore the use of a research
team is not desirable [
3
]. Accordingly, the coding phase (i) was
conducted by one researcher based on what he perceived to be
relevant regarding the dened research questions. Besides the pre-
determined research questions, no existing theoretical framework
was used to guide the coding phase (i.e., data-driven approach [
4
]).
The coding took place on both semantic (i.e., surface) and latent
(i.e., underlying ideas and assumptions) levels.
After coding, the initial themes were created by grouping to-
gether interrelated codes (ii). First, codes containing similar ideas
were arranged into groups, such as “Lack of tangible work goals”
or “Non-motivating top-down eorts”, which were then collated
to form themes that aim to capture wider patterns within the data.
The constructed themes are not primarily based on quantiable
measures, such as frequent occurrence across the dataset, but rather
aim to capture aspects relevant to the current study and its objec-
tives [
4
]. After having constructed themes, the transcripts were
read again, and further coding was conducted to capture additional
relevant data that would t these themes. Steps (i) and (ii) were
thus repeated iteratively to further identify and code relevant data
extracts in the transcriptions, and to check whether the themes
work in relation to the coded extracts (iii). Finally, the themes are de-
scribed through an analytic narrative provided below, with relevant
extracts translated from Finnish to English.
3 RESULTS
To answer the predetermined research questions, four intercon-
nected themes were constructed based on the interview data: 1.
Inherent work qualities as main motivators, 2. Tall poppy syndrome,
3. Detrimental competition and 4. Work as a serious pursuit. These
themes contribute to the current body of research on work gamica-
tion by rst describing the motivational characteristics of work and
then disclosing employee attitudes towards gamifying work tasks,
systems and their occupational environment in general. Moreover,
these themes elaborate on how gamication, organizational culture
and work tasks cohere.

Preconceptions towards gamifying work Mindtrek ’21, June 01–03, 2021, Tampere/Virtual, Finland
While the interviewees did not oppose the idea of gamifying
their work tasks, several patterned concerns and conicts were
identied based on their responses. The rst theme was formed
based on the notion of the interviewees describing how they per-
ceived work to be intrinsically motivating. While some managerial
attempts to increase work motivation were mentioned through-
out the interviews, many of them were considered mostly futile.
Some of the most prominent aspects of the intrinsically motivating
work qualities were collaboration and teamwork, which predomi-
nated the organizational practices and culture. Based on this notion,
theme two was formed to describe how aordances such as titles
or trophies, that highlight individual performance, were considered
unsuitable, whereas theme three elaborates on some of the conicts
that may arise from implementing competition. Finally, theme four
colours on the identity conict that may occur when work is being
gamied.
3.1 Theme 1. Inherent work qualities as main
motivators
Besides salary, the interviewees predominantly described their work
motivation arising from the inherent qualities of the tasks, the
working environment and employment arrangements. In particular,
being able to plan and conduct the daily tasks freely and being able
to solve problems, such as loading cargo to a ship space eciently,
were often mentioned as some of the most motivating aspects of
working at the port. Moreover, most interviewees regarded steve-
doring as highly collaborative work, noting that working with
others and helping colleagues are important sources of motivation
and work satisfaction. As an example, one interviewee described
the most rewarding aspects of work as follows:
“In work-related problem solving, the reward is very
meaningful when (...) just the good feeling that you
get when you are able to solve a problem and learn
something new at the same time (...) and you also
know that you help someone else’s work.” (Intervie-
wee 6)
Due to the absence of metrics related to individual working ef-
ciency, most interviewees stated that they have no tangible or
quantiable work-related goals and, besides salary, did not describe
motivational aspects in addition to the inherent qualities of work
previously mentioned. Nevertheless, some eorts for increasing
work motivation had been implemented at the port. For example,
meal tickets had been handed out for the groups that performed
well. Instead of simply providing incentives, some of these prac-
tices had rather gameful qualities: lotteries had been organized for
those reporting safety issues encountered at the port, and honorary
mentions of good performance were printed on a weekly leaet dis-
tributed among employees. However, many interviewees regarded
these “gamied” motivational eorts as meaningless - or at least
outweighed by the intrinsic qualities of work - as exemplied by
the following extracts:
“I have done them (safety reports) when needed, if I
have seen something. Not for the sake of being eligible
to take part in a lottery.” (Interviewee 5)
“If they write ‘well done’ on some weekly leaet, it
does not mean anything to us.” (Interviewee 9)
Interestingly, some interviewees even regarded feedback from man-
agers as unnecessary due to their work’s autonomous nature:
“I really don’t care what others think as long as I
am happy with it (performance at work). (...) Our
employer does not see how we work during the day.
It is a big place and a vast area, they are not there.
(...) we don’t need any personal feedback, or at least I
don’t.” (Interviewee 9).
At any rate, many interviewees expressed that meaningful feedback,
given directly, immediately and sincerely, is motivating. Positive
feedback, however, was seen to lose its meaning if not provided
for a valid reason - “when you have done something well” (Inter-
viewee 10). Similarly, tangible rewards, such as meal tickets, were
regarded as meaningless by some of the interviewees if given out
too generously.
3.2 Theme 2. Tall poppy syndrome
Besides being given directly and only for a valid reason, personal
feedback was generally preferred over public acknowledgement,
which was mostly perceived as embarrassing and unsuitable for
the working environment. This was due to the perceived juxtapo-
sition between public praise and the nature of stevedoring work,
which relies on tight and seamless cooperation of individuals, as
well as the ensuing organizational culture where “those that y solo
are quickly put back into the line” (Interviewee 9). In addition to
being unsuitable for the organization, public recognition was per-
ceived as something unfamiliar to the entire surrounding culture as
“Finns become embarrassed when publicly praised” (Interviewee 1).
In many interviews, the perception of ill-suited public recognition
extended additionally to various emblems of success, such as titles
and trophies:
“If we talk about some placards on the wall where
your name is written (...) this is a kind of a harsh
community and there will be mockery. There will be
mockery for a long time.” (Interviewee 4)
Some interviewees, however, perceived public recognition as
potentially motivating and satisfying. Nevertheless, even in such
cases, it was associated with bragging, “blowing one’s own horn”
(Interviewee 6), as well as being seen to pose a risk of generating
envy among colleagues.
3.3 Theme 3. Detrimental competition
The organizational culture formed by the necessity to work collab-
oratively in tight-knit groups also aected how the interviewees
perceived the suitability of competition-based aordances in their
working context. Whereas cooperative gamication was generally
considered a good idea as it reects the natural way of working
at the port, most interviewees perceived competition as a risky
aordance. This was due to its potential to aict the status quo
consisting of necessary routines built upon a highly collaborative
way of working.

Mindtrek ’21, June 01–03, 2021, Tampere/Virtual, Finland Eetu Wallius et al.
Although competition was seen as a part of working life - ”we
all compete for our own living space at the workplace” (Intervie-
wee 1) - and there existed a subtle contest between dierent work
groups on who could load most tonnes per shift to ships, it was
mostly deemed harmful for various reasons. Firstly, competition
was mostly associated with quantitative performance, and work at
the port is composed of complex and varying tasks, which cannot
be adequately measured using quantied metrics, thus providing
an unfair basis for competition:
“Certain clients require more preparation (...) it might
take 10-20 minutes to prepare a container whereas
another might take only a few minutes.” (Interviewee
5)
Secondly, competition was perceived as a source of stress and
deteriorating to work performance by some interviewees:
“A person that is not competitive can’t complete the
same amount of work in a competitive situation as
they normally would.” (Interviewee 8)
Besides individual work performance, competition was seen to
pose a risk to the organizational culture as it increases the divide
among individuals as well as work groups:
“It puts people into categories.” (Interviewee 8)
“Maybe if one group does (...) plenty more than the
other four, then surely the other four are frowned
upon.” (Interviewee 4)
Well-being, work performance and organizational culture were
not the only aspects that were seen as potentially deteriorated by
competition. The interviewees expressed that competition in the
working environment can pose additional physical risks, thus af-
fecting the quality and safety of their work. As the interviewees
predominantly associated competition with quantitative perfor-
mance, the concerns of safety and quality were mainly related to
increasing working pace and the number of errors that follow:
“I think that competition is bad in a working envi-
ronment, as when you increase speed, there will be
more accidents. It is not safe there in my opinion.”
(interviewee 10)
Competition, however, was in some cases perceived dierently
regarding aspects of work besides the main tasks of loading and
unloading cargo ships, and related planning and management. For
example, competition applied to corporate safety training was re-
garded as motivating and non-harmful by some interviewees:
“In those kinds of safety things, why not, as it is only
about who has the best skills, wins. It is just ne.
Maybe it encourages you to learn more.” (Interviewee
6)
Some interviewees nevertheless expressed concerns that compe-
tition applied to corporate training, for example, might eventually
extend to other aspects of their work, thus causing some deterio-
rating eects described above.
3.4 Theme 4. Work as a serious pursuit
Although the interviewees did not generally oppose the idea of
gamifying their practices, many of them expressed a sentiment of
how work is something to be kept separate from play.The per-
ception of how these two should not be mixed was most evident
when the interviewees discussed how immersive aordances, such
as role-play and avatars, would t the working context. Although
some interviewees were slightly amused, and even curious by the
idea of utilizing role-play at work, it was mostly deemed unsuit-
able for the working environment as well as the “conservative” and
“stuck-in-their-ways community” (Interviewee 8).
Instead of raising concerns related to organizational outcomes
and processes, such as safety or teamwork, aordances related to
role-playing and avatars were considered unfamiliar and aversive -
a mismatch with the professional identities of those working at the
port:
“Many of the harsh stevedores will not probably start
building themselves an avatar.” (Interviewee 6).
“Such avatars don’t belong to professional life, I am a
conservative person in that sense.” (Interviewee 2)
However, the perception of work and play as something to be
kept separate extended beyond role-playing aordances. As an
example, also competition was deemed “childish” (Interviewee 9)
and something suitable for sports and leisure, but not work:
“When I go competing (at sports) and put the number
tag on my chest, I can take things to the next level (...)
but not everybody can do it and I don’t think it can
be demanded at work.” (Interviewee 8)
Moreover, when discussing the possible risks arising from ap-
plying additional motivational aordances to their organization
and work tasks, many of the interviewees suspected that it would
be met with some resistance due to the perception of work and
“fun and play” being something to be kept apart. As an example,
the employees expressed how “some are here just to work, so they
won’t bother playing anything” (Interviewee 5) and how there might
be a risk of “the boundary between work and leisure disappearing”
(Interviewee 8). Additionally, one of the interviewees expressed
that in order to successfully implement gamication in their organi-
zation, “it is quite important that is not taken as a joke” (Interviewee
3) further emphasizing the perception of work as something to be
taken seriously.
This idea of work as a serious pursuit, which, in some cases con-
tradicts the perception of gamifying it, was assumed to be stronger
among the older generation of workers by the interviewees. Be-
sides the generation gap, gaming habits were brought up by some
interviewees as something that might inuence the acceptance of
gamication. Overall, it was suspected to motivate especially those
that generally enjoy playing games and the generation of workers
“born with a phone in their hand” (Interviewee 2). In contrast, the
older generation of stevedores might be foreign to the idea of using
gameful systems and more hesitant towards attempts to gamify
work tasks.
4 DISCUSSION
By focusing on maritime port logistics as a case study, this study
examines the motivational characteristics of work-oor operations
and contributes to the current corpus of gamied labour by pro-
viding an understanding of the employees’ preconceptions and

Preconceptions towards gamifying work Mindtrek ’21, June 01–03, 2021, Tampere/Virtual, Finland
attitudes towards gameful motivational aordances in their work-
ing context, which is an avenue that has not been explored in-depth
by previous research [
25
]. Besides employee perceptions, gamica-
tion research so far has largely failed to detect emerging outcomes
that extend beyond dependent variables in a given study [
14
]. Thus,
our in-depth qualitative study sheds light on the emergent eects
that might occur when gamication is implemented in business
organizations by disclosing employee concerns related to such or-
ganizational change.
As the rst theme describes, the inherent qualities of work tasks
and the working environment were perceived as the main source
of motivation by the interviewees. At the same time, motivational
characteristics based on rewards or punishment (i.e., external regu-
lation [
24
]) were rarely brought up. The mentioned sources of work
motivation and satisfaction were often related to social aspects,
such as cooperation and helping colleagues, whereas the intervie-
wees did not have tangible work-related goals due to the complex
nature of maritime port work which is dicult to quantify. In addi-
tion to the social aspects, often mentioned sources of motivation
included problem-solving and being able to plan and conduct one’s
own work freely. Thus, the motivational characteristics of maritime
port work seem to cover the needs of relatedness, autonomy and
competence [
8
] (
RQ1
). These results dier from a study conducted
by Putz et al. [
21
] among order pickers, as in their study the ex-
trinsic motivators outweighed the intrinsically motivating aspects
of logistics work. This can be partially explained by the notion
that the study by Putz et al. [
21
] was conducted among warehouse
order pickers, whose work description diers from stevedoring.
Whereas order picking at a warehouse is highly monotonous work
comprising repetitive sequences characterized by time pressure,
the interviewees in our study described variability - “no day being
like another” (Interviewee 1) as an important motivational aspect of
their work. Moreover, stevedoring and order-picking likely attract
people with dierent motivations and characteristics, which, in
turn, might give birth to diering traditions within organizations.
Therefore, the dierences in job descriptions, responsibilities as well
as worker characteristics and traditions within the organizations
possibly explain the diering results.
The interviewees of our study considered gamication as poten-
tially motivating and engaging, while describing various potential
concerns related to gamifying their work (
RQ2
). Although the in-
terviewees described practices (e.g., competition between dierent
work groups) which imply that their organization has evolved to
have playful aspects [
26
], several potential pitfalls related to im-
plementing additional gamefulness through interventions emerged
throughout the interviews. Whereas cooperative gamication was
deemed suitable, other motivational aordances like competition
and those highlighting individual achievement were perceived risky
to the organizational culture, and even physical safety, as Themes
2 and 3 highlight. This is mostly due to teamwork being a core
cultural element within the case organization as the work tasks
predominantly require a collaborative eort. On the other hand,
aordances related to role-playing and avatars were mainly consid-
ered non-harmful but instead viewed as unfamiliar and aversive - a
mismatch with the organizational identity [
22
]. As Theme 4 reveals,
the perception of stevedoring as a “harsh” working culture conicts
with the idea of converting their work into something playful. This
resonates with prior studies that associate the “longshoreman iden-
tity” with “physicality”, “masculinity” and even “machismo” shaped
by the dangerous nature of stevedoring [
18
]. Therefore, in the light
of our results, the prediction of Warmelink et al. [
25
] of gamica-
tion becoming a highly contested organizational change due to its
potential to reshape professional as well as organizational identities
seems to hold true. However, this is not only due to the identity
conict, as the mixing of play and work also raised concerns related
to organizational culture, processes and outcomes.
Our results highlight the importance of not just understanding
user motivations but also organizational values when gamifying
work tasks. Overall, our results suggest that cooperative aordances
should be favoured over competitive ones, while aordances high-
lighting individual achievement, such as titles and trophies should
be implemented with caution when applied to primary work tasks.
However, competition, titles and trophies can be suitable when
applied to secondary tasks, such as corporate training. Moreover,
gamication should not aim to entirely transform how employees
perceive their tasks, as work is considered inherently motivating,
and the “mixing of work and play” was considered an aversive
idea. Instead, gamication should aim to enhance the inherently
motivating aspects of work, such as problem-solving and autonomy.
5 LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE WORK
This study is based on the preconceptions of gamication among the
interviewed maritime port employees. However, the experiences
of actual implemented gamication likely dier from preconcep-
tions. Like any organizational change, the idea of implementing
gamication might be initially met with resistance, whereas the
attitudes change over time when the changes take place [
2
]. More-
over, this study was conducted among one port operator company,
and interviewees with similar cultural background, which inu-
ences the generalizability of the results. Thus, our ndings should
not be considered guidelines for gamifying maritime port work
as such. However, the interviewees in our study have extensive
experience in maritime port work and therefore we believe our
results oer important insights on the issues to consider in order
to successfully implement gamication in this particular domain.
Another limitation relates to the data analysis. Although using a
team of researchers when conducting a reective thematic analysis
is not required [
3
], having only one researcher conduct the analysis
can lead to conrmation bias, and the constructed themes dier
depending on the analyst. Additionally, the data extracts chosen
to represent the constructed themes were translated from Finnish
to English which might have led to translation inaccuracies, and
nuances of the responses being lost in the translation process.
As this study is based on preconceptions towards gamication,
further in-depth qualitative research is needed to elicit employee
experiences and attitudes in work organizations that have gamied
their practices and tasks and compare how the actual experiences
dier from the preconceptions presented in this study. Moreover,
future research should explore employee attitudes towards gami-
cation in contexts and tasks outside of maritime port logistics as
diering job descriptions, organizational cultures and traditions as
well as employee demographics are likely to reveal complementary
and diering insights related to work gamication.

Mindtrek ’21, June 01–03, 2021, Tampere/Virtual, Finland Eetu Wallius et al.
6 CONCLUSIONS
This study explored motivational characteristics of work and em-
ployee attitudes towards gamifying their organization, practices
and systems by focusing on maritime port logistics work as a case
study. The results indicate that the intrinsic qualities of work were
perceived as the main motivators, especially social aspects, prob-
lem solving and freedom to conduct tasks at one’s own discretion.
Whereas the general idea of gamifying occupational practices was
not opposed, the interviewees expressed various concerns related
to work gamication. The idea of work as a highly collaborative
pursuit contradicted the ideas of implementing competition-based
aordances or aordances that highlight achievements of individ-
uals while raising concerns related to organizational processes
and outcomes such as teamwork and safety. Moreover, the inter-
viewees expressed a sentiment of how work is something to be
taken seriously, contradicting the idea of making it “playful”. Our
ndings suggest that researchers and practitioners should take or-
ganizational values, especially teamwork, into account and aim to
conform to them when designing and implementing work gam-
ication. Whereas competition, titles and trophies might not be
suitable when applied to primary tasks, they can support secondary
task engagement, such as corporate training. Moreover, as work is
considered inherently motivating, gamication should not aim to
profoundly alter how work tasks are perceived but enhance such
intrinsically motivating aspects.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by European Union Regional Devel-
opment Fund and conducted as a part of the Satadilogis project
(A74723) and by Academy of Finland Flagship Programme [337653
- Forest-Human-Machine Interplay (UNITE)].
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