Gamification in Knowledge Management: Increasing Motivation to Share Knowledge Using Cooperation and Inter-Team Competition
type: CreativeWork
description: Knowledge Management is a key component that can contribute to the success of an organization. Many barriers prevent knowledge from being shared and one of those barriers is motivating workers to share the knowledge they possess with their organization. Gamification has proven to be a good tool for motivation, extrinsically and intrinsically. Many gamification elements have been researched within the knowledge management field; however, the ability of cooperation and inter-team competition to increase motivation to share knowledge have not been researched. These methods have been proven to be effective in motivating users in other fields like gaming and crowdsourcing. To achieve the research objectives of this study, I conducted an experiment to bring to light which of the gamification affordances, cooperation or inter-team competition, is more effective in intrinsically motivating people to share their knowledge. The experiment was conducted by assigning groups to the two conditions and giving them a task to do, either as a group (cooperation) or as a group that is competing with other groups (inter-team competition). The goal was to learn which of these groups was able to share more knowledge and if they were intrinsically motivated through the activity to share their knowledge with others. The results showed an increase in sharing behaviors in the inter-team competition condition however intrinsic motivation was not detected for both groups. This means that inter-team competition does increase instances of knowledge sharing but more research needs to be conducted to find why and how we can intrinsically motivate workers.
abstract: Knowledge Management is a key component that can contribute to the success of an organization. Many barriers prevent knowledge from being shared and one of those barriers is motivating workers to share the knowledge they possess with their organization. Gamification has proven to be a good tool for motivation, extrinsically and intrinsically. Many gamification elements have been researched within the knowledge management field; however, the ability of cooperation and inter-team competition to increase motivation to share knowledge have not been researched. These methods have been proven to be effective in motivating users in other fields like gaming and crowdsourcing. To achieve the research objectives of this study, I conducted an experiment to bring to light which of the gamification affordances, cooperation or inter-team competition, is more effective in intrinsically motivating people to share their knowledge. The experiment was conducted by assigning groups to the two conditions and giving them a task to do, either as a group (cooperation) or as a group that is competing with other groups (inter-team competition). The goal was to learn which of these groups was able to share more knowledge and if they were intrinsically motivated through the activity to share their knowledge with others. The results showed an increase in sharing behaviors in the inter-team competition condition however intrinsic motivation was not detected for both groups. This means that inter-team competition does increase instances of knowledge sharing but more research needs to be conducted to find why and how we can intrinsically motivate workers.
author: Alkurdi, Sarah
keywords: Gamification, Knowledge management, knowledge sharing, motivation
date published: 2021-01-01T08:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:39:50Z
provider: Claremont Graduate University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Claremont Graduate University