Gamifying knowledge sharing in humanitarian organisations: a design science journey

ABSTRACT

Humanitarian organisations provide invaluable work to improve the lives of individuals impacted by natural and anthropogenic hazards. While humanitarian organisations are highly knowledge intensive, they often fail to manage knowledge effectively. Providing adequate incentives to foster knowledge sharing on a knowledge management system is a challenge for many organisations. It is especially important in the humanitarian context where organisational efficiency leads to saving more lives. We argue that gamification (i.e., the integration of game-like features, such as points or badges in non-game systems) is a viable solution to address the lack of knowledge sharing often encountered. To do so, we embark on a design science journey with Doctors Without Borders to investigate how gamification within (e.g., using a personal profile) and outside (e.g., using a connected ambient object) a knowledge management system can improve knowledge sharing. Our findings demonstrate that well-designed gamification can increase engagement and knowledge sharing, in particular for altruistic individuals.

ACCEPTING EDITOR:

• Dov Teeni

ASSOCIATE EDITOR:

• Chon Abraham

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge sharing
• humanitarian organisations
• ict4d
• gamification
• design science

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Université de Lausanne [CROSS – Collaborative Research on Science and Society]; École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne [CROSS – Collaborative Research on Science and Society] and by the European Commission [731685].