Digital Transformation (DT) initiatives often face high failure rates. The study assesses gamification’s impact on overcoming DT challenges like high failure rates, resistance to change, and lack of engagement in the news/media organizations, identifying key gamification elements driving successful transformation and increasing engagement in.
The study adopted a mixed-methods approach, utilizing an experiment with 164 participants from a single newspaper. Applying gamification techniques for five months, collecting quantitative data and qualitative survey responses. Statistical analysis assessed the impact of gamification on DT success. Thematic analysis of survey responses provided participants’ experiences.
The study demonstrated a significant positive increase in Key Data Points measuring the digital transformation in news/media organizations over 5 months, indicating a successful and sustained behavior change and increased engagement. Points, rankings, leaderboards and badges were the most impactful gamification design elements. Survey found the gamification appealing to 81% of participants, with 83.7% reporting a greater interest in learning new digital content production methods.
The experiment is conducted in one news organization, measuring key data points relevant to DT in news industry and may not be generalizable.
Empower organization struggling with DT, by introducing gamification to DT process and share findings to inspire replication across similar organization.
The research fills the literature gap in studying the effect of gamification on DT, and offers practical guidance and evidence of its power to encouraging positive behavioral changes, increasing engagement, and mitigating resistance to change.
