BLIK, the academic student journal for audiovisual culture asked me to revise (read: shorten by one third) a critical article I wrote in 2008 on research conducted by IBM. It will be published somewhere this month in their forthcoming issue on ‘theory and practice’. Abstract:
Faced with the challenge of sustaining innovation in the networked economy, management strategies appear that introduce elements of play to the work place. In 2007 IBM initiated research on the way corporate leaders may learn from leadership within Massively Online Role Playing Games, resulting in the suggested transfer of several features of the game GUI to the work place. This paper aims to highlight the problematic aspects of this research and its acclaimed practical use, arguing for critical reflection on the overall possibility and consequence of transferring technological features from a specifically coded game environment to a corporate setting.
