Gamifying a public enterprise: dissertation studies how and why the strategy (sometimes) engages
Luciana Santos de Assis defended at UnB’s Applied Computing graduate program a dissertation critically analyzing gamification implementation in organizational contexts — through a case study inside a Brazilian public enterprise.
Brasília, December 21, 2023
Corporate gamification tends to be treated as a broad-spectrum drug: it is prescribed for engagement, for performance, for culture. But experience on the middle floor shows that the same initiative that energizes one team can be met with indifference by another — and that the decisive factor there is a complex weave of motivational profiles, institutional context, and intervention design. It is that weave that Luciana Santos de Assis unpacks in the dissertation defended at UnB’s Applied Computing graduate program, advised by Prof. Dr. Sergio Antônio Andrade de Freitas .
The research articulates a case study in a Brazilian public enterprise and crosses three axes: Gamification as strategy, employees’ motivational profiles, and engagement observed over time. The work departs from a finding in the literature — the heterogeneity of reported results — and takes the rare step of examining, on the organizational shop floor, why that variability happens. The outcome is a reading that avoids both generic enthusiasm and defensive skepticism, offering instead a diagnosis of what must be observed before, during, and after adoption.
The dissertation is connected to the paper Gamification in Organizational Contexts: A Systematic Literature Review, published in the proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. The paper systematizes the literature that supports the empirical scope developed in the defense.
The defense took place on December 27, 2023 in Brasília. The examining committee was chaired by the advisor, Prof. Dr. Sergio Antônio Andrade de Freitas (CIC/UnB), and composed of Prof. Dr. Charles Andryê Galvão Madeira (IMD/UFRN) and Dr. Tiago Barros Pontes e Silva (IDA/UnB). Prof. Dr. Gladston Luiz da Silva, then coordinator of the PPCA program, also signed the final sheet.
The full text — written in Portuguese — is available at the UnB Institutional Repository.
About CEDIS: The Center for Studies, Development, and Innovation in Software (CEDIS), linked to the University of Brasília, researches and develops innovative software solutions with strong presence in Gamification .