Open Strategizing and Gamified Organizing: A Bulletin Board View

This paper studies the effect of group commitment on open strategizing in gamified organizing. Based on a 39-month ethnographic field study of five MMO raid organizations, we argue that both strategy formation and implementation are shaped by the collective commitment of organizational sub-groups. Building on Tuomela’s theory of social practice we argue this collective commitment is either a we-mode, a pro-group mode or an I-mode commitment. When one of these is dominant, it guides how an organization’s ethos is enacted. Strategy formation in such organization consists of entering action proposals onto a public bulletin board; which groups then evaluate and possibly commit to implement under the guidance and constraints of the organizational ethos. Each action on the organization’s bulletin board, such as the choice of which game content to tackle next, is one step in a chain of decisions that makes up the organization’s life. What is central is that the collective commitment and organizational ethos empower and constrain both open strategy formation and implementation in distinct ways. Our findings have wider implications for understanding the relationship between open strategizing and sustainability in gamified organizing.