CfP: 32nd Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism (SCOS):
Sport, Play and Game
Playful, gameful, workful: fields, approaches, materials and
mindsets within organizing settings
Play and games have entered into popular awareness to an unprecedented level, and
we are now considering how they might offer insight into fundamental questions
about different aspects of human society and activities. Often our understanding of
what play and games are hinges on an exceptionalist understanding of games as
something set apart from everyday life (Huizinga, 1950). Here, games are framed as
a subset of play and, as such, gaming and playing is culturally sequestered,
consequence-free activities, safe, and unproductive (Caillois, 1961). Recent game
scholars have started to contest this dichotomy (Malaby, 2007) which has spurred an
interest in the digital intermingling of work and play (Scholz, 2013), online games as
“corporate ideology” (Rettberg, 2008) and more specifically organizational play.
Within the latter ‘serious play’ is viewed as an engine for motivating work-related
objectives (Statler et al., 2009), whereas others maintain that work and play can no
longer be separated in the post-industrial organization (Kane, 2004). Games, play
and work are, in essence, about organization, organizing and being organized (Hung,
2011; Wenger, 1998). They are incidents of lived experience being organized as
structured situations, requiring different mindsets of organizing and being organized.
The paper’s main contribution lies in its multifaceted and multilayered framework
for understanding the intermingling spheres of play, game, and work. These spheres
carry different symbolic and cultural meanings, and foster different emerging
interactions between the artifacts, spaces, subjects and practices embedded in and
surrounding these.
Drawing on the authors’ extensive theoretical and empirical studies of
playful, gameful and workful interactions, experiences and practices within the field
of ‘digital games’ and ‘playware’, some of the apparent dichotomies between play &
games, seriousness & fun, leisure & work, rules & creativity are broken down,
CfP: 32nd Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism (SCOS):
Sport, Play and Game
nuanced and clarified. Hence, the authors argue that free play can indeed be rulebound, serious, and hard work, work-things can easily be appropriated as play-things
or game-things (and vice versa), while gaming practices can be concurrently playful
and workful.
In the paper we conceptualize this through a multifarious network of interactions
between:

artifacts; play-things (Lego bricks), game-things (Minecraft or LEGO
Mindstorm) and work-things (smartphones or worktables),

spaces; play-spaces (e.g. the living room), game-spaces (e.g. Minecraft worlds)
and work-spaces (e.g. the office),

subjects; players, gamers and workers, and

practices; playing, gaming and working
Here, establishing interrelations between different theoretical frameworks for work,
play and games can contribute to explicate distinctions and correlations between
gameful, playful and workful activities and experiences (Sennett, 2008; Nørgård,
2012; Sutton-Smith 2001), attitudes (Suits, 2005; Karoff, 2013), framings (Goffman
1974; Wittgenstein) as well as social approaches (Toft-Nielsen, 2012) subjects take
towards certain artifacts, practices and settings (Tuan, 2005; Lefebvre, 1991;
Creswell).
Overall, the paper empirically investigates and theoretically develops a conceptual
network for the above-mentioned spheres within different organizational contexts
such as the work office, the gameworld, the living room and the playground. In this
way, the paper contributes to the understanding of playful, gameful and workful fields,
approaches, mindsets and materials within organizing settings.
(Abstract: 494 words)
CfP: 32nd Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism (SCOS):
Sport, Play and Game
References
Caillois, R. (1961). Man, play, and games. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe.
Huizinga, J. H. (1950). Homo ludens : a study of the play-element in culture. Boston:
Beacon Press.
Cresswell, T. (2004). Place - a short introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing
Gofman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis - An essay on the organization of experience.
Boston: Northeastern University Press
Hung, A. C. Y. (2011). The work of play : meaning-making in videogames. New York:
Peter Lang.
Kane, P. (2004). The play ethic : a manifesto for a different way of living. London:
Macmillan.
Karoff, H.S. (2013). "Play Moods and Play Practices." International Journal of Play
Vol. 2 (3)
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Malaby, T. M. (2007). Beyond Play. Games and Culture, 2, 95-113.
Nørgård, R.T. (2012). Gameplay Corporeality - the corporeal-locomotive dimension in
gameplay activity and experience. PhD Thesis, Aarhis University, Institute for
Aestetics and Communication, Information and Media Studies.
Rettberg, S. (2008). Corporate Ideology in World of Warcraft. In: Corneliussen, H. &
Rettberg, J. W. (eds.) Digital culture, play, and identity : a World of Warcraft
reader. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Scholz, T. (2013). Digital labor : the Internet as playground and factory. New York:
Routledge.
Sennett, R. (2008). The Craftsman. London: Penguin Books.
Statler, M., Roos, J. & Victor, B. (2009). Ain't Misbehavin': Taking Play Seriously in
Organizations. Journal of Change Management, 9, pp. 87-107.
Sutton.Smith, B. (2001). The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
Suits, B. (2005). The grasshopper: games, life and utopia. Peterborough, Ont.:
Broadview Press.
Toft-Nielsen, C. (2012). Gamingpraksis : en vidvinkeloptik på computerspil, køn, genre
og hverdagsliv. PhD Thesis, Aarhis University, Institute for Aestetics and
Communication, Information and Media Studies.
Tuan, Y.-F. (2005). Space and place : the perspective of experience. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Wenger, L. (1998). Communities of Practice - Learning, meaning and identity.
Cambridge: The University of Cambridge.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell