The importance of play in organisation

The importance of play in organisation The role of play as a `social innovation ' is attracting emerging research attention since it can affect the emotional climate and complex collaborative performance of the modern workplace. The psychology of play recognises the benefits of incorporating play and `playing games ' at work. The increasing use of computer games throughout our society motivates the use of games and game technology for serious purposes including education, training and research. While managers are often reluctant to publicly state that play is good for work, they are willing to use the term `Serious Games'. These are games that engage users in their pursuit, and contribute tothe achievement of a defined purpose other than pure entertainment. This paper presents a study into the use of online team-based gaming to explore the cooperative and social aspects of team behaviour in a department of an organisation that wished to increase its human network-centric capability. A session of an online version of the traditional board game Go was conducted and arange of data was collected, leading to a qualitative analysis of the game and its impact on the players. The results indicate that team gaming sessions can enhance people's awareness and mastery of the collective processes underlying teamwork and cooperation in the workplace. This contributes to our understanding of the use of play and gaming in the workplace as a social innovation