Key in socially driven game dynamics, open the doors of agility - an empirical study on gamification and employee agility

While gamification researchers have emphasised the exploration of game dynamics beyond typical game mechanics, there is still a blind spot regarding how specific game dynamics driven by social features enhance individual agility in the workplace. Since socially driven game dynamics are essential for collective units like organisations, this research conceptualized collaborative competition, paralinguistic digital recognition, and dynamic interactions as socially driven game dynamics and further, investigated how these game dynamics enhance individual agility through a moderated mediation model. Adopting a purposive sampling technique, 421 complete responses were found to be suitable for further analysis. The hypotheses were tested using an observed variable approach (Process Macro). The indirect effect of paralinguistic digital recognition on employee agility through collective engagement was found to be stronger than that of other game dynamics, such as collaborative competition and dynamic interactions. As hypothesised, collective goal difficulty acts as a positive moderator, accentuating the mediating effect of collective engagement. This study is one of the first works explaining the association between gamification and employee agility with a systematic framework, therefore advancing the existing literature on gamification and employee agility.