Mikko Vesa

Strategic ethnography 2.0: : Four methods for advancing strategy process and practice research

Although slow to enter mainstream strategy research, ethnographic methods play an important role in studies of strategy processes and practices. In this article, however, we argue that the potential of “strategic ethnography” has not yet been fully realized. In particular, we maintain that there is a need to complement conventional non-participant, observation-based ethnography with other ethnographic methods. This leads us to suggest four methods that will help advance contemporary research in strategy processes and practices: auto-ethnography which can provide a better understanding of the lived experiences of different types of strategists in different settings; video-ethnography, which allows detailed analysis of strategic practices in their sociomaterial context; comparative ethnography, which enables comparison of processes and practices in different settings, and virtual ethnography, which will further our understanding of the virtual aspects of organizational strategy work.

Massively Multiplayer Online Games as Information System: Implications for Organizational Learning

In this chapter, we discuss the implications of the information systems structures of massively multiplayer online role-playing games to organizational learning that takes place within them or connected to them. The games consist of three interdependent information systems: an information retrieval system accessed by using game content as its keywords, a social system formed by the players, and an expanded system that extends outside of play proper, in the form of experience records like game blogs and videos. By developing their procedural literacies, players learn to analyze the systems and to compare their content and logics to the real world. In-game groups in turn use strategic practices to spread such learning organization-wide, in order to foster efficiency and better content access. By cleverly using briefing, debriefing, and strategizing procedures, real-world organizations too can then learn from these processes, as they free their members from individual learning traps and extend the lessons gained from voluntary gaming into absorptive and adaptive real-world practices.

Gamification: Concepts, Consequences, and Critiques:

The domain of work is etched into our minds as a domain of the sombre, the orderly, the very coalface of dull modernity through which our societies prosper. Work also demarcates that which is of value; work itself; from that which is less so; e.g. play. But as the behemoth of global capitalism lurches forward into the 21st century we are witnessing a; be it new or simply renewed; interest in merging work and play. It is this development, labelled gamification, that this dialogue collection of essays explores offering conceptual and critical insights into the possibilities and problems of this attempted merging.