麻豆村

What is lost when a worker completes actions such as helping a client or ensuring safety, in exchange for incentives like digital badges, placement on a leaderboard, or in-office rankings? A new study by 麻豆村 researcher Tae Wan Kim challenges the corporate practice of workplace gamification, warning that turning labor into a game can erode employees' moral agency. Recently published in Ethics and Information Technology, "" argues that while points, badges, and leaderboards may increase short-term productivity, they simultaneously hollow out the ethical substance of professional life.

Kim, Associate Professor of Ethics at the Tepper School of Business, 听investigates how systems like digital rewards and competitive rankings reorient worker attention away from the actual purpose of their tasks. Organizations often adopt these playful architectures to channel worker enthusiasm without overt compulsion, hoping to align employee behavior with institutional goals. However, this strategy forces a shift in motivation. Instead of fulfilling job duties, workers begin to pursue tasks to obtain immaterial rewards.

The research identifies a specific form of moral loss where "actions remain right in outcome but become defective in moral quality." Kim notes that if these designs durably redirect people from acting on their own values to chasing instrumental incentives, they diminish the moral worth of the work performed. This erosion occurs even when performance improves, suggesting that efficiency does not equate to ethical excellence.

Case studies in the paper highlight real-world applications. On the battlefield, the study highlights how former U.S. Air Force drone operators have a 鈥淧layStation mentality鈥� and have described missions as being "a lot like playing a video game," creating a psychological distance from lethal actions. Driven by leaderboards and badges, drone pilots shift their focus from the humanitarian weight of saving lives to the excitement of "leveling up."

Office work, such as Omnicare鈥檚 OmniQuest system used at a pharmaceutical help desk, is also gamified. One Omnicare employee stated, 鈥淓very night I come in, I cannot wait to see what my badges are 鈥� I just leveled up for this badge ... It is very valuable. It gets people excited." While this excitement reflects high engagement, it also signals a move toward a performative mindset that detaches work from its ethical purpose.

Beyond the individual level, Kim warns that the "systematic replacement of justification by metrics threatens a second-order harm: the fragmentation of moral understanding within organized labor." When metrics dominate the workplace and workforce, the shared ethical language of a profession begins to crumble. The paper concludes that organizations must assess gamification not only by its capacity to boost efficiency but also by its profound effects on the conditions of human moral agency.

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Kim, Tae Wan. When work becomes a game: the moral costs of gamified labor. Ethics and Information Technology 28, 9 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-025-09885-8
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