Responsible innovation at work: gamification, public engagement, and privacy by design

Abstract

ABSTRACT Public engagement is crucial to strengthen responsibility frameworks in highly innovative contexts, including as part of business organisations. One particular innovation that calls for public engagement is gamification. Gamification fosters changes in working practices to improve the organisation, efficiency and productivity of a business by introducing gratification and engagement mechanisms in non-gaming contexts. Gamification modifies the workforce’s perception of constraints and stimulates the voluntary assumption of best practices to the benefit of employees and enterprises alike. Here, we broadly discuss the use of gamification at work. Indeed, gamification raises several concerns about privacy, due to the massive collection, storage and processing of data, and about the freedom of employees: as the level of data protection decreases, so too does workers’ self-determination. We argue that the implementation of privacy by design can not only strengthen autonomy via data protection but also develop more viable instances of RRI in accordance with human rights.