Exploring flow-promoting management and leadership skills via serious gaming

ABSTRACT

The considerable proliferation of serious games (SG) in management education necessitates an academic foundation grounded in the concepts and practice of leadership, Flow, learning and development theory. Going beyond addressing the benefits of SG, this study is the first to demonstrate the successful use of SG in two areas: (a) teaching Flow theory within management studies via dedicated software designed to train a Flow-promoting Leadership style; and (b) showing that SG can serve as an innovative tool for measuring 29 leadership skills. The article demonstrates how non-intrusive data – collected during FLIGBY gameplay by 7931 managers globally, who made 150+ simulated leadership decisions – de facto support the process of leadership skill development. The findings show the system of relationships among the four critical Flow-promoting Leadership Skills that are needed for leading a work environment with more frequent Flow experiences. The results support educators and content developers in their quest to find optimal pathways and combinations for effectively developing skills by showing the underlying complexities of Flow and Leadership. The study contributes to the application of Flow-promoting leadership theory in practice via the help of innovative SG technology.

KEYWORDS:

• Serious games
• game-based psychometrics
• flow theory
• leadership skills measurement
• adaptive learning system

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). All data was collected by third parties in an anonymous format – profiles cannot be traced back to participants’ names.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by ALEAS Simulations Inc., California, USA, who provided the quoted figures and the global skills database that contained the anonymous game and skills results for research purposes, the latter which was solely conducted by the Leadership & Flow Global Research Network (www.flowleadership.org).

Notes on contributors

Zoltan Buzady

Zoltan Buzady, Ph.D., is a tenured associate professor of leadership development at the Corvinus University of Budapest. His research focus is Flow theory, serious gaming, and leadership development.

Agnes Wimmer

Agnes Wimmer, Ph.D., is a tenured professor at the Corvinus University of Budapest. Her research interests include business performance measurement and management, business relationship evaluation, behavioral approaches in decision making, and the evaluation and development of leadership skills.

Anita Csesznak

Anita Csesznak, Ph.D., is a tenured associate professor at the Corvinus University of Budapest and has a research focus on business performance measurement, methodology and quantitative methods.

Peter Szentesi

Peter Szentesi is an Assistant Professor at the Corvinus University of Budapest and has a research focus on Gamification, Behavioral Science, Decision Sciences.