Results anticipated / achieved

NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY

HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

Faculty of Social Sciences

School of Psychology

Project Proposal

“GAME-PLAYING TECHNIQUES

AS A WAY OF STAFF DEVELOPMENT IN AN ORGANIZATION”

Student: …, Group …

Argument consultant:

Senior Lecturer, …

Style and Language consultant:

Professor, …

Contents

The paper focuses on interrelation of game-playing techniques and workforce development. The research objective is to identify the influence of board games, in particular, on mutual understanding and team climate and, consequently, on job satisfaction on the whole. The study investigates into the question of understanding of how cohesively personnel work and makes possible to plan various events for its development. The experimental part of the survey is based on three groups of different types of collective bodies, depending on how often the staff plays board games – frequently, occasionally or never. Test techniques comprising tests for mutual understanding, evaluating team climate and job satisfaction are being applied to the investigation. The interrelation between employees’ being involved in playing board games and creation of potentially pleasant working environment is supposed to be proved during the survey, that is, thanks to playing board games people communicate more often and gradually understand each other better, thus making their working atmosphere comfortable. The results of the examination can be used in marketing for human resources, in development of creation of board games, namely. The inquiry also contributes to children’s psychology science as board games can be used in the field of improving interpersonal human communication skills.

Introduction

In the XXI century there is an obvious tendency for company leaders’ need in organizing different personnel training courses. In this context special attention should be paid to teambuilding training courses. These days in many organizations playing technologies are widely used in staff development in order to create psychologically comfortable climate in the collective group. Namely, there are vast opportunities for board games application as part of playing training courses aimed at teambuilding.

Background.The significance of the research is proved by the fact that it is a new survey in the sphere of personnel development. In spite of the existence of a set of studies on the subject, the problem of interdependence of game technologies and personnel development in modern psychological science is not thoroughly investigated. There exist a huge amount of surveys devoted to the problem of training courses influence on the on internal collective climate but there can hardly be found any dedicated to board games in particular. Therefore search and development of the theory of game technologies application for company personnel (on the example of board games) is relevant and very topical for this field of knowledge.

Problem statement.Our research was aimed to understand the scale of influence of board games playing on working process, on staff relations and on team climate on the whole.

Our work’s goals also consisted in experimental proof of the fact that a collective body where employees regularly play board games tend to be more cohesive, to have warmer climate in the team, to enjoy better job satisfaction. All these factors enable easy and simple further staff development.

The hypothesis of the investigation can be defined in the following way: staff members who tend to play board games regularly plays will presumably better understand each other, thus, their job satisfaction will increase, and they will be happy to grow in the sphere they work.

Delimitations of the study.The considered circle of questions is explained by my personal experience. Throughout long time I used to work with board games (I worked in a game store for years in shop, took part in event organization). And I found it very much pleasant that we had a real team, just friends who were ready to support each other anytime, we were one big family indeed. We played board games almost every day and enjoyed it extremely, therefore we liked our workplace.

So the goal I set for myself in this investigation was to define the ways a game as an instrument can influence the staff team working atmosphere, the given collective body cohesiveness, employees working performance on the whole.

Professional significance.The practical importance of the conducted research is the following: its findings can be used by practical psychologists for their applying in training courses and in creating new ones as well.

Company heads resort to various training courses, events aimed at teambuilding in order to create amicable environment for their personnel, eliminate possible disagreements among workers.

Academic novelty of the solved tasks being solved consists in the fact that in the process of game playing there occur certain changes of an ego-state, supposedly, from states "Parent", "Adult" to a state "A free child". As a result practical applications of our theory the individual and/or collective gamegramme can be worked out. A special type of people's emotional state, both absolute strangers and team members, appears in the process of game playing, that can be called ‘children-like game emotions’.

We suggest determining by this term an ego-state of a human being of any age playing various games, and implying sense of free discourse, removal of psychological borders and in some cases feelings of euphoria. These emotions generated in the course of a game enable "recognition" of each other, disclosure of the best qualities of the personality, appearance of sympathy, friendship and mutual understanding and, consequently, team unity.

Definitions of key terms. Speaking about the role of game technologies in staff training and their contribution to the creation and development of favourable working environment, it is necessary to mention that each time different things could be identified with these terms. It depends on the way prominent psychologists, psychiatrists and scholars in other fields define them.

Mutual understanding is a social-psychic phenomenon based on the so called ‘empathy’. It implies a deep penetration into the inner world of each other. Mutual understanding is the basis of particular trust in people’s relationships and the ability to predict your communication partner’s behaviour.

Social skills training is a therapy method which helps people to obtain new certain social skills or to improve the existing ones, to develop persistence while playing roles and to produce desirable models of behaviour.

As far as the term ‘communication within an organization’ is concerned, it carries out two major functions. The first one boils down to the achievement of the main objectives of the organization and the solution of vital problems of management whereas the second function implies meeting employees’ needs in:

being aware of forthcoming work; receiving feedback on performance results;

being well informed and, finally, social set-up and support. The term somehow varies among these four points and has to be accurately discussed in each case.

Literature review

In the present literature review I examine both theoretical and empirical studies in the field. Over the half past century a considerable amount of work has been done to analyze factors influencing staff climate in a working environment. Numerous attempts have been made to develop assessing techniques, test questionnaires, for instance, two big reference books with a wide choice of test techniques can be named here. For my investigation I chose the modified option of the technique by B.D. Parygin called ‘Climate’. The big encyclopedia of psychological tests by A. Karelin describes a technique of diagnosing social and psychological team climate.

It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of Peter Senge’s surveys on the self-training organization. The scientist says that insufficiently harmonious teams lose their energy in vain. He strongly believes that coordination is a necessary condition under which growth of opportunities of one team member raises possibilities of all group participants.

In the present literature review one cannot but mention the research of another prominent psychologist Michael Argyle who dedicated his numerous works to the question of job satisfaction. The following factors, according to his theory, are of vital importance in this sense: financial reward, relationship with workmates and authorities, career ladder growth opportunities. In our investigation a special interest should be paid to examining types of relations among fellow-employees, such as friendship, sympathy, mutual interest, i.e. those exceeding the bounds of workplace affairs that appeared thanks to playing board games. That is why I suppose studies by this outstanding scientist are of great importance and should be used in our investigation.

Differentiating dialogue and discussion as representing two different methods of team cohesiveness M. Argyle identifies dialogue as a free and creative discourse of difficult and delicate questions, deep and attentive listening to your co-worker who is being your interlocutor and your counterpart concurrently when you are both involved in the process of game playing. Board games particularly in my opinion increasingly develop dialogue skills. This idea can be illustrated on the example of the mentioned above game Activity when while explaining words you enter into a dialogue, so much desirable and important for many staff members in their routine work performance.

Andrew Innes believes that a board game can be shown as a ‘tiny universe’ (Innes, 2015. p. 118). In his article ‘What Board Games Can Teach Business’ published in Harvard Business Review he adduces a few apt comparisons considering that the board is ‘the physical environment, cards function as resources or catalysts, dice provide a dollop of randomness’ (Ibid.) Taking a game called Monopoly as an example he says that playing this game you can ‘rarely roll your way’ (Ibid.)

A. Innes also stresses the collaborative spirit is extremely desirable for any organization and playing active games can contribute to the achieving of appearance of this spirit within a staff team.

Similar ideas are observed in another article ‘Home Play Games’ written by Tima Benitez. The author points out that people ‘have a need to connect on a very basic level’ (Benitez, 2010, p. 27). As a result they seek any opportunities to play games to feel themselves ‘genuine’ (Ibid.).

Methods

Testing is being used in the survey as the main method of the investigation. By means of test techniques, we did research into the ways mutual understanding in a collective body and their job satisfaction interrelate. The objective of one test is to define how well the person at the beginning of research is able to understand people surrounding him/her. The second test is used as a supplementary one and is veiled so that the examinees do not understand that it is aimed to estimate their satisfaction with work.

Testing of all the examinees in all groups should be conducted at the beginning of the survey. It has to be followed by the experiment carried out on several groups of personnel teams.

The employees of the Mosigra retail network are to be involved into the experiment as the first group. The co-workers of this company constantly play board games, and we are targeting to find out whether game-playing experience during even a short period of being a staff member of the store enables newcomers to change their communication skills, to improve understanding within the collective body.

The second group is represented by people working for a different organization who are aware of board games playing significance for their job performance. But the crucial point here is that they are not going to know the objective of the experiment undergoing.

And finally, we need a test panel, a collective body where people are not playing board games at the present period of life. It is a fact of common knowledge that each of us used to play board games in childhood, though even if not frequent, but when a person grows up he or she may drop this occupation. Such people though they are not so easy to find are wanted for the control group. Our assumption is employees not practising game-playing, board games namely, can be office staff dealing with routine paperwork mainly.

As far as instruments for the survey we find Activity and Imaginarium most appropriate. The first one is a board game for a team of two-four people who are supposed to explain words by means of gestures or pictures. After a certain moment you begin to understand the workmates in your team better and guess words quicker. This phenomenon leads to better understanding among the colleagues.

Imaginarium is a game targeting at developing human imagination. You have to adduce associations to pictures with interesting a little surreal drawings. But if a player starts remembering cards over time, it is necessary to get additional ones to update the game.

The experiment has to be a long-term one, lasting at least from two weeks to one month. The people involved into the process are supposed to play board games at their workplace two or three times a week. On the expiration of the experiment period the examinees have to be tested again the way they were at the very beginning. We are to compare the data obtained at the beginning and the end of the experiment in the final analysis.

If the data shows distinguishing improvement in mutual understanding, relations among employees, climate warming in a collective body and increasing job satisfaction our theory should be regarded proved by an experimental way. If a shift towards the reverse direction is observed, a so-called situational investigation should be conducted in order to learn the reason of such findings.

Results anticipated / achieved

We anticipate board games to develop communication skills, dialogue skills, in particular. The game Activity, namely, can be adduced here as an illustration of this phenomenon: while explaining word you start contacting with your counterpart. The thing is, creating game situation helps workers talk not only about their routine jobs but share happy moments with their colleagues, ask for support and sympathy in need. Our survey has to prove that people lack such communication badly.

I have a clear vision of the experiment findings. Based on the analysis of the testing results collected, overviewed and embodied documentary I am sure I will be able to prove my supposition concerning the role of board games in staff development. The idea of uniting people with the help of board games playing techniques application is very rational and reasonable. Psychologists interested in the issue, entrepreneurs, managers could consider our experiment findings.

Conclusion

Summing up I would like to draw the following conclusion. In modern world the importance of staff development techniques is obvious. Each of the described methodologies has its own advantages and disadvantages and the explorer’s task is to try to find the most suitable one for each particular case or, what is better, to combine different approaches in an appropriate way. This project just overviewed several most significant theories which could be used in game-playing techniques application analysis.

Furthermore, this paper should be conceived as a first step to further research. There is a vast area of investigation when it concerns the problem of interrelation and interdependence of application of playing techniques and creation of mutual understanding atmosphere among employees, and consequently, good staff performance. A question of further development of the theory of game-playing techniques application in collective bodies can be named to the subject of prospective investigations in the given field. Creation of various types of the so-called ‘gamegrammes’ for different types of players can also make a prominent contribution to psychological science.

And there is one more point to be mentioned here. The experiment is still being carried out and undoubtedly we have certain expectations for its findings. It is increasingly common practice when the process of testing can demand a few changes, that is, some more tests may be added. In spite of that it seems to be quite evident that board games are aimed to help people to relax, forget about boring routine and find themselves in a wonderful dream world.

References

1. Benitez, T. Home play games // Gifts & Decorative Accessories. Feb. 2010,

Vol. 111. Issue 2, P. 26-29.

2. Innes, A. What board games can teach business // Harvard Business Review.

Jan./Feb. 2015, Vol. 93. Issue 1/2, P. 118-119.

3. Senge, Peter (2006). The Fifth Discipline. The Art and Practice of the

Learning Organization. Random House Business Books.

4. http://onlinetestpad.com/ru-ru/TestView/Opredelenie-indeksa-gruppovoj- splochennosti-Sishora-1080/Default.aspx

5. http://onlinetestpad.com/ru-ru/TestView/Diagnostika-psikhologicheskogo-klimata-v-maloj-proizvodstvennoj-gruppe-V-V-SHpalinskij-E-G-SHelest--1343/Default.aspx

6. http://onlinetestpad.com/ru-ru/TestView/Modificirovannaya-ekspress-metodika-po-izucheniyu-psikhologicheskogo-klimata-v-trudovom-kollektive-1147/Default.aspx

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 2738