Thesis
Strategy making : a gamified causal mapping approach
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 2025
- Thesis identifier
- T17358
- Person Identifier (Local)
- 201973941
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- This PhD dissertation explores the potential of integrating gamification with causal mapping to improve strategy making sessions. The research question asks whether gamification can improve strategy making workshops that employ Causal Mapping. The objectives include identifying participant challenges, exploring how gamification can address these challenges, and selecting gamification elements that enhance the process. This investigation addresses the low adoption rates of Causal Mapping in organizational strategy development despite its proven benefits in navigating complex, unstructured scenarios. The study adopts an ethnographic action research design, utilizing my dual roles as a strategist and a researcher to observe and interact effectively within the research settings. The research philosophy combines phenomenology and pragmatism, reflecting a socially constructed view of strategy. The fieldwork involved action research cycles across two organizational settings: the IT department of an FMCG company in the UAE and the Dubai Center of Strathclyde Business School. These settings provided diverse contexts for testing the gamified Causal Mapping approach, facilitated by different group support systems. The dissertation is structured into eight chapters, starting with a comprehensive literature review and progressing through detailed presentations of each research iteration. The findings from these iterations are synthesized to assess the effectiveness of gamified Causal Mapping in enhancing strategy workshops. The study contributes to academic knowledge and practical applications in strategic management. From an academic perspective, it suggests a way to improve strategy making workshops using gamification, showcasing it on SODA, while still being applicable to other strategy making approaches. It opens possibilities for further research into integrating gamification methods and their broader application across different organizational contexts. The findings underscore the potential of gamified Causal Mapping to make strategy a more inclusive and dynamic practice, thereby democratizing the strategy process and enhancing organizational capabilities. It is a matter of future research to establish if the insights from this study also apply to strategy making sessions that use different modelling tools than causal mapping. A technical prototype is developed to illustrate the application experience.
- Advisor / supervisor
- Anisa, Nur
- Dörfler, Viktor
- Resource Type
- DOI
Relations
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PDF of thesis T17358 | 2025-06-05 | Public | Download |