Performance appraisal of knowledge workers in R&D centers using gamification

In the knowledge-based economy, R&D centers in service industries increasingly depend on the performance of knowledge workers to gain competitive advantage. Therefore, these centers must give careful consideration to the performance assessment and continuous improvement of knowledge workers using appropriate performance assessment systems and models. In this paper, a system was designed for the performance appraisal and ranking of knowledge workers in R&D centers of banking industry using gamification approaches. The case study method was applied for the conceptual design of the system and the selected case was the R&D center of Mellat bank, one of the Iranian leading private banks. Data collection was performed via semistructured interviews with 12 key participants of performance appraisal process which included vice president of research and development and 11 senior researchers as head of research groups of the center.