Desperately Seeking the Artefacts and the Foundations of Native Theory in Gamification Research: Why Information Systems Researchers Can Play a Legitimate Role in this Discourse and How They Can Better Contribute

Gamification has taken the world by storm. Regardless of where one stands on gamification, it can aptly be described as interesting but also galvanising and controversial. We are pleased to write a provocative editorial to kick off this special issue on gamification in the European Journal of Information Systems. Our position is that the information systems (IS) discipline has the opportunity to play an outsized role in navigating the discourse of gamification-an increasingly influential, interdisciplinary discourse in research and practice. We assert that active engagement in the gamification discourse is a compelling IS research opportunity, given the growing, globalised platform-based economy. Consequently, we frame our editorial with the knowledge we have gained as IS researchers who engage in gamification research in an effort to share what we have learned about artefacts and original theorisation with both IS and gamification scholars. We do so by proposing a pragmatic path forward for gamification and IS researchers who wish to contribute to these related discourses, both individually and in the form of the combined IS-gamification discourse. We propose a framework of three practices that we are confident can more systematically generate the key theoretical artefacts needed to generate native theory in the IS-gamification discourse and hence to improve the associated research and practice. Foundational to this framework is our paradigm, which advocates active engagement with IS-gamification research and practice, as bridged by a strong focus on design thinking and generating artefacts that are foundational to theory generation.