  Organizations highly depend on enterprise systems (ES), which are unlikely to
develop their full potential if end-users neglect system usage. Accordingly,
organizations attempt to overcome barriers to end-user acceptance in the ES
context, which can be attributed to several factors on ES, organizational, and
end-user level. Trying to take advantage of the growing passion for games,
Gamification is a phenomenon proposed to motivate people by applying elements
common to games in other contexts that have the potential to increase end-user
acceptance. While first applications of Gamification exist in areas such as
finance, health, and education, utility of gamifying ES has not been explored
in-depth. Aiming to understand how Gamification can be applied to ES to
increase user motivation, we analyze literature concerning game elements (i.e.,
mechanics and dynamics) used in Gamification and related risks. Our study
yields a synthesis of mechanics in clusters of system design, challenges,
rewards, and user specifics as well as related dynamics. We discuss the extent
to which the game elements can be used to address ES acceptance barriers. While
our study reveals that Gamification has potential for motivating ES users,
future research should analyze concrete implementations of Gamification in ES
contexts to investigate long-term effects.
