About some uses of games in workplaces

Emmanuelle Savignac (1)

1 CERLIS - UMR 8070 - Centre de recherche sur les liens sociaux

Regardless of the question of “play”, we propose to analyze what is produced from the structure of games used in workplaces and especially from role playing games. What is asserted for these games is that these fictional devices (for example a CEO becoming a maid or a mechanic) are supposed to give access to the “reality” of others places and activities, using a pleasant way to experiment that (thanks to the game). If hierarchies are reversed (“reversal day” is the name of one of these devices), it’s also the case for the usual opposition work/game and also for fiction/real. And if playing is supposed to be constitutively a free activity, what about freedom in the games we have studied? We propose to study the game’s power of transformation (or not), applied in work situations. Moreover, we’ll analyze what is denoted in game which has not the same denotation “for real” and what becomes freedom from game to work and what become relationships or hierarchy in these games.

Mots clés: role playing games; management; reversal days

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie; Sociologie

Emmanuelle Savignac. About some uses of games in workplaces: From the freedom of the game to the experience of the work reality. 5th ETHNOGRAPHY AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH CONFERENCE, University of Bergamo, Jun 2014, Bergamo, Italy. ⟨hal-01424300⟩