O35 - Social InnovationReturn

Consumers play extra-role behaviours while actively participating in designing and improving goods and services, thus becoming prosumers. Modding, i.e. game modifications which aim at creating a new or improving experience for the players, is an interesting form of prosumption observed in the game industry. The general purpose of the study is to identify to what extent players are willing to perform game modding, as well as who and how may benefit from this extra-role behaviour. Qualitative research was conducted in the form of focus groups with Polish game players. Results of the conducted research allow identifying benefits for four groups of beneficiaries, i.e., players as mod users (game diversification, better customisation, higher quality of games, more realism of the game, fun and excitement to play a modified or a new game, prolonged games’ lifespans), modders as mod creators (creativity, gaining knowledge about how to create a game, social affiliation and pride or career development) game developers (extending games’ lifespans, updating, and renewing game, improving the quality of games, the opportunity to reach a wider audience) and intermediaries like cloud gaming platforms which share the benefits with game developers.
Implications for Central European audience: The study provides evidence that customers’ inclination to prosume may vary and is stimulated by specific drivers in the form of perceived benefits. Thus, the research supports Adam’s equity theory. From the managerial perspective, the current study provides useful, actionable guidance on how to encourage players to engage in real prosumtion in virtual worlds. Game producers need to learn about their customers’ needs outside of normal exchange processes. Players shall be perceived as an inseparable part of the gaming industry, who deliver an extra value to the market by game modding activities.

Social Entrepreneurship has become a buzzword due to the exponentially rising number of scientific works devoted to this topic. The prevalent part of the research focuses on the social side of the venture, while the other equally important entrepreneurial side is still in the shadows. Can it be that social entrepreneurs do not value the entrepreneurial aspect (inventing, founding and developing) of social entrepreneurship and are engaged in these activities merely because of other goals and passions (for example “helping”, “social welfare” etc.)? This research conducted in Entrepreneurial passion, aims to identify the differences within the domain of inventing, founding and developing passion among social and commercial entrepreneurs. The paper also aims to find out if the cliché about the social cause being the only force that moves social entrepreneurs is right. The primary data was collected among 87 social and 119 commercial entrepreneurs. The Welch`s t-test and the Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon test were applied. As a result, no statistically significant differences were found in any of the mentioned aspects (Inventing, founding and developing) of entrepreneurial passion of social and commercial entrepreneurs.

Negative feedback has been repeatedly identified as beneficial for organizational learning, adaptability, and performance. Despite having these advantages, most organizations still do not use negative feedback to its full potential, as they fail to spread it correctly among their members. The application of negative feedback, therefore, faces several issues like misuse or process avoidance that are mostly driven by psychological factors. The purpose of this paper is to discuss potential benefits of a newly emerged organizational approach called radical candor for contemporary state of the art in feedback-related behavior and to propose how it might be successfully applied in organizational settings. We define radical candor as a proactive and compassionate engagement in an unpleasant and direct feedback process. Radical candor may help reduce the influence of psychological factors like extreme levels of attachment, harsh emotions or low self-esteem in order to make organizational members more engaged and satisfied with the negative feedback process. Organizations willing to apply radical candor might consider either official implementation from top to bottom (through managers and leadership) or unofficial intervention through the agents (employees of all levels) depending on company characteristics.

This paper focuses on the current state of art in mindfulness research on workplace and identifies some of the necessary steps and risks in the creation of mindful leadership theory. Mindfulness has the potential to effectively address three topical organizational challenges of growing demands on adaptability, prevailing issues of work-related stress and the necessity to raise the moral level in organizations. Current studies seem to suitably respond to the issues of work-related stress; however, the challenges of adaptability and morality so far lack appropriate empirical validation. Lack of empirical support is also noticeable in the case of mindful leadership theory as most studies still focus solely on individual leader development. However, it is important to start to discuss the suitable core variables of mindful leadership now as a clear differentiation from other leadership approaches like authentic leadership will be crucial for successful creation of mindful leadership theory. This paper also presents recommendations for entrepreneurs and managers willing to incorporate mindfulness into their organizational settings.