ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the intersections of organizational theory, serious games, and health interventions and suggests areas of focus to incorporate games-based approaches into research on health in organizations. It also explains how different industries have used games to facilitate and maintain relationships, the unique features of games that can achieve organizational goals, the theoretical constructs that can explain how games can affect health-based outcomes, and propose future directions for organizational research. Serious games represent an effective strategy for health organizations to encourage members, communities, and individuals to engage with, process, and internalize health-based messages. The formal features of games allow for a more interactive form of engagement with health messages than traditional health communication intervention materials. Many members of health organizations, nonprofit charities in particular, are volunteers who work infrequently and often outside of formal organizational spaces and may not experience the types of organizational identification that other, more traditional workers perceive.
