A Segmentation of Volunteers at the 2013 Austin City Limits Music Festival: Insights and Future Directions

Volunteers at music festivals play a critical role in festival operation and success. As the music festival industry continues to grow, the ability for these large productions to effectively execute a large volunteer program is augmented. Volunteers from the 2013 Austin City Limits Music Festival were surveyed in regards to their self-image congruency, motivation, satisfaction, and intent to return as a volunteer at the festival. Analysis resulted in three distinct segments which has significant practical implications for festival management. Academic implications exist with the addition of self-image congruency and further discovery of volunteers in the festival and event industry.     

Connecting the Two Faces of CSR: Does Employee Volunteerism Improve Compliance?

In 2004, the United States Sentencing Commission amended the Federal Sentencing Guidelines to allow firms that create “effective compliance and ethics programs” to receive better treatment if prosecuted for fraud. Effective compliance and ethics, however, appear to be limited to activities focused on complying with the firms’ internal legal and ethical standards. We explored a potential connection between the firms’ external corporate social responsibility (CSR) behaviors and internal compliance: Is there an organizationally valid relationship between these two firm activities? That is, when organizations demonstrate CSR with behaviors external to the firm, such as employee volunteerism, are their employees more likely to demonstrate uncompromised legal and ethical compliance behavior internally? We collected data from 164 working professionals enrolled in a top-tier MBA program in the southeastern United States regarding their employer-sponsored volunteer activities and their intentions to comply in various organizational compliance vignettes. We found that employer-sponsored volunteerism is associated with uncompromised compliance choices in one of the three vignettes. This finding indicates preliminary support for further inquiry into the relationship within the firm between external CSR behaviors and policies regarding organizational compliance. Post hoc analyses suggest that employer-sponsored volunteerism is strongly associated with a positive organizational identity, but organizational identity is not associated with the significant compliance vignette. This evidence suggests that the underlying mechanism that connects external CSR behaviors and internal compliance intentions is complex and requires future study.     

Corporate social responsibility and employee volunteerism: What do the best companies do?

Employee volunteerism as a practice of corporate social responsibility aids corporations by strengthening employee satisfaction and retention internally and by strengthening corporate reputations and connections with stakeholders externally. Of particular interest are the specific practices and procedures used by companies to encourage and support volunteer activities of their employees. We reviewed publicly available documents of Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For ranking to gain insight into how these best companies practice employee volunteerism and whether they link employee volunteerism to their corporate social responsibility strategy. We propose a connection of the position and importance of employee volunteerism in the corporate practices of social responsibility. Our findings suggest that many highly regarded companies specifically link employee volunteerism to their corporate social responsibility strategy. These companies also utilize similar practices to encourage and support employee volunteerism. We highlight the practices that managers could consider to support their corporate social responsibility efforts and offer several suggestions for future consideration.     

Managing Heritage Volunteers: An Exploratory Study of Volunteer Programmes in Art Museums Worldwide

This study addresses the paucity of research on volunteer management in art museums and heritage attractions. Based on the results of surveys and interviews with volunteers and managers from international art museums, it identifies three sets of promising practices that appear to increase the performance of volunteer programmes: (1) building a community of volunteers; (2) enhancing volunteers' learning experiences; and (3) fostering the self-management of volunteers. Taken together, these practices offer evidence for the value of the ‘serious leisure’ concept in the theory and practice of volunteer management.     

AN EXAMINATION OF VOLUNTEER MOTIVATION IN CREDIT UNIONS: INFORMING VOLUNTEER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

ABSTRACT: Volunteer recruitment and retention is a problem that most credit unions experience. Research suggests that knowledge of volunteer motivation can inform volunteer management strategies. This paper uses a survey approach to determine whether current volunteers in credit unions in Northern Ireland are more motivated by the actual act of volunteering, by the output from the volunteering activity (including altruism) or because the volunteering activity increases their human capital value. Altruistic reasons are found to be the most influential, with the act of volunteering also scoring highly. This knowledge should inform volunteer recruitment programmes and internal appraisal processes as management can reinforce messages that provide positive feedback to volunteers on the social benefits being achieved by the credit union. This will further motivate current volunteers, ensuring retention. When motivation was analyzed by volunteer characteristics we found that older volunteers, retired volunteers and volunteers who are less educated are more motivated in their role. There was little evidence that individuals volunteer to improve their human capital worth.     

Intra-organizational Volunteerism: Good Soldiers, Good Deeds and Good Politics

Despite the millions of hours donated to charity each year by employees on behalf of their employers there has been relatively little research into the motives for such pro-social behavior. The current paper extends Peterson’s (2004, Journal of Business Ethics 49, 371) study by exploring a unique form of employee volunteerism identified as intra-organizational, or employer-sanctioned volunteerism, and uniting the heretofore distinct charity support and organizational citizenship behavior literatures. Results of a preliminary study revealed that employee participation in such intra-organizational volunteer programs is motivated by charity, firm, and personal benefits. Managerial and research implications are presented.     

Understanding Voluntary Intentions within the Theories of Self-Determination and Planned Behavior

This survey study aimed to test the usefulness of an integrated model that combines self-determination theory (SDT) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB) in explaining volunteers’ intention to continue. Participants (N = 284) completed a survey form measuring the psychological constructs derived from SDT (i.e., autonomous and controlled motivations) and the TPB (i.e., attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control [PBC], and intention). Results of path analysis showed that autonomous motivation positively predicted attitudes (β = 0.47, p < 0.01) and PBC (β = 0.39, p < 0.01). Conversely, controlled motivation was negatively associated with attitudes (β = -0.16, p < 0.01) and PBC (β = -0.18, p < 0.01). Attitudes (β = 0.39, p < 0.01) and PBC (β = 0.49, p < 0.01) were then positively related to intention. The integrated model is generally supported in the context of volunteerism, and it may better explain voluntary retention than only use SDT or the TPB.     

关于大学生志愿精神的调查研究——以温州某独立院校为例

文章从大学生对志愿精神的认可、大学生志愿者招募渠道、志愿者组织体系等三方面调查资料为基础,通过对温州某独立院校的大学生参与青年志愿服务的情况进行调研和剖析,得出当代大学生参加志愿活动状况不容乐观的基本结论。     

Understanding students' responses to university‐led charity campaigns: a study of a Haitian earthquake relief campaign

The primary focus of this paper is to understand determinants of behavioral intentions of individuals towards a university‐led charitable campaign. We build a comprehensive model of determinants of behavioral intentions of students towards a university‐led charitable campaign at an individual level. This study identified perceived importance of the cause, social value, and recognition as determinants of behavioral intentions. The results indicated that to increase donations, charitable campaigns should stress the importance of the cause to potential donors and publicly recognize volunteers and donors. Implications and recommendations such as leveraging the university's internal channels of communication to reinforce the importance of the cause are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The lived experience of London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games volunteers: a serious leisure perspective

Along with other sporting mega-events, the Olympic Games, in all its versions, makes extensive use of volunteers. The 70,000 London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic volunteers, for example, played a vital role in the delivery of the event. Stebbins’ theoretical perspective of serious leisure includes consideration of volunteering and there are calls for its further empirical evaluation. This study, therefore, uses a qualitative study of the lived experience of London 2012 volunteers to test the relevance of the serious leisure framework to Olympic volunteering. The data are drawn from the reflective diaries of 20 participants who volunteered in a variety of roles during London 2012. It is concluded that all of the qualities of serious leisure are identifiable to various extents within the experiences of the London 2012 volunteers. This finding will help Olympic and other sporting mega-event managers to understand and improve the experiences of their volunteers. Recommendations are also made, in the light of the findings, for the further refinement of the serious leisure perspective. Particular attention is paid to highlighting how the findings might contribute to recent debates around whether sporting mega-event volunteering is best explained by the serious leisure quality of career volunteering, or by the serious leisure associated concept of project-based leisure, or alternatively by the competing term of episodic volunteering.