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.     

Altruisim and the Economics of Non-Profit Organisations

Economists cannot completely explain the existence of nonprofit organisations without assuming that some individuals are altruistic and have a Kantian ethic. Once that is done, the economic model becomes more realistic, and some interesting implications for economics and management can be derived.     

Competition for Power and Altruism

The paper analyzes the trade-off between power and altruism by using an experimental framework which involved a group of experimental agents, undergraduate students of the University of Siena. The results show that the introduction into the experimental structure of a tournament for the power appreciably altered the behaviour of agents. More specifically the degree of altruism, measured by the dictator offers, significantly decreased when the agents were able to trade altruism for power. The results were more clear-cut and robust in the case of the dictator game, but also in the case of the ultimatum game the introduction of the tournament for power altered the behavior of subjects. A significant gender effect emerged.     

Non-paternalistic intergenerational altruism revisited

In this paper, we prove the existence of a stationary equilibrium in an intergenerational stochastic game with non-paternalistic altruism as defined by Ray (1987). Our approach is based on the assumption that the transition probabilities are non-atomic. The utility function of each generation has a very general form including many special cases studied in the literature.     

Strength of the Social Dilemma in a Public Goods Experiment: An Exploration of the Error Hypothesis

We present the results of an experiment on voluntary contributions to a public good with a unique dominant strategy equilibrium in the interior of the strategy space. The treatment variable is the equilibrium contribution level. By increasing the equilibrium contribution level, we reduce the strength of the social dilemma. Though we observe that the average level of contribution rises with the equilibrium contribution level, the average rate of over-contribution is not affected in a systematic way. Over-contribution is statistically significant only at the lower level of equilibrium contribution but not at the higher levels. We show that the Anderson et al. (1998, Journal of Public Economics. 70, 297–323) logit equilibrium model which combines altruism and decision errors fits quite well our laboratory data.     

What motivates volunteers to help at business events? Reciprocal altruism and reflexivity

Volunteering literature is yet to examine the motivations for helping at business events. This paper contributes to closing this research gap by on-the-ground investigation of volunteer motivations at business events. Drawing upon 22 volunteers from different business events in China, the results identify a variety of functional motives related to self-development. The analysis gives emphasis to the subjectivity and reflexivity with which individuals give meaning to their motivations and suggests that reciprocal altruism and reflexivity are evident among volunteers. This paper provides insights into the salience of business event volunteering and suggests implications for event organisers dealing with volunteers.     

公立医疗机构比私立医疗机构更利他吗？

为了研究不同所有制医疗机构的利他性,本文使用相关调查数据对农村地区新农合受访者门诊费用、药品费用及其各自付比进行回归分析。结果显示：在基层公立医疗机构看门诊所产生的医疗总费用、总费用自付额均显著地高于基层非公立医疗机构,而这一差异可能源自总费用中的非药品费用;相比基层非公立医疗机构,患者在基层公立医疗机构看门诊拥有更高的总费用报销比。以上结论不满足公立医疗机构降低患者医疗费用利他性假设,因此本文建议更加深化医疗改革,促进非公立医疗机构发展、提升患者福利。     

Defining the ‘Social’ in ‘Social Entrepreneurship’: Altruism and Entrepreneurship

What is social entrepreneurship? In, particular, what’s so social about it? Understanding what social entrepreneurship is enables researchers to study the phenomenon and policy-makers to design measures to encourage it. However, such an understanding is lacking partly because there is no universally accepted definition of entrepreneurship as yet. In this paper, we suggest a definition of social entrepreneurship that intuitively accords with what is generally accepted as entrepreneurship and that captures the way in which entrepreneurship may be altruistic. Based on this we provide a taxonomy of social entrepreneurship and identify a number of real cases from Asia illustrating the different forms it could take.     

Teaching Bioeconomics

Bioeconomics is a relatively young field that uses an expanded microeconomics to examine animal behavior, human behavior, and animal and human social institutions. A voluminous literature is rapidly accumulating. There are as yet no standard textbooks, but there are several excellent books and/or articles that can be used in combination with videos and other aids to make a course that students will enjoy and that teachers can use to advance the frontiers of scholarship in economics and biology.*Invited editorial     

Capital Accumulation in an Economy with Dynasties and Uncertain Lifetimes

This paper studies how the lack of an annuities market affects savings behavior and intergenerational transfers in a dynastic overlapping generations economy. I find that the answer to this question depends crucially on altruism. On the one hand, if the altruistic bequest motive is operative, then the lack of annuity markets enhances capital accumulation. On the other hand, if the altruistic bequest motive is not operative, the absence of annuity markets can either increase or decrease aggregate savings. I characterize under which conditions capital accumulation is enhanced. I also prove that an overlapping generations economy with altruism and uninsurable lifetime risk faces capital overaccumulation relative to the modified Golden Rule. The efficient allocation corresponding to the modified Golden Rule can be decentralized as a competitive equilibrium by a pay-as-you-go social security system, and this can only be done if individuals are altruistic.