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The purpose of this paper is to explore the links between various characteristics of hospital administration and the utilization of classes of volunteer resource management (VRM) practices.

This paper uses original data collected via surveys of volunteer directors in 122 hospitals in five Northeastern and Southern US states.

Structural equation modeling results suggest that number of paid volunteer management staff, scope of responsibility of the primary volunteer administrator, and hospital size are positively associated with increased usage of certain VRM practices.

First, the authors begin the exploration of VRM antecedents, and encourage others to continue this line of inquiry; and second, the authors assess dimensionality of practices, allowing future researchers to consider whether specific dimensions have a differential impact on key individual and organizational outcomes.

Based on the findings of a relationship between administrative characteristics and the on-the-ground execution of VRM practice, a baseline audit comparing current practices to those VRM practices presented here might be useful in determining what next steps may be taken to focus investments in VRM that can ultimately drive practice utilization.

The exploration of the dimensionality of volunteer management adds a novel perspective to both the academic study, and practice, of volunteer management. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical categorization of VRM practices.

A change in leadership can often be stressful for an organization. Miriam, the Founding Executive Director of a supporting foundation for a rural hospital, was primarily a servant leader, providing volunteers and staff with the tools needed for successful fundraising. As the initial Executive Director for this small nonprofit organization, she established an organizational culture that fit the needs of the community; volunteers became accustomed to that culture and the organization flourished. Upon Miriam’s retirement, her replacement brought a very different type of leadership rooted in hierarchical structures and authoritarianism. Accustomed to a more supportive organizational culture, many volunteers flatly refused to work with the new executive director. He exacerbated the problem by refusing to acknowledge any missteps he might have taken and was not receptive to any ideas not his own. He was not supportive of staff or even the organization’s own board members. The new executive director was accustomed to being in control and misunderstood managing the needs of multiple stakeholders. He moved too quickly to consolidate his own power without consideration of the organization’s needs. He tried to instill a “heroic” leadership style in a culture of shared leadership. The credibility of the organization suffered as a result, not only among volunteers and hospital staff, but, as they talked within the community, publically as well.

This study offers a critical inquiry into accountability vis-à-vis organizational identity formation. It investigates how accountability evolves in the transformation of an NGO operating in the field of migration management from an informal grassroots group into a fully-fledged organization.

The paper is the outcome of a participatory action research project on Welcome Refugees (WR), a UK-based NGO. The project involved documentary analysis, focus group and semi-structured interviews, field notes, and participant observation. The analysis draws from poststructuralist theorization to explain the interplay between organizational identity and different forms of NGO accountability over time.

The study shows how different forms of accountability became salient over time and were experienced differently by organizational members, thus leading to competing collective identity narratives. Organizational members felt accountable to beneficiaries in different ways, and this was reflected in their identification with the organization. Some advocated a rights-based approach that partially resonated with the accountability demands of external donors, while others aimed at enacting their feelings of accountability by preserving their closeness with beneficiaries and using a need-based approach. These differences led to an identity struggle that was ultimately solved through the silencing of marginalized narratives and the adoption of an adaptive regime of accountability.

The findings of the case are of practical relevance to quasi-organizations that struggle to form and maintain organizational identity in their first years of operation. Their survival depends not only on their ability to accommodate and/or resist a multiplicity of accountability demands but also on their ability to develop a shared and common understanding of identity accountability.

The paper problematizes rather than takes for granted the process through which organizations acquire a viable identity and the role of accountability within them.

Volunteer-based organizations are dependent on volunteers to meet the goals of the organization. Identifying and training volunteers as leaders of the organization is one way to increase positive social change in their community. However, there is limited literature investigating the outcomes of providing leadership training to volunteers. This case study determined participants’ perceptions of a volunteer leadership training experience compared to observations of the actual leadership training. A focus group revealed three themes that were both supported and refuted by observations of the training: (a) the need for refreshers and follow-up trainings, a disconnect between understanding leadership concepts and applying them in the volunteer scenario, and the transfer of for-profit skills and experience to the non-profit setting.

This exploratory survey study investigated the alleged benefits associated with corporate volunteer programs. The results demonstrated that employees viewed volunteerism as an effective means of developing or enhancing several types of job‐related skills. This was particularly true for female employees and employees participating in a formal volunteer program. The results also demonstrated that organizational commitment was higher for volunteers from companies with a corporate volunteer program than for non‐volunteers with organizations without a corporate volunteer program. Finally, the results indicated that job satisfaction was related to volunteerism among female employees, but not for male employees.

We explore how neoliberal logic has led to an erosion of social-welfare programs and pervades organizational structures and functions of a third-sector organization. Based upon fieldwork in a foodbank in the North-West of England, we discuss the impact of economic cuts upon organizational norms of the foodbank, and the intersection with the provision of charity support and personal relationships between the staff, volunteers and visitors.

This article analyses pervasiveness of neoliberalism on a foodbank and the impact this has on organizational norms and relationships found within the organization. It integrates themes of structural violence, neoliberal discourse in the charity sector, notions of (un)deservingness and appropriate of time.

Our research finds how a hostile environment transpires in a third-sector organization under increased economic and bureaucratic pressures and from this, organizational rules emerge that ignore the lived experiences of the people it serves. Herein, visitors must learn the organization's norms and garner relationships to be able to navigate the organization to successfully access essential resources.

The findings in this article will be of interest to academics researching poverty and organizational norms, professionals in the charity-sector and policy makers. Rules originating from economic and bureaucratic pressures can establish barriers to accessing essential material resources. It informs the pressures felt in balancing access to support services with personal timetables, and the need to include visitors' voices in establishing norms.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the extent to which new forms of capital are noticed by different members of nonprofit organizations (directors, employees, and volunteers) and valued as a factor of organizational capacity.

Using survey research methodology, the authors studied a nonprofit institution – a delegation of the Portuguese Red Cross located in Fafe, a city in northern Portugal, by giving a questionnaire to all its members.

The respondents revealed that the existence of other forms of capital (in addition to financial capital) is recognized and valued and that human capital as a whole is particularly relevant to the fulfillment of the Fafe Delegation of Portuguese Red Cross’ mission.

This is the first study on the perceptions of human capital, social capital and financial capital in a Portuguese nonprofit organization.

The authors use their university and its writing program as a case study to interrogate established wraparound support systems for foster youth and the role that additional, volunteer faculty – led support services can play in retention and graduation rates. This chapter first provides research on college-going foster youth in the United States. Then, it considers the foster youth population and established support programs at the University of California, Riverside. Next, this chapter reviews the benefits of faculty – student mentoring and tutoring, specifically in composition studies, and how those benefits can contribute to a successful college-going experience. The chapter then shifts to offering a model for those interested in establishing a similar program. Using business, communication, composition, education, and psychosocial theory to ground the discussion, the authors provide a detailed account of the proposal, implementation, and ongoing programmatic administration processes, including the rationale undergirding decision-making. Ultimately, they show how equitable supplemental academic support led by composition faculty can bridge the gap between existing foster youth services and outstanding needs, an innovative approach that relies on the natural mentoring relationships which organically evolve from faculty–student interaction.

Social enterprises live in the limbo between social and market objectives, posing many operations management challenges. This study extends the discussion of operational priorities, which has focused on purely for-profit organisations, to the context of social enterprises by exploring, from a resource-based perspective, which resources and operational priorities are most important to them and how they are used to respond to conflicting demands.

Multiple case study research was carried out involving five Portuguese social enterprises, representative of the main sectors in which social enterprises operate in Europe. Ten semi-structured interviews with directors and other high-ranking respondents were conducted, and content was analysed to gather evidence on the key resources and operational priorities pursued by social enterprises. Cross-case conclusions were drawn, resulting in theoretical propositions and a conceptual framework.

Findings suggest that social enterprises rely on intangible resources and combine different operational priorities, which may vary throughout their lifecycle. Community engagement has emerged as a specific operational priority, in addition to those already reported in the manufacturing and services literature. To balance conflicting demands, most social enterprises studied combine innovation with community engagement or customer focus.

The study contributes to the development of knowledge about the operations strategy in the specific context of social enterprises, an organisational model that has not been systematically addressed in the operations management literature, and brings the discussion of operational priorities into the social enterprise field, thus strengthening the link between these two fields.

This paper aims to present the findings from a small study of social enterprise governance in the UK, taking a case study approach to uncover the experiences of internal actors who are involved in their board-level management.

The study took a qualitative constructionist approach, focusing on stakeholder involvement in social enterprise governance. Initial theme analysis of 14 semi-structured interviews with board or senior management representatives revealed key issues in the governance of social enterprise, which were then explored through a comparative case study of two organisations.

The study found that social enterprises surveyed employed a number of mechanisms to ensure appropriate stakeholder involvement in their governance, including adopting a participatory democratic structure which involves one or more groups of stakeholders, creation of a non-executive advisory group to inform strategic direction and adopting social accounting with external auditing. The research also highlighted the potential of the community interest company legal form for UK social enterprise, particularly in developing the role of the asset-locked body in terms of providing CIC governance oversight.

This survey was limited to the North West of England; however its findings can potentially support innovation in conceptual developments internationally.

This research contributes to the under-researched field of social enterprise governance, potentially enabling these organisations to adopt more effective governance mechanisms that appropriately manage the involvement of beneficiaries and other stakeholders.