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This paper seeks to provide an insight into the recruitment and selection of volunteers in the heritage sector, drawing comparisons between paid and unpaid workers to assess the implications of the findings for volunteer management.

A multi‐method research design was adopted involving qualitative interviews with managers and volunteers, in conjunction with a postal survey of volunteers across 12 study sites, which were all visitor attractions in the heritage sector.

The findings show that the effectiveness of the recruitment and selection process can be undermined by a lack of formality and supporting resources. This raises questions about the effectiveness of human resource management for volunteers, both specifically in the heritage sector and in the wider context of volunteer management.

The research was of an exploratory nature and so further investigation is needed to consider the impact of these findings on the effectiveness of volunteer recruitment and selection across a range of sectors.

The research highlights the existing practices in place for volunteer management in the heritage sector so raising issues for managers regarding the challenge of achieving a balance between formality and informality of human resource management practices.

The research takes a micro‐level approach to examining the recruitment and selection of volunteer workers. It provides a link in the literature between the management of volunteers and human resource management practices.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the advantages and disadvantages to primarily utilizing undergraduate student volunteers for a long-term digitization project and to discuss methods to mitigate the disadvantages of student volunteer work.

This paper presents a case study of the use of student volunteers for the Historical Campus Newspaper Digitization Project at the University of Minnesota, Morris.

This paper describes the process of recruiting, training and managing student volunteers for a digitization project. Both advantages and disadvantages to student volunteer work are discussed, including possible steps to mitigate the disadvantages of student volunteers.

This paper is limited to one institution’s experience utilizing student volunteers on one digitization project.

Librarians and archivists interested in new staffing methods for digitization projects can utilize this paper to better understand the benefits and costs to student volunteer labor before putting volunteer projects into practice.

This paper presents a unique case study of a digitization project staffed primarily with undergraduate student volunteers in an American academic library and archive.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of volunteerism during the digitisation project by the Office of the Premier in Mpumalanga with a view recommending the best practice.

The empirical data was collected through the semi-structured qualitative interviews with the records manager and ten volunteer archivists employed by the Office of the Premier.

Local pupils within the Mpumalanga province were recruited to participate in the digitisation project as a form of youth empowerment. The Mpumalanga Provincial Archives was not involved in the digitisation project to ensure that all digitisation specification was in line with the requirement of the provincial archives. Furthermore, a lack of resources to implement the digitisation project was cited as the main stamping block for the successful implementation of the project.

This paper is limited to the Office of the premier, in the Mpumalanga province.

Archivists interested in recruiting volunteers on a digitisation project can use this paper to understand the benefits and cost of volunteer labor before putting volunteer projects into practice.

The success of a digitisation project depends on the involvement of the Mpumalanga Provincial archives.

This paper presents a unique case study in South Africa of a digitisation project staffed with volunteers in the office of the Premier.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the perceived benefits and costs of volunteering affect participation. Based on this rational choice approach, the research tests a multivariate model of the determinants of volunteering.

The database for the empirical analysis is the 2005 Americans' Time Use Survey. To estimate the model of participation in volunteer activity, this research uses the complementary log‐log technique.

The findings support the central hypothesis that participation in volunteering decreases as the opportunity cost of volunteer activity increases. In addition, participation in volunteering increases as people perceive themselves as more embedded in their communities, thus suggesting that rational individuals make strategic assessments in their decisions to volunteer based on the level of trust in the exchange relationship.

The findings suggest that policies that promote a sense of embeddedness in the community, as well as those that link the workplace and volunteer opportunities, would help motivate rational individuals to volunteer. In‐depth interviews to ascertain people's motivations to volunteer would be useful to supplement the findings.

The findings suggest that policies that promote a sense of embeddedness in the community, as well as those that link the workplace and volunteer opportunities, would help motivate rational individuals to volunteer.

This paper contributes to the understanding of volunteer behavior as a rational choice in an exchange relationship. Based on these findings, this research argues that policies that promote a sense of community embeddedness as well as those that link the workplace and volunteer opportunities, help motivate rational individuals to volunteer.

While numerous studies of leadership have been conducted in the corporate and public sectors, there are lots of people leading in civic, social, and community service organizations and little is known about either how they lead or how their leadership practices are similar to or different from those leading in other sectors. The purpose of this paper is to fill that gap by examining leadership practices unique to leadership that occurs within organizations where both leaders and followers are volunteers.

The sample involved surveying over 60 percent of the volunteer (n=569) leaders across a national youth sports organization based in the USA.

Volunteer leaders engaged more frequently in leadership behaviors than did paid leaders. Some differences in leadership behaviors were found on the basis of respondent gender, age, educational level, and employment status. Leadership behaviors were systematically related to quality of respondents’ volunteer leadership experience. While objective measures of organizational effectiveness were unrelated to the leadership behaviors of the voluntary leaders, subjective assessments did impact how leaders behaved.

The research relied upon the self-reported leadership behaviors of respondents, and the organization’s measure of effectiveness was unrelated to respondent leadership behaviors. Future studies would benefit from leadership assessments provided by observers and constituents, samples involving different kinds of volunteer organizations (both settings and services) and more complex and nuanced empirical relationships.

It is problematic that a volunteer organization cannot clearly define what it means to be an effective leader. Knowing the direct relationship between leadership behaviors and how favorably people feel about their voluntary leadership experience implies making certain that volunteer leaders actually have the opportunity to lead.

Because so many people volunteer and voluntary (and not-for-profit) organizations are vital to economic well-being it is important to know more about what effective leadership looks like within this domain.

Few studies of volunteer leaders have been done, and none in this particular type of youth sports organization. Extends an understanding of leadership and what people do when they are leading others, especially in terms of settings involving volunteer participants rather than paid participants.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the determinants of job satisfaction in Italy with particular emphasis on social relations.

This paper uses the data from the Multiscopo Survey of Households (MSH) conducted by the Italian Central Statistical Office for the years 1993-1995-1998-2000 for empirical investigations with ordered probit and robustness tests. A statistical matching procedure to impute missing values on household income in MSH is also performed.

The paper finds that social interactions matter. While visits to relatives are not statistically significant, volunteer work and the frequency of meetings with friends are significantly and positively correlated with job satisfaction, with church attendance having the biggest impact on job satisfaction. These results seem to confirm the main assumption of the paper: social relations are helpful in gaining more and in improving career prospects. The findings also show that meetings with friends increase job satisfaction through self-perceived health, suggesting a “buffering effect” of the networks of friends. In addition, results for Italy confirm findings gathered from job satisfaction studies with some novel evidence.

The role of social relations in job satisfaction has received no attention. The paper contributes to the literature by carrying out the first empirical analysis on the relationship between social relations and job satisfaction. Overall, the value-added of the study is twofold. First, it adds a new piece of evidence to the existing literature on job satisfaction, i.e. the effects of social relations. To the best of the knowledge, there are no studies which consider social interactions as determinants of job satisfaction. Second, it extends the country evidence on the determinants of job satisfaction.

Increasingly, post credit crunch, organisations are seeking to develop new ways of attracting, recruiting and retaining staff in the UK high street for less or even no financial reward. The aim of this paper is to investigate volunteerism and volunteer management, based on an exploratory case study of two British Red Cross (BRC) shops. It also aims to examine the reasons why people volunteer and why they keep doing so in the context of BRC, as a charitable organisation.

An exploratory case was used to gain an insight into how BRC recruit and retain volunteer staff. This was achieved by interviewing volunteers and the shop management personnel. An overview of BRC structures, strategic direction and views on volunteerism is also developed as part of the case study.

Exploratory findings from the research show that people decide to volunteer mainly for a variety of reasons such as social interaction, to carry out work that is valued in the local community and for self‐satisfaction. Volunteer satisfaction is derived from helping BRC to help others and also being part of The Red Cross. Volunteer retention is attributed to a proactive management style in terms of creating a favourable work environment. The shop manager's leadership skills are crucial in establishing a friendly and positive attitude towards volunteers. In addition, youth volunteers are attracted in order to gain work experience and learn new skills.

The study is exploratory, based on preliminary interview findings from 17 informants in two BRC shops. However, the insight gained helps in understanding the reasons why volunteerism is successful within the BRC.

The paper can help policy makers reflect and decide on useful tactics and strategy for developing and improving volunteer management within the retail sector.

There is a paucity of literature in relation to retailing and volunteerism and this study contributes to the literature by identifying reasons why this charity has been so successful in attracting and retaining volunteers.

This study aims to offer insights into the contextual and situational variables that influence volunteering choices.

An analysis of European and US business students’ volunteering experiences is performed. Cross-cultural and experiential outcomes are compared and contrasted at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

A majority of volunteering decisions are made without thoughtful reflection, based on convenience in an effort to reduce personal hardship, and influenced heavily by institutional and organizational structures.

These results call into question the notion that volunteering-related choices are deeply personal, purposeful and/or reflective decisions. Moreover, the findings begin to explain why volunteerism continues to be dogged by labels such as “ineffective”, “inefficient” or “lacking in value” when benchmarked against expectations.

This chapter is an effort to make sense of the complexities emerging from the tension between my academic-self and activist-self in the case of my participant observation in a small community organization which I call free food store. By drawing from my experiences at the ‘free food store’, I do not only reflect on some specific moments where my multiple roles/selves clash, but also invite my readers to reimagine and build an activist academy that works along with communities to ‘change the world’. While this piece can be considered as an ongoing and intense dialogue between the activist and academic about ‘what is to be done?’ in a neoliberal world, it is also an attempt to think, write and, more importantly, act differently through embodied experiences, aspirations and imaginations.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the conditions associated with serving on boards by investigating the factors that distinguish older volunteers who serve on nonprofit boards from those who only volunteer programmatically.

Surveys of 354 residents of Southeastern North Carolina over age 50. Measures include education, wealth, retirement status, public service motivation (PSM), patterns of residential mobility, secular and religious organization meeting attendance, and volunteer activity in the past year. Data were analyzed using a Heckman probit selection model.

Respondents who have higher levels of education, are retired, or have lived in the community for longer periods are more likely to report board volunteering, but are not any more likely to volunteer programmatically. Those with higher levels of PSM are more likely to report general volunteering, but are not any more likely to volunteer on boards. Two measures reveal divergent findings based on type of volunteering: moving frequently in one’s lifetime and attending weekly religious services are associated with a greater likelihood of programmatic volunteering but a reduced likelihood of serving as a board member.

Limitations include self-reported, cross-sectional data, and a geographically restricted American sample that is older, more educated, and more likely to own a second home than average.

In order to better address board member recruitment, nonprofits should consider extending opportunities through strategies targeting retired community newcomers.

This study contributes an analysis of PSM among nonprofit board members, and identifies factors that distinguish programmatic and board volunteers, in order to better understand the conditions associated with board service.