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1. Collaboration of NGOs and business in Poland

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Abstract:

The paper is devoted to cross-sector collaborative bonds appearing in Poland in the last years. The general purpose of the paper is to draw a picture of existing collaboration between NGOs and business organizations in Poland. Particularly, its purpose is to research the conditions and characteristics in which Polish profit and non-profit organizations establish the collaborative bonds. First, the paper introduces short description of social economy in Poland, presents corporate social responsibility as a possible framework for cross-sector collaboration and shortly introduces different theoretical frameworks of inter-organisational collaboration. It is of descriptive type and is only the first step to explore more deeply (in an analytical way) the area of collaboration. The reason is that this paper is the first of its kind in Poland. The paper is conducted in 2008. The questionnaire available online is used. The invitation to participate in the research is sent directly by e-mail to 830 organizations from the whole country (the level of feedback: 21.2 per cent). Thanks to the research, it is possible to draw a broad picture of NGOs - business cross-sector collaboration. The survey results allow an understanding of the nature of collaboration between two sectors may be helpful to other scientific researchers and to leaders of business and non-governmental organizations to establish long-lasting mutually beneficial relationships. This paper itself is the first step to trace and understand processes that arise in the area of collaboration between profit and non-profit organizations in Poland. This paper is the first of its kind in Poland and has to be descriptive and exploratory to allow future analysis and conceptualizations. Though there are many exhaustive research on the third sector in Poland, there is a lack of research where the collaboration with business partners is explored.

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1 Introduction

The paper characterizes the current situation in the area of building partnerships between business and the third sector in Poland. To clear the definitional context of the third sector in Poland some words of explanation are needed. The concept of the third sector in Poland appears in 1990s as a name for independent institutions that are distinct from the government and market institutions. The name "non-governmental organizations" emphasizes the state of independency and "non-profit organizations" underlines the social goal that is more important than profit maximization. "The concept of the third sector started to be used more widely in an effort to unify the existing terminology" ([2] Borzaga et al. , 2008). But the term third sector is the least recognized by the public opinion. Eventually the three terms: third sector, non-governmental and non-profit organizations are used here synonymously, although it is some kind of simplification.

The collaborative bond that has occurred in last years in Poland seems to be partly the result of implementation corporate social responsibility (CSR) concept into business organizations. The concept of CSR has a big influence on establishing, developing and maintaining business - NGO bonds. It seems that it supports win-win strategy of both partners.

Poland is one of the post-communist countries and this means that there are probably specific conditions for development of the third sector and social economy sector as well. The paper addresses these socio-political circumstances. Polish democracy is relatively young so there was not enough time to build strong structures that are characteristic for many western countries in Europe. Polish citizens have started learning the rules of civil society, getting know processes of market economy and using their rights fully. From the beginning of transformation NGOs play a huge role in building civil society and democracy ([27] USAID, 2006; [9] Gumkowska and Herbst, 2006). This is one of the reasons why good relationships between business and social organizations are so crucial.

In Poland, there is still a lack of model examples how business ought to collaborate with NGOs. The weaknesses touch different problems such as know-how exchange or benchmarking practices. On the other, hand more and more original examples from Polish enterprises show that there is some progress. Polish entrepreneurs declare willingness to collaborate with NGOs but they need proper tools. Probably one of the most efficient ways to hold appropriate relationships are corporate foundations which are the bridges between business and social sector. Corporate foundations might help to develop better financial management and clear procedures of collaboration what strengthen the trust and make the collaboration easier ([15] Kozakiewicz and Greszta, 2007).

There are some other factors that play a crucial role in promoting collaboration between business and the third sector. Impulses to these kinds of activities may be either positive or negative ([30] Warner and Sullivan, 2004). In some cases, business organizations are involved in working with NGOs because it is safer to avoid some potential conflicts rather than loss of company's image. On the other hand, they treat alliances and collaboration as strategic tools of achieving goals in which they recognize an opportunity to fortify their position on the market. The paper will answer the question how really sophisticated are these relations and if it is possible to treat them as a first swallows of permanent practices.

Authors will also introduce forms of alliances and partnerships that exist in Poland. The paper may be used as a set of clues for both business and academic units. It develops the present knowledge about mechanisms of collaboration and gives valuable suggestions how to work together and form cross-sector partnership.

General aim of the paper is to draw a broad picture of the state of existing collaboration between NGOs and business organizations in Poland from the perspective of NGOs. Its descriptive character results in the lack of deepen analysis in the field of NGOs-business collaboration in Poland. It is the first step that leads to better exploration of interrelations that occur between those two sectors. In particular, authors would like to research the conditions in which polish profit and non-profit organizations establish the collaborative bonds, what is the motivation for setting partnership and what kind of collaboration do the non-profit organizations expect from their business partners.

2 Specific situation of social economy in Poland

Social economy emerges as a new way to face social problems. Its role on the map of socio-economical initiatives cannot be ignored. Social economy is something between third sector and for-profit business organizations. Social enterprises are more than non-profit organizations, they do not participate in advocacy activities and redistribution of wealth but mainly they are producers of good and services ([16] Kazmierczak and Rymsza, 2007, p. 110). In Poland, because of historical and cultural heritage, organizations that are numbered among social economy entities are growing up from the third sector. Nowadays social economy sector in Poland consists of:

- Typical entities of social economy (social cooperatives and other social enterprises that have typical legal forms of business activity, e.g. limited liability company).

- Entities that are usually perceived as social enterprises like cooperatives (in Poland because of communist regime mainly they have lost their socially-oriented character but thanks to democratic changes also cooperatives turn back to their social and collective roots).

- Those non-profit organizations from the third sector that run economic activity (very often they are perceived as a first step to social enterprise, as an important source of ideas and activities that help to develop social economy in Poland). This is the reason why the research presented in the paper concentrates on the third sector organizations, because their development is the most advanced among institutions mentioned above.

Polish social movements have its long tradition. It was especially noticeable during hard periods of Polish history such as annexations (120 years of occupation under the rule of Prussia, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire) where social organisations were a support for surviving Polish culture and a tool for sustaining Polish identity, after getting back the independence in 1918 when they strengthen national identity and built system of education, healthcare and social care or during the second World War where they operated illegally ([12] Indeks spoleczenstwa obywatelskiego, 2008). The situation changed during the communism, social organization were under governmental pressure and often repressed. Generally, social organizations were downgraded or eliminated by communist regime ([22] Reichel and Kozakiewicz, 2007).

The new era of social organizations emerged after 1989 when the communism collapsed. However, it was not an easy time for NGO's too. As is suggested in Index of Civil Society "they had strong connections with politics" and it was really hard to find social ideas among them ([12] Indeks spoleczenstwa obywatelskiego, 2008). NGOs ruled their own rights and battled to survive. But it should be much stressed that this period was a great boom and eruption of social activities. People wanted to take part in public life and have the rights to decided in social issues. Ecological, educational, consulting or social organizations emerged as a sign of new times for Polish democracy.

After the big boom of mass emerging of organizations the situation started stabilizing in the middle of 1990s. Social organizations are growing up, they are implementing strategies, missions and visions and their activities are being regulated by legal acts ([12] Indeks spoleczenstwa obywatelskiego, 2008).

In 2003, the Public Benefit Activity and Volunteer Work Act was issued. It has changed situation of non-governmental organizations by creating two new instruments: possibility of running a campaign to raise 1 per cent of tax from individual taxpayers and establishing a requirement of collaboration between local authorities and non-governmental organizations (requirement to draw up a yearly programme of collaboration with non-governmental organizations; [22] Reichel and Kozakiewicz, 2007; [28] Ustawa o dzialalnosci pozytku publicznego i o wolontariacie, 2003).

According to Polish Central Statistical Office, which keeps a REGON register, by the end of third quarter of 2006, there were 55,016 registered associations and 8,212 foundations (in Lodzkie region where the pilot survey - described in the further part of the paper - was conducted there are 3,133 of NGOs). However, the size of the non-governmental sector is in fact larger, as one ought to add the following to the above mentioned figures (by the end of third quarter of 2006):

- about 15,000 voluntary fire brigades, which have a legal status of associations, although in practice they act in accordance to different principles than other associations;

- 3,703 social organizations (parent-teacher associations, hunters' associations and social committees);

- 18,523 trade unions;

- 15,474 Catholic Church units, other churches and religious gatherings;

- 5,459 organizations of vocational and economic self-government; and

- less numerous employers' union groups and political parties ([9] Gumkowska and Herbst, 2006; [22] Reichel and Kozakiewicz, 2007).

Therefore, the third sector ought to be estimated at over 120 thousand registered subjects. However, it is worth keeping in mind, that certain part of these organizations is not active (REGON register being the only thing that is left of them and is not actualized yet). In an unofficial but most up-to-date internet data base ( http://bazy.ngo.pl/ ) there are now (beginning of June 2008) registered 112,121 non-governmental organizations ([13] Internet database of non-governmental sector, 2008).

To characterise the current state of the third sector in Poland we can use issues identified in a publication titled The 2005 NGO Sustainability Index ([27] USAID, 2006). The report mentioned above underlines many positive and negative trends in development of this sector in our country, just to mention:

- Good legal solutions and their positive impact on cooperation between the public and social sectors, as well as opportunity to raise funds (1 per cent of individual tax liabilities).

- Increasing number of public services that is commissioned to non-governmental organizations (procedures are more restrictive, but organizations are more professional).

- EU funding that allowed to strengthen the infrastructure of many organizations.

- Development of partnerships that is a requirement for many funds such as EQUAL and Fund for Civic Initiatives (FIO), however, for the moment, partnerships are weak and formed mainly to obtain grants.

- NGOs' weaknesses in regards to strategic planning (grant oriented and project thinking is replacing mission thinking).

- The larger and professional organizations have a greater opportunity to engage in strategic planning and even influence the process of domestic operational programmes for the years 2007-2013.

- NGOs' abilities to participate in decision-making by society increases (e.g. possible participation in commenting on legislation and representatives participating in government's commissions).

- NGOs are able to elect their representative to the Public Benefit Activity Council.

- Still about 40 per cent of the local authorities do not collaborate, many officials treat NGOs only as performers of contracted public services.

- More NGOs understands the importance of forming coalitions.

- NGOs themselves by campaigning for the 1 per cent law have increased the public's awareness and understanding of social sector ([27] USAID, 2006; [22] Reichel and Kozakiewicz, 2007).

But Polish society may be still named as passive in civil dimension. Polish people are not interesting in participating in civic activities. We still have to learn from Western countries how to attend in process of decision making, using public rights and benefit from market economy and freedom of choice.

Civic society in Poland today has two faces: the social group's activities such as NGOs which are relatively strong and individual social awareness which is unfortunately still low ([26] Spoleczenstwo obywatelskie, 2008).

3 NGOs as business organizations' stakeholders

The huge debate about stakeholder theory has lasted from tens of years. Thanks to the innovative work of [4] Freeman (1984, p. 31) who successfully joined the strategic management with stakeholder point of view managers started to perceive different social groups as valuable or critical for company's development. In general, stakeholders are "those groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist." [8] Goodpaster (1991) analyzed stakeholder concept as rooted in ethics. The problem, who is the stakeholder might be seen through the prism of the level of saliency and power they have ([6] Frooman, 1999, p. 203; [20] Mitchell et al. , 1997) or risk they might bear - like in Clarkson papers ([20] Mitchell et al. , 1997).

Beyond the ways how to identify a stakeholder, it is worth to take into consideration that potentially every kind of stakeholder might become the critical one for organization survival. Thus, relationships among different groups of stakeholders are professionalized and stakeholder relationship management is becoming common practice that can assure competitive advantage and minimize the risk of unexpected situations which may have negative impact on organizational image or performance. Non-profit organizations seem to have a big potential to influence the enterprise so it is becoming crucial to pay attention how to create most valuable relations that will be mutually satisfied.

For the organizations that are socially responsible stakeholder relationship management is very important for establishing beneficial ties.

In the current situation that came into being in the area of collaboration between business sector and NGOs in Poland the role of CSR concept cannot be overestimated. Most kinds of collaboration that have occurred in last years in Poland seem to be the result of implementation CSR into business organizations. CSR has started playing a huge role in establishing closer relationship between business and third sector. NGOs can also benefit from development of CSR strategies by companies. Enterprises can be perceived as a new source of funds or new partners that can help to achieve social goals of NGOs.

The roots of CSR in Poland are different from those that characterize other societies. The concept was not the result of public outcry of corporate practices such as environmental disasters, corruption or taxes' hoax but appeared as a implementation of western patterns. It is especially noticeable in international corporations that started establishing their divisions in Poland.

International organizations which transfer their knowledge and experiences to Polish conditions have invaluable contribution in development of good practices in Poland. More and more values, principles and rules of corporate governance and corporate responsibility have started being a part of philosophy of Polish enterprises' performance.

On the other side, CSR seems to be helpful with changing the bad image of Polish enterprises which was created in the previous regime. During the communist period private forms of business were excluded because of ideological reasons. When the system of capitalism started reviving and private business' initiatives appeared the need of understanding and improving the good image among society seems to be crucial. The conditions under which CSR emerges are not easy but there are many reasons for developing this concept in Poland ([24] Safiej-Bartosik and Lukasiak, 2008, p. 39). The research conducted in 2003 on the group of the 500 biggest corporations operating in Poland revealed that main reasons for involving in social issues are building good image of corporation, better cooperation with local society, sense of civil duty, heart's need or building long-lasting relations ([19] Menedzerowie 500 i odpowiedzialny biznes wiedza, postawy, praktyka, 2003, p. 13). Polish entrepreneurs declare willingness to collaborate with NGOs but they need proper tools.

NGOs, as the better face of civil society, have their fixed position on the map of Polish achievements in the transition period. From the beginning of transformation NGOs have been one of the most important stakeholders which have a great impact on development of civil society and democracy ([27] USAID, 2006; [9] Gumkowska and Herbst, 2006).

The third sector is still developing in Poland. It is worth mentioning that about 4,000 of associations and 500 foundations are established in Poland each year ([17] Kuraszko, 2008, p. 11). It may suggest that cooperation with this group of stakeholders may pay much. However, potential cooperation must be treated as a strategic goal ([25] Schimanek, 2008, p. 2). Without it, all bonds that are created will not be persistent. But the problem is that some NGOs treat corporations only as a source of money and they are not thinking in strategic perspective. There are two reasons of such situation. Many organizations still do not have strategy of working with business so they make different projects that are not connected with each other and sometimes even do not create a clear picture of organizational long-term goals. This way while looking for money from different sources the business seems to be the easiest to obtain one. On the other side, many business organizations do not care of money they give to NGOs. They do not have any procedures and monitoring systems for spending funds. As research (conducted in 2007) showed that there is still a lack of proper monitoring and evaluation of social activities ([15] Kozakiewicz and Greszta, 2007). It may be relatively easier to gather money from many business organizations instead of striving for building permanent relations with restricted amount of firms.

The others have started perceiving business as a partner for joint projects and it seems that all ought to lead this way. The latest research revealed that however, there are many small alliances, there is still a lack of entrenched agreement in the field of collaboration between business and non-governmental organizations. The problem appears also in knowledge and know-how exchange or benchmarking practices too. However, the situation is changing for better (e.g. findings from research).

Corporate foundations seem to be the most efficient way to hold appropriate relationships with NGOs for many business organizations. Corporate foundations might be also a good solution for financial management dedicated to collaboration with NGOs and making transparent procedures of liaison ([15] Kozakiewicz and Greszta, 2007). The report published in March 2008 shows that corporate foundation may be a good bridge that join social goals with business. Corporate foundations' activities are addressed not only to public institutions (76 per cent) or individuals (65 per cent) but also to NGOs (62 per cent) what may suggest that they are reliable partners for progress ([7] Fundacje korporacyjne w Polsce - raport z badan, 2008, p. 66).

One of good examples may be the Kronenberg Foundation that was established by Citi Handlowy Bank. It formulated the procedures that regulate the collaboration with all potential beneficiaries. The activity of the foundation embraces many fields from educational to cultural. They have clear application forms and rules of giving grants and donations what makes their work transparent ([14] Internet site of the Kronenberg Foundation, 2008).

4 Business - NGOs collaboration

Business organizations perceive NGOs as a valuable partners who may play a huge role in linking business with society. That is why they try to establish long-term relations with non-profit organizations. But, there are a lot of reasons for engaging in partnership. The role of third sector organizations seems to be very important. The contribution they can deliver to partnership can consist of: local knowledge, capacity to mobilize community participation, provision of local leadership, possibility of ensuring relevance to local need, offer of independent monitoring, emphasis on sustainability and other unique resources ([30] Warner and Sullivan, 2004, pp. 20, 176, 266). For a company such collaboration can bring also (among other possibilities): a new channel of communication between company and local community and can help to manage social conflicts and risk. Partnership can also bring opportunity for cost savings ([30] Warner and Sullivan, 2004, pp. 20, 205, 206). The collaboration and forming partnership can be a part of CSR programme of the company.

But the collaboration is not itself a "business" without risk. For example, the positive image can be damaged by one partner which behaves in unexpected and irresponsible way. This is why the process of building trust and agreement between partners is crucial. This process should be built on following principles:

- mutual understanding and meaningful communication;

- focus on satisfying partners' interests;

- finding more new options thanks to joint problem solving; and

- reaching the agreement that adds value for all partners ([30] Warner and Sullivan, 2004, p. 174).

The process of inter-organizational collaboration has emerged as a joint response to social problems which would be hard to solve if organization would try to do it on its own. The advantage of a collaboration approach is that it may generate innovative solutions of different social problems ([10] Heath, 2007, p. 145). Business organizations started participating in many initiatives for society and in the society ([1] Boehm, 2005, p. 148).

The concern of collaboration appears in many theoretical works and touches different contexts and issues of organization-organization relationship. The collaboration might be understood as strategic alliances among for-profit organizations, relationships between nonprofits, bonds that occur among non and for profit organizations and among governmental institutions and non-profit organizations ([29] Vangen and Huxham, 2003, pp. 5, 6; [3] Butterfield et al. , 2004, p. 166).

There are many definitions of collaboration that focus on different aspects. An inter-organizational collaboration can be defined as "a process between interdependent organizational actors who negotiate the answers to shared concerns" or as "cooperative inter-organizational relationships that relies on neither market nor hierarchical mechanisms of control." ([23] Rodríguez et al. , 2007, p. 153). The collaboration may be perceived as a process or as a relationship.

The collaborative bonds are voluntary processes. It is expected that thanks to the established forms of cooperation both sides will be satisfied. The idea of collaboration is mutually beneficial oriented action that integrate the goals of different organizations. It can have many different faces from occasional and superficial to close and strong relations and more or less complex forms.

Agota Giedre Raaisiene in her paper presented a short overview of models that were developed to understand inter-organizational collaboration. She made the synthesis of available approaches and different ways of making collaborative bonds in different sectors. She divided existing models into categories: process models, context models, models of organizational structure, mixed or combined models. The models take into account factors that influence the collaborative bonds, the ways in which collaboration is established or its structure ([21] Raisene, 2009, pp. 374-381). There are many other models that present analytical approaches that constitute the stages of collaboration. The most broad seven stage model of collaboration includes the whole spectrum of possible shades of collaboration. It contains such stages as coexistence, communication, cooperation, coordination, coalition, collaboration and coadunation ([5] Frey et al. , 2006, p. 385).

The theory of collaboration is rich in varied aspects and factors of collaboration management. Similar to other managerial processes collaboration faces with different barriers and obstacles from the communication processes between partners through the cultural diversity of organizations to trust and accountability of the collaborative ventures ([11] Huxham and Vangen, 2000, p. 773). The nature of problems may be technical as well as psychological so it is not so easy to build and maintain the collaborative bond in organizations that operate in two "different worlds".

5 Research and results

Main objectives of the research survey are following:

- to draw a broad picture of the area of collaboration between NGOs and business organisations (the first such research of the area in Poland);

- to understand the current state, range and character of collaboration between NGOs and business organisations;

- to understand reasons to collaborate from NGOs' point of view;

- to find how the collaboration with business is assessed by NGOs;

- to find what forms of collaborations are preferred by partners;

- to find if there are any barriers for cross-sector collaboration; and

- to find what kind of business partners are chosen by NGOs to set collaborative bonds.

The pilot survey was conducted in the beginning of May 2008. The survey was sent by e-mail to 282 non-governmental organizations from Lodzkie region using e-mail addresses that were gathered in a database. The chosen organisations are active in the field of "Science, culture and education". The level of feedback achieved is 10.28 per cent (29 questionnaires sent back).

The main research involved bigger number of organizations that are active also in other fields and represent all 16 regions of Poland. The research took place in 14 November 2008-17 December 2008. The questionnaire was available online and the information about the research was available also in  ngo.pl  newsletter. The invitation to participate in the research was sent directly by e-mail to 830 organizations. Finally, 176 questionnaires were accepted (the level of feedback: 21.2 per cent) and were taken under analysis. Most of our respondent were associations (73.9 per cent), foundations (24.4 per cent) and one corporate foundation and two cooperatives. Only 10.8 per cent of respondent organizations run themselves economic activity and additionally 15.9 per cent run chargeable activity (in Polish conditions these 26.7 per cent of organisations we can - very cautiously - rate among social enterprises).

The below results are only the part of the whole questionnaire results and are presented to show the first of its kind in Poland broad picture of the area.

5.1 The pilot phase

Main conclusions from the pilot phase were as follows. The most organisations that responded to the survey exist long enough to share with their experiences.

Almost all organizations represent the "collaborational" attitude. Over 62 per cent (18 organisations) cooperate with business. The results reveals that among these 18 organizations that collaborate with business there are also 14 organisations that collaborate with public sector institutions and 13 that collaborate with local/regional authorities. There is no organisation which declares that do not want and do not need to collaborate with business.

Collaborating NGOs assessed the collaboration/relation with business as "rather good" or even better (average - 0.78; rather good - 0; good - 1). This shows rather positive aspect of business-NGO partnership.

The majority of respondents that formed partnership with business treats enterprises as partners for common activities (16) and as a source of funds (11). Only one organisation expressed in its answer that business can be treated by NGOs as a competitor for the same funds and resources.

The existing climate for collaboration between business and NGOs is assessed by respondents as moderate (average - 0.069; moderate - 0; good - 1). The organizations that collaborate with business gave the higher assessment=0.47 (a half step from "moderate" to "good").

This assessment is confirmed by the answers from the next question - in respondents' opinion legal environment do not support common activities. However, the majority of surveyed organisations perceived collaboration as a good practice. It may suggest that operating partnerships bring benefits for partners and community and collaborative bonds are set even if there are certain barriers.

Most organisations collaborate with more than one (or even two) partner enterprises. The collaboration was initiated more often by NGO than by enterprise. Mainly partners represent SMEs sector.

The collaboration with business is not so good assessed as collaboration with organizations from other sectors. Even more, for these NGOs that collaborate with business the assessment also shows "collaboration with business" on the last position (after collaboration with other organisations from public sector). NGOs' experiences show that private enterprises are better partners than state owned enterprises (proportion 4:1).

The respondents had an opportunity to express their own opinion on reasons "why do business organisations collaborate with NGOs". The gathered answers present a broad picture of possible motivations. Summarizing the view on business motivations for collaboration stretch from engagement and social sensitivity to concentration on its own interest.

5.2 Main research

Main research showed some similar results to the pilot phase. But there are more details and some more precise results. Results may vary also because of a different target groups (for example: only 1 region in pilot stage and the whole country in main research).

Almost all organizations represent the "collaborational" attitude: NGOs cooperate with other NGOs (about 84 per cent - 147 organizations), with local/regional authorities (almost 69 per cent - 121 organisations), with educational organisations (60 per cent - 106 organisations) and with business (about 53 per cent - 94 organisations; Figure 1 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.]).

Enterprises are - in the opinion of respondents - perceived as partners for common activities (87.5 per cent of answers) and as a source of funds (81.3 per cent of answers). Not many NGOs see business organizations as their competitors for the same funds and resources (only 6.8 per cent answers) and opponents in a conflict situations (only 1.7 per cent answers).

Collaborating NGOs assessed the collaboration/relation with business as "rather good" or better (average - 0.52; rather good - 0; good - 1). This shows rather positive aspect of business-NGO partnership.

Forms of collaboration that exist in Poland may differ according to the kind of organization, the scale of operation or its needs. Dependently of the situation NGOs are provided with money, aid in kind, counseling, human resources (volunteers) or they do common projects.

In Poland in many cases "social involvement" means for business simply a transfer of money or a help in kind ([18] Lepka et al. , 2006, p. 3). But collaboration is rather something beyond just a philanthropy. The authors of cited position enumerate other possible forms of engagement ([18] Lepka et al. , 2006, pp. 3, 4):

- grant/donation agreement;

- sponsoring;

- cooperation agreement;

- barter;

- buying services from organisation;

- pay-roll (voluntary deduction from salaries);

- voluntary services and corporate volunteering; and

- 1 per cent of individual tax liabilities.

It is obviously possible and sometimes beneficial to apply activities that combine mentioned opportunities.

Existing types of collaboration from the NGO perspective are presented in Figure 2 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.].

Organisations answered that the most expected forms of cooperation (in comparison to already existing forms of cooperation) are: receiving support and counselling, doing common projects, using enterprise's equipment and having volunteers from enterprise employees. These forms are more active and stronger engage business organisations in collaboration.

The respondents that collaborate with business organizations when assessing the existing climate for collaboration choose most frequently the answer: "existing climate is moderate (despite significant legal and human barriers it is possible to collaborate)".

Usually, NGOs initiate the collaboration, but sometimes also business organisations. In about 15 per cent cases a collaboration was initiated by the third party institution. In about 73 per cent cases the collaboration was initiated thanks to personal connections for example with top management of the business organisation.

The collaboration with business is not so good assessed as collaboration with organisations from other sectors. But - it differs from the pilot phase - these NGOs that collaborate with business assess the "collaboration with business" on the second position (just after the "collaboration with other NGOs"). But generally all respondents assess that it is better to collaborate with other NGOs and local and regional authorities than with business organisations. It seems that most of the organisations that do not collaborate with business concentrate on collaboration with local and regional government. We can assume that for them collaboration with business is still considered as too difficult.

NGOs' experiences show that private enterprises are much better partners than state owned enterprises (proportion 3:1).

6 Conclusions

The conducted research on both stages presents the complexity of current state of the business-NGO collaboration. The existing situation seems to be good but there are still some important gaps that inhibit the further development. The barriers can be found in general climate, legal regulations and also in both NGOs and business partners. Sometimes they act accidentally without clear procedures and long-term vision. It would be difficult to find real examples of strategic alliances between enterprises and NGOs. The collaboration is still limited to short-time activities that are not consequences of existing strategies of business and third sector organisations.

When forming partnership organisations should identify their real strategic needs. It is also crucial to rise understanding of partners from other sector and their interest. The collaboration means not only just transferring money or subcontracting services. Above all they should learn how to work together. The research showed that there is a strong need to do it.

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Appendix

About the authors

Janusz Reichel was born in Poland. He graduated from University of Lódz (MA in Economics) in 1991. At that time he became an assistant in the Chair of Ecological Philosophy at the Faculty of Management and Organisation and then in 1998, he became an assistant in Department of Strategic Management and Ecology at the Technical University of Lódz. In 1999, he completed his PhD (in Economics) in the Faculty of National Economy in Academy of Economics in Wroclaw, Poland - dissertation titled: "Local Exchange Trading System (LETS) as an example of new forms of money". Then in 2000, he became an adjunct first in Department of Strategic Management and Ecology and a year later in Department of Industrial Ecology at the Technical University of Lódz. From 2004, he started working in Faculty of Management, University of Lódz, Poland. Through all these years he was also active as Lecturer and Guest Lecturer in other universities. He taught strategic management (in different sectors), environmental and business ethics, corporate social responsibility, environmental management system (ISO 14001) and ecological economics. He had received many Rector's Awards for the scientific and didactic activity. He published over 90 articles and three books (in Polish): Local Recycling of Money (2007), Earth Time (2006) and Money for Local Communities - Small is the Most Beautiful (1997). He also wrote a part of Multimedia Encyclopaedia 2002 on Economics (2002). From 2006 to 2008, he was a Project Manager of Polish partner in Leonardo da Vinci project devoted to social entrepreneurship ("EU training excellence for social entrepreneurship sector"). From 2007 to 2009, he was a team member in the scientific project (devoted to Eco-industrial parks) run by Technical University of Lódz. Other activities are as follows: in 1993, he attended a two-week course "Ecology and Aestethics" in Schumacher College in Dartington Hall in Great Britain. In 1997/1998, he attended the series of training workshops in developing and implementing ISO 14001 standard, run by World Environment Center and US Agency for International Development in Opole. From 1997, he has been collaborating with Pollution Prevention Center "SOZO" at the Technical University of Lódz (consulting, training and research services). In 2003, he passed the course of Internal Auditor of Environmental Management System ISO 14001 run by Det Norske Veritas. From 2008, he is a member of national Technical Committee in Polish Committee for Standardization working on Social Responsibility Guidelines ISO 26000. He was also active as a researcher and an expert in different programmes and assessment procedures, e.g. external expert in Polish National Programme Foresight 2020, expert in assessment procedures (ex-ante, mid-term and ex-post) in Leonardo da Vinci programme, monitoring of projects in PHARE 2003, PHARE 2002 and Phare Access 2000 programme, expert in FIO for Polish Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and other. He is also well recognized as an active member of different NGOs since the beginning of 1990, e.g. cofounder of Interacademic Ecological Lobby (IEL) and of Ecological Education Center run by IEL (1992/1994 - Vice-President). He is also a member of Polish division of The European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, Association Polish Forum ISO 14000 Club and others. Throughout his career his major interests have included environmental and social aspects of management and economy, specially NGOs sector and environmental management systems and corporate social responsibility. Janusz Reichel is the corresponding author and can be contacted at:  [email protected]

Agata Rudnicka was born in Poland. She graduated with honors from University of Lódz. She received the degree of MSc from specialization Environmental Policy and Management (2007). She was rewarded the scholarship from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland (2006). She is also the scholar of German DBU Foundation (2008). She was the participant in summer course "The Challenges of Sustainable Development in Poland (2006)". She was a apprentice of United Nations Development Programme in Poland (XII. 2007-III. 2008). She has participated in many conferences and professional trainings devoted to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainable development. She has deep knowledge in those areas. She is the researcher of the Business and Non-Governmental Organizations Institute (Instytut BI-NGO). She is now a PhD Candidate in Faculty Management, University of Lódz. She is preparing the PhD thesis focused on the issue of internal dimension of CSR. She is a member of National Technical Committee in Polish Committee for Standardization working on Social Responsibility Guidelines ISO 26000.

AuthorAffiliation

Janusz Reichel, Faculty of Management, University of Lódz, Lódz, Poland

Agata Rudnicka, Faculty of Management, University of Lódz, Lódz, Poland

Illustration

Figure 1: Collaborating respondents (in percentage)

Figure 2: Existing types of collaboration (respondents that collaborate with business; in percentage

Subject: International; Studies; Nonprofit organizations; Business community; Collaboration

Classification: 9176: Eastern Europe; 9130: Experimental/theoretical; 9540: Non-profit institutions; 2310: Planning

Publication title: Social Enterprise Journal; Bingley

Volume: 5

Issue: 2

Pages: 126-140

Publication year: 2009

Publication date: 2009

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Place of publication: Bingley

Country of publication: United Kingdom, Bingley

Publication subject: Sociology

ISSN: 17508614

Source type: Scholarly Journals

Language of publication: English

Document type: Feature

Document feature: References Charts

DOI:  http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17508610910981716

ProQuest document ID: 603594498

Document URL:  https://search.proquest.com/docview/603594498?accountid=10932

Copyright: Copyright Emerald Group Publishing Limited 2009

Last updated: 2018-10-06

Database: ABI/INFORM Collection; ProQuest Central Essentials

Bibliography

Reichel, J., & Rudnicka, A. (2009). Collaboration of NGOs and business in poland. Social Enterprise Journal, 5(2), 126-140. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17508610910981716

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1. The challenges of the new institutional environment: an Australian case study of older volunteers in the contemporary non-profit sector

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ABSTRACT

Increased emphasis on efficiency and regulation is changing the nature of the non-profit sector in western countries. In this paper, we explore the impact of these contemporary changes on older, more traditional volunteers. Specifically, we use neo-institutional theory as a framework to explore the micro-effect of these processes in one large, multi-service non-profit organisation in Australia. The findings of an ethnographic study are presented using an analytical template comprising: (1) the observational space; (2) the conversational order; (3) the content of talk; and (4) areas of resistance. Findings from these categories provided evidence of two institutional orders - one a traditional way of operating consistent with a charity model, and the other, a new, dominant approach driven by market forces. It was found that older, more traditional volunteers struggled to maintain the old order as well as to make the transition to the new order. If organisations are to benefit from a pool of potential volunteers and if older people are to benefit from the social and health advantages associated with productive ageing, there are important implications in these findings. Older people are able to make a successful transition to the new order, but organisations need to be more proactive in facilitating the change. In particular, organisations need to reject ageist cultures and practices, provide training and skills development, and to work collaboratively with older people. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

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Introduction

In western countries, the non-profit or third sector is a significant component of institutional life (Salamon and Anheier 1996). The sector has a central role in civil society between the state and the market, and is said to provide a buffer that protects vulnerable individuals from the excesses of the two (Wolfe 1989). Volunteers are important producers of social capital and are integral to the success and viability of the sector (Onyx, Leonard and Hayward Brown 2004; van Til 2000). Estimates for Australia, for example, indicate that volunteers give 836 million hours of their time to over 700, 000 non-profit organisations (Department of Family and Community Services 2005). Such figures also show that, as in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, volunteer numbers tend to decline in later life, but that older volunteers give more time to their volunteer activities than any other age group (Department of Family and Community Services 2005; see also Davis Smith and Gay 2005, Narushima 2005; van Willigen 2000). This suggests the importance of older volunteers to the contemporary non-profit sector.

There is growing global evidence that the non-profit sector is facing strong external pressures to change the way it operates (Brown et al. 2000; Lyons 2001; Saul 2004). In particular, it has been argued that the imposition of the market forces that emphasise efficiency, as well as growing attention to regulation and risk management, are undermining the traditional institutional order of the sector (Brown et al. 2000). The implications of such changes are profound, and have the potential to impact significantly on the 5.2 million volunteers (34 per cent of the Australian population) who currently give their time to non-profit organisations (Department of Family and Community Services 2005).

This paper uses neo-institutional theory as a theoretical framework to explore the impact of change on older, traditional volunteers in a case study of one large, international and multi-service non-profit organisation in Australia. The use of neo-institutional theory is important as it allows examination of voluntarism and volunteers as key constituents and active agents in the non-profit sector's institutional context (Di Maggio and Powell 1991). It allows us to explore the impact of extraneous change on the institutional order, and specifically, on older, traditional volunteers. The paper begins with a brief review of the issues that face the contemporary non-profit sector in western countries.

The new institutional environment

The non-profit or third sector is undergoing fundamental and often disruptive changes in the ways it conducts its activities. These result from the sector embracing the values and approaches of the private market or, in short, becoming marketised (Eikenberry and Kluver 2004; Galaskiewicz and Bielefeld 1998; Lyons 2001). Simultaneously, governments are reducing the size of the public sector and the value of contracted out services to the non-profit sector (Smith and Lipsky 1993). As government funding to the sector adopts quasi-market models, several dilemmas are being created for the many organisations that deliver human services (Lyons 1997). Generally, they are forced to compete for funding, which pressures them to adopt business practices and priorities (Gaston and Alexander 2001). Yet marketisation and the creation of a competitive environment create many tensions for a sector that was founded on civil society principles of collaboration and is staffed by volunteers (Eikenberry and Kluver 2004).

Such transformative change presents new challenges to the operation, structures and management of non-profit organisations (Saul 2004). Concurrent with the pressure to become more competitive, there are demands for the more professional organisation of volunteer activities. Governments are both funders and regulators of the sector, and dictate the conditions under which aspects of work are carried out (Lyons 2001). A new legislated regulatory environment has emerged, such as changes to workplace health and safety requirements, which is having a profound effect on organisations (Brown et al. 2000). The legal environment is becoming more complex and restrictive, resulting in the need for organisations to be actively involved in risk management and volunteer and client protection (McGregor-Lowndes 2003).

In addition to becoming risk conscious, external pressures are also challenging organisations to become much more highly regulated. Non-profit organisations are subject to increasing controls and regulation, at the same time as they are expected to become more efficient, flexible and responsive to changing needs (Brown et al. 2000). These environmental pressures are also leading to profound changes in the sector's social relations, with the new ethos requiring clearly-focused, instrumental-based interactions, and professional management. Distinctions between paid staff and volunteers can become blurred, leading to further tensions (Lie and Baines 2007). All these changes challenge traditional social relations in a sector that still comprises many charitable organisations staffed by volunteers as amateurs and altruists (Brown et al. 2000). The sector is highly dependent on volunteers, but as Lie and Baines (2007) have suggested, little is known about how these organisational changes impact upon the capacity and commitment of volunteers, and particularly those volunteers accustomed to working in a traditional institutional environment.

It has been suggested that one result of these changes is a split in the sector between a declining, traditional, 'charity' model and a new model run on business lines and incorporating elements of social enterprise (McDonald and Mutch 2000; Zappala 2001). In the alternate models, volunteering is based on quite different motives, commitments and skills, with traditional volunteers engaging for affective rather than instrumental reasons, exhibiting relatively unbounded commitment, and motivated by a value system founded on the idea of devotion to the welfare of others (Brown et al. 2000; McDonald and Mutch 2000). As Zappala (2001) suggested, many of these volunteers are older, female, unskilled and not in the labour market. By contrast, new or social enterprise volunteers engage for largely instrumental reasons, such as seeking experience for employment or for status rewards, and exhibit specific and limited commitment to the organisation (Zappala 2001). The differences could be described as between a 'warm and fuzzy' and a more 'business-like' approach (McDonald and Mutch 2000).

Extraneous pressures on the non-profit sector are resulting in new forms of volunteering, which require changes in the organisational cultures of both staff and volunteers (Saul 2004). Previous studies have also shown that they also create various tensions and challenges for the sector (McDonald and Warburton 2003). There is, however, very little empirical evidence about the specific impact of these changes on older, traditional volunteers and their responses to change (Lie and Baines 2007). As authors such as Narushima (2005) suggest, however, the potential contribution of older people as volunteers merits more attention. Reacting to this gap in the literature and to explore these processes and the impact on older volunteers in some depth, this paper presents a case study of one large multi-service organisation in Australia.

The theoretical framework

To understand better the process and impact of organisational change on traditional volunteers, we used neo-institutional theory drawn from organisational sociology as a theoretical framework (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Scott 1995). This theoretical perspective suggests the existence of distinct organisational fields or communities of organisations, which have a common meaning system, a shared normative perspective, and that exhibit distinct modes of organisation (Jepperson 1991; Scott 1995). Neo-institutional theory draws on this notion of institutions to explain the conditions and processes by which particular ways of organising come into being, stabilise and endure (Lowndes 1996). Organisational fields provide a socially-constructed blueprint for action that is generated and maintained through the interactions of the participants (Barley and Tolbert 1997). The role of these participants is the focus of the present study, as neo-institutional theory explicitly posits a significant role for human agency.

From the perspective of neo-institutional theory, the non-profit sector has a unique institutional order quite distinct from other organisational fields (DiMaggio 1987; Powell 1988; Zilber 2002). One distinctive characteristic is the reliance on volunteers. They act or engage deliberatively and, as key constituents of the non-profit sector, are critical to the way the institutional order is created and maintained (McDonald and Warburton 2003). Yet neo-institutional theorists have argued for more micro-level analyses to uncover the institutionalising practices of human agents (Barley and Tolbert 1997). Berger and Luckmann (1967), for example, have suggested that institutions need to be repeatedly constructed and reconstructed by social actors. It is the continuous enactment of practices and meanings by organisation members that constitutes and maintains institutions, including their taken-for-granted nature (Scott 1995; Zilber 2002). This all suggests a need to explore in depth how these processes operate in the Australian non-profit sector.

In particular, there is a need to examine the role of volunteers in the context of significant external change. Neo-institutional theory has been criticised in the past for its emphasis on institutional stability and its neglect of the processes of change (Hoffman 1997; Kondra and Hinings 1998; Powell 1991). Some have argued that human agency is an important factor in institutional change, and that participants go about their business in organisations in conscious and thoughtful ways (Greenwood and Hinings 1996). Zilber (2002), for example, explored institutionalisation in a Rape Crisis Centre in Israel as the interplay between actors, actions and meanings. She described the institutionalisation of feminist ideology at the centre, and how the introduction of a competing institutional order (therapeutic volunteers) led to tensions and challenges over the actions and meanings of its practices and culture. The available evidence suggests a key role for volunteers in determining the institutional order of the non-profit sector. We thus draw on neo-institutional theory as a framework by which to explore how changes to the institutional order of the non-profit sector are impacting on older, traditional volunteers in one organisation, and to examine their responses to these changes.

Research design

This paper draws on ethnographic research and specifically on observations, archive data and interviews. These sources and methods are appropriate for the principal purpose of the study, to explore how volunteers engage in the construction of the institutional order (Brewer 2000). In Stake's (1998) methodological typology, we have conducted an instrumental case study designed to understand a particular social process. As noted by Yin (1994), case studies are not universally generalisable, but are theoretically generalisable. Preliminary research found that the study organisation had two distinct institutional orders, namely traditional and new ways of operating that are consistent with the business and regulatory environments (McDonald and Mutch 2000; McDonald and Warburton 2003). The challenges generated by the need to manage change were illustrated by the comments of service co-ordinators. One comment highlighted the problems associated with 'getting our ladies who have been making sandwiches for 50 years to wear latex gloves' (Warburton and Mutch 2000), and another emphasised the difficulty of ensuring that volunteers meet professional standards to avoid 'the organisation [having] its socks sued off' (McDonald and Warburton 2003: 387).

The study reported here builds upon an earlier study of change in a sample of non-profit welfare organisations in Brisbane, Australia (McDonald and Mutch 2000). One large international multi-service organisation that typified the context suited to the research was selected from this initial sample as appropriate for more intensive examination. This large organisation had a budget in Australia in 2008 that approached $A500, 000, and delivered approximately 60 local programmes and services. About 30, 000 volunteers work with the organisation - they not only deliver services but also raise funds for Australian and overseas projects. Volunteers have played a significant role in this organisation since it was established at the beginning of the First World War. The old order has been operating since the organisation's foundation, and is most clearly manifest in the regional branch structure across the state of Queensland. The large volunteer group representing this institutional order are mostly older women, with many aged in the seventies and eighties. By contrast, 'new' volunteers are mostly younger, in paid work, and more likely to be committed to a particular client group or social problem through a number of services offered by the organisation. The new order was identified as being promoted by the organisational executive, central office and professional staff (McDonald and Mutch 2000).

In this paper, we report an analysis of the observational data collected over six months during 2002-03 from 12 of the organisation's sites at which volunteers were active. These sites were chosen to represent the range of provided services. Those representing the traditional order included six regional branch meetings (three urban and three rural) and a multi-branch conference. More recent services and sites of the new order included a hospital play-scheme for children, central-office-run volunteer information sessions including placement interviews, and an after-school volunteer programme for refugee children. Also included in the study were two other services at the same location but at different times of day and that exhibited different institutional orders: a day café (traditional institutional order) that we have described as 'stepping back in time to the social order of the 1950s' (McDonald and Warburton 2003: 391); and a night café for homeless young people, representing the 'new' order. In total, three observers undertook 26 blocks of observation, amounting in aggregate to 39 hours. During and immediately after these observations, field notes were taken, with each observer recording extemporarily what they witnessed at each site. Each site was visited by at least two observers, with the field notes always taken separately.

Prior to the fieldwork, we developed a structured analytical framework to guide the observation and note taking. This involved three observers undertaking independently planned, sequential observations of an independent site (the Departmental tea-room) over a whole day. From this, we discussed our three sets of observations and collectively generated analytical codes to use as a template to observe the organisational setting. These comprised: (1) the observational space, which included aspects such as how the room was set up, the physical layout, the colour scheme, and signs and symbols within the setting; (2) the conversational order, management of conversation topics, relations with each other and social hierarchies; (3) the content of talk or what was said within the observed spaces; and (4) resistance, talk which illustrated ambivalence or negativity about the organisation. The field notes collected by each of the three observers were initially subjected to an iterative and reflective process session to ensure inter-rater reliability in the coding. The final codes therefore represented a consensus across the three researchers. This iterative process, together with the use of 'thick description' to describe the data, aimed to maximise the rigour and trustworthiness of data collection and analysis (Krefting 1991; Lincoln and Guba 2002).1 The findings are presented below under the four dimensions of the template, and using examples from the ethnographic data to illustrate the points made.

Results

The observational spaces

Data collected from observations conducted at each of the 12 sites clearly reflected the two different organisational orders, one based on older, traditional sources of volunteers and the other on the new context which is more likely to draw on professional, more skilled volunteers. One of the more traditional volunteer settings was a daytime café that has been in operation from the Brisbane City Hall for over five decades. Its original purpose was to provide a safe haven for those visiting the city from rural areas. The setting is old fashioned and reflects the 'country town' that Brisbane was in the 1950s. Here, volunteers engage in traditional 'female' activities of food preparation and serving, in what could be termed amateur, unskilled work. The café has tables covered with red cloth, lacy drapes and plastic sheets, reflecting an earlier era. On the wall is a formal picture of a very youthful Queen Elizabeth II, as well as several framed, black-and-white wartime photos of young women who were members of the organisation. The volunteers are all older people, mostly women, dressed well, conservatively and with blue aprons, and identified by a prominent organisation badge. By contrast, volunteers in other settings operated in quite different institutional spaces. An immediate contrast is that at night the same room becomes a café for homeless young people, with deliberate and marked changes to the ambience and layout. The traditional pictures are replaced or covered up, and the walls are covered with hand-drawn, brightly coloured pictures, or posters about violence, safe drug use and other health issues. The volunteers also operate quite differently and appear more like professional youth workers, dressed in black trousers and polo shirts with a very small institutional logo.

Symbols are important representations of the two institutional orders in the organisation. They are particularly important in two of the traditional settings - the daytime café and the branch meetings. In these contexts, various membership symbols are worn by the volunteers - scarves or ties and jackets in the organisation's colours at branch meetings, and the organisation's flag is draped over the meeting table. These symbols represent longevity and history, with length-of-service badges given as rewards for service. These symbols are clearly very important to the volunteers in these settings. Heated debates were observed at two branch meetings about the recognition of longevity for an award. In the more contemporary settings, these symbols had little significance. Clothing was much more informal and organisational symbols were subdued or absent. At the refugee homework programme, for example, there were no visible symbols of the organisation. Instead, volunteering in the 'new' order is often located in a secondary space, such as a school (refugee homework programme) or a hospital (hospital play-scheme). The volunteers in these spaces also have to obey the rules and regulations of these highly regulated environments.

In all the traditional settings, volunteers tended to be old, with many appearing well over aged 70 years, and were more likely to be female. The differences in the institutional orders present challenges for traditional or charity-model volunteers. This can be clearly demonstrated by the decline in the number of volunteers and their increasing average age, which has caused many branches to close and threatens their sustainability. Concerns were expressed at a number of branches that, because the average age of the volunteers was rising and many had withdrawn, they were losing the 'heart and soul' of the organisation and were failing to attract new volunteers. People simply did not have time to attend meetings. Reactions to our presence at branch meetings underscored the point that they did not attract many new faces.

The conversational order

Attention to the conversational order in the two different institutional environments demonstrated different social relations and ways of interacting. At the traditional sites, the volunteers appeared very comfortable in their role; they understood the organisation and had a long-term commitment both to the organisation, as well as to other volunteers and clients. At the daytime café, for example, volunteers were welcomed warmly by other volunteers as they came on duty, and they socialised with each other and sat at tables together for lunch. The volunteers knew the routine and what was expected of them. When they arrived at the daytime café, for example, they picked up their aprons and began work. By contrast, volunteers at the 'new' institutional settings were expected to be flexible and adaptable. For example, on a visit to the refugee homework programme, the volunteers were playing games with the children, because, as they explained, the children had taken exams that day. At the night café, the volunteers who worked with homeless young people had to be alert to potential problems. They took their duties very seriously, regularly checking the toilets for drug usage; and they were prepared for violence or visits by the police.

Volunteers in the 'old' institutional order demonstrated a strong attachment to the organisation, as represented by the length of service and the time they devoted to the role. The volunteers at the day café had long-term and stable attachments. One volunteer, for example, had served for 13 years, coming four days a week. We were told that it was not uncommon for volunteers in the branches to have 40 or 50 years' service. By contrast, at the night-time café and the refugee homework programme, many volunteers were new recruits and the institutional order was professionalised, more distant and formal - a clear contrast with the social, relationship-based conversational order of the traditional environment. In the hospital play-scheme, for example, the co-ordinator stressed the rules and regulations surrounding interactions with clients. Sick children can be cuddled, but the person's hands need to be visible at all times. All volunteers need to submit to police checks, and to obtain departmental clearance (a 'blue card') to work with children. This is clearly important in the 'new' institutional order, where clients - children, refugees or people who are homeless - are deemed vulnerable and merit protection.

At the information sessions for new recruits, different values and professional motives were promoted, such as skill building or gaining experience. For example, social work students were encouraged to gain experience by volunteering in the night café; and childcare students to volunteer for the hospital play-scheme. Volunteer roles were promoted as instrumental, in contrast with the more affective motives of the 'old' order, where social interactions and relationships were prominent.

Content of talk

Differences between the two institutional orders were also apparent in the content of the volunteers' talk. The talk represented two distinct discourses, one relationship-based and one dominated by managerialist rules and regulations, and revealed the primacy of the new institutional order. The volunteers' roles within the two environments differed. In the traditional environments, the roles often involved unskilled, charity-type work, such as producing items for fundraising events, running raffles or working in the organisation's shop, with food and hospitality important components. This approach contrasted with the more professional approach in the 'new' environment, as demonstrated by the night-time café volunteers, or in the teaching aspects of the refugee homework programme. It was also evident at the hospital play-scheme, as the following note about an induction session conveys:

[The co-ordinator] makes the job sound very professional. She talks about how other states have play-therapists in hospitals. She stresses the importance of play and learning through play. She says strongly, 'I consider all volunteers here to be staff'. 'This is a real job' is the message, and you should treat it as such. She talks about 'best practice' and how important it is to be as professional as possible.

The professionalisation of the volunteer environment was reflected in the discourse or the 'new' environment, which was essentially managerialist. For example, at the play-scheme, volunteers had 'a job description'; volunteering was described as a 'shift' with 'rosters'. In another example, the old institutional order confronted the new, when speakers from the central [head] office also used the discourse of managerialism. They stressed that the organisation was overcommitted - 'delivering too many services' - and that these needed to be 'rationalised' and services 'rebadged'. This is the language of business and social enterprise, and provided clear evidence of a new, dominant institutional order.

Resistance

The management rhetoric recognised the value of volunteers to the organisation. As the paid co-ordinator for the hospital play-scheme observed, 'we value volunteers and would like to see them stay as long as possible'. Further, at the information session, one of the new managers emphasised the importance of volunteers as 'the lifeblood of our organisation'. He also said, 'there is a home for each of you in this organisation', and stressed 'the smorgasbord of opportunities' available to potential recruits. The observational evidence suggested, however, some conflict between this rhetoric and people's openness to different ways of working. In particular, it was clear that many of those operating within the traditional institutional order were aware of the challenges and that there was some resistance to change.

For those entering the organisation and expecting traditional ways of operation, being introduced to volunteering in the new institutional order led to visible confusion. This was illustrated by an interview at head office, which treated volunteer recruitment like a job interview. One older woman, expecting to use motherhood skills as the basis for working in the hospital play-scheme, was visibly confused with all the professional and organisational issues - the professional language of play therapy, the associated rules and regulations, as well as the need for rigorous checks into her background. There were other examples of confusion when those who had been part of the traditional institutional order for many years were faced with both external and internal demands to change. The branch members were generally well aware that, from the central office perspective, their function was to raise funds for the organisation's services. Some modes of fundraising are very traditional, however, such as selling craftwork and cakes and holding social evenings. In general, the branches appear to resist attempts to become more professional and efficient in fundraising. At one branch, for example, the use of telemarketing (phone-based marketing) was discussed through involvement of the local high school. Although it was briefly implemented, it was soon discarded and traditional modes of fundraising re-introduced.

At times, volunteers in the traditional institutional order expressed quite strong resistance towards the new modes of operation. Members at several branches described clashes with central office, some of which spilt over into open resentment and even conflict. This centred on financial management and control, where the branch members saw central office impinging on their normal mode of working. The following observational note of a rural branch meeting captures the reactions:

They felt that central office was trying to dictate how they operate. For example, they had been told that at the meeting they should arrange themselves in a horseshoe shape and not as they had today (with the committee at the front facing the members). ... The result was a great deal of resentment.

Members felt that central office simply did not understand the work being done on the ground, and was trying to exert control over the local branches. In turn, the branches resisted these attempts to change, sometimes even confronting central office. Coupled with the decline in numbers and the ageing of branch committee members, there was also recognition that the branches would eventually close.

Discussion

In the organisation that we studied there was clear evidence of two institutional orders - a traditional way of operating consistent with a 'charity' model, and a 'new', social enterprise mode (McDonald and Mutch 2000; Zappala 2001). It should be recognised that not all older volunteers operate within the traditional or charitable mode, but our observations indicated that volunteers in traditional settings - such as the branches - were predominantly older people. Further, the data suggested that many of these volunteers experienced confusion and tensions, particularly in facing the managerial processes espoused by the central office and that were being diffused through the new service areas. Recruitment had become centralised and formal. The new tasks are challenging, many involving vulnerable client groups and necessitating a suite of protective and risk management processes. Length-of-service was not particularly valued, instead the emphasis was on skills development and usefulness. Valued volunteers now need to be flexible and to adapt to efficient and well organised processes that are implemented by the new professional breed of service managers.

Our observations suggest that volunteers operating in traditional settings experience external pressures to change. This pressure presents challenges for those operating in this declining institutional order, as well as for those attempting to gain entry into the new institutional order. Despite some spirited resistance to these processes, there is also acceptance that these efforts are doomed to fail. These findings exemplify the effects of organisational change in the non-profit sector (Eikenberry and Kluver 2004). In particular, the study identified the risk that traditional, older volunteers will be excluded from the new institutional environment and be unable to make the transition to new, social enterprise styles of volunteering. As Lie and Baines (2007: 235) suggested, there may be 'a misfit between the volunteering role and the essential nature of what volunteering mean[s] to older people'.

Older people bring particular advantages to organisations, and thus merit recruitment and retention as volunteers. They bring lifelong experience and skills to their roles. They are also more likely to be highly committed and to remain for a comparatively long period (Lyons and Hocking 2000; van Willigen 2000). This contrasts with the rapid turnover of many new, social enterprise volunteers (Zappala 2001). Certainly, the rhetoric observed in the case study organisation stressed both the enormous value that volunteers bring to the organisation, and the need for diverse volunteers. This suggests that volunteering should be open to everyone, regardless of age, background or experience, and demonstrates the need for transparent volunteer processes. Further, there was evidence of recognition of the cost effectiveness of older, more traditional volunteers, who bring a strong commitment to the organisation. Despite this rhetoric, however, their strengths were little recognised in practice. It is clear that organisations need to be more proactive if they are to utilise effectively the contributions and capabilities of older volunteers.

The findings of this study have important implications for organisations that seek to retain volunteers in a declining institutional order and to recruit older volunteers into new institutional orders. How should organisations respond? First, it needs to be recognised that it is both unethical and ageist if potential volunteers do not feel wanted simply on the basis of their age (Minichiello, Browne and Kendig 2000). Our study certainly found evidence of pervasive ageism, echoing Narushima's findings from a Canadian study of the potential transformative mechanisms of volunteering amongst older people. Here, too, the organisational rhetoric valued volunteers but 'organisational indifference suggest[ed] lingering institutionalised ageism' (Narushima 2005: 580).

Concerns about ageism are raised by the evidence that within the studied organisation, traditional volunteers were relatively invisible in comparison with the 'new' volunteers who dominated a particular space, such as the night café, or occupy a secondary organisational space, such as a hospital. This does not mean that older or traditional volunteers are not important or valued. There is a danger, however, that older people perceive age-related barriers to volunteering and are under-valued (Warburton, Paynter and Petriwiskyj 2007). As a result, older people may be discouraged from volunteering in the new regulated institutional environment, and others may give up. Evidence of confusion and resistance displayed in the findings from this study are very concerning for non-profit organisations reliant on volunteers.

As noted earlier, however, it should be recognised that many older people operate successfully in the new institutional order. The 'new' order does not comprise solely younger volunteers, simply those who are able to adjust to the new rules and regulations, some of whom are older people. For example, at the highly-regulated hospital play-scheme, some of the regular volunteers were older people. They had a clear role, as in many of the 'new' services, had adapted to the new institutional rules, and were valuable assets to the organisation. It is important that older people remain open to this possibility, but it is even more important that volunteer managers accept older people as volunteers, and use capacity and interest as a measure rather than simply age.

Secondly, resistance to change on the part of traditional volunteers may result from top-down organisational processes being imposed on relatively autonomous volunteers, rather than objections to change per se. It might be that a more collaborative and consultative process of change would ensure that others can make the transition to the new order (e.g. Gilroy 2003). In particular, the data suggest that there is a need to address proactively the confusing and confronting processes experienced by new recruits. For example, simple explanations and rationales for new and supportive recruitment and induction processes should be provided to all prospective volunteers. If they are not, then the result may well be that the pool of potential volunteers will shrink and people, particularly those experienced in the old order, will simply turn away from volunteering.

Thirdly, the findings also suggest that training needs to be provided to help older people make the transition to the new institutional environment. In a recent study of the incentives and barriers to volunteering by seniors, training was rated very highly as an incentive to volunteering (Warburton, Paynter and Petriwiskyj 2007). Training and skill development is essential if older volunteers are to become more self-reliant and to be able to undertake new, more challenging volunteer roles (Narushima 2005). Initial generic training is often provided, both around generic issues such as risk management but also specific to the task. To ensure that older volunteers have a place within a dynamic organisation, however, structured training and skills development are required. The existence of such training will also help older people develop their confidence and facilitate the recruitment of more volunteers (see Narushima 2005 for more on transformative learning for older volunteers).

Finally, it should be remembered that volunteering is potentially a valuable activity for older people, as well as beneficial for societies that are adjusting to population ageing (Davis Smith and Gay 2005; Warburton 2006). Volunteering is associated with positive social and health outcomes for older people (Greenfield and Marks 2004; Lum and Lightfoot 2005). It can lead to good psychological health, and the social aspects offer a pathway out of loneliness and social isolation (Freedman 1997; Wilson and Musick 1999). If western countries are to benefit from such healthy and productive ageing scenarios, then positive attention is required for recruiting and retaining older people as volunteers (Narushima 2005).

Conclusions

The intention of the present study was to contribute to the literature on change in the non-profit sector (e.g. Lyons 2001; Eikenberry and Kluver 2004), to provide an in-depth account of the experience of traditional, older, volunteers in the new institutional environment, and to consider the implications for non-profit practice. The case study utilised neo-institutional theory to demonstrate the changing role of volunteers in one large non-profit Australian organisation, and to explicate the challenges faced by older volunteers in the new institutional order.

To focus on only one, albeit large, non-profit organisation raises questions about the generalisability of the findings. The main strength of the study, however, is that it was theoretically driven and has examined processes of change in the non-profit sector in some depth. By conceiving change as institutional change and volunteers as institutional agents, we are able to think about the constitutive role of volunteers that moves beyond mere description. Further, given the similar organisational changes in other western countries, it is likely that the scenario described here is relevant in other countries. This allows for some predictive comments about the future for older volunteers in the changing institutional framework. The findings from this study suggest that there are many challenges and barriers to overcome if older volunteers are to have developing and effective roles in the new non-profit context. Older people bring strengths to organisations which need to be recognised and nurtured. It is clear that organisations need to respond proactively if they are to operate both ethically and efficiently in the contemporary environment.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr Amma Buckley for her help with data collection. They would also like to thank the organisation involved and, in particular, all those who participated in this ethnographic study. The project was funded by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery grant.

NOTE

1

Ethical clearance was obtained from the University of Queensland for the study, with gatekeeper approval from the Chief Executive Officer of the organisation to conduct the observations and to talk informally to the volunteers.

Footnote

1

Ethical clearance was obtained from the University of Queensland for the study, with gatekeeper approval from the Chief Executive Officer of the organisation to conduct the observations and to talk informally to the volunteers.

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AuthorAffiliation

* John Richards Research Initiative into Aged Care in Rural Communities, La Trobe University, Wodonga, Victoria, Australia.

[dagger] School of Social Work, Global Studies, Social Science and Planning, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.

Subject: Older people; Volunteers; Nonprofit organizations; Aging; Quality of life

Publication title: Ageing and Society; Cambridge

Volume: 29

Issue: 5

Pages: 823-840

Number of pages: 18

Publication year: 2009

Publication date: Jul 2009

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Place of publication: Cambridge

Country of publication: United Kingdom, Cambridge

Publication subject: Social Sciences: Comprehensive Works, Gerontol ogy And Geriatrics

ISSN: 0144686X

CODEN: AGSOD9

Source type: Scholarly Journals

Language of publication: English

Document type: Feature

DOI:  http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X09008484

ProQuest document ID: 195642144

Document URL:  https://search.proquest.com/docview/195642144?accountid=10932

Copyright: Copyright © 2009 Cambridge University Press

Last updated: 2018-10-06

Database: ProQuest Central Essentials

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The challenges of the new institutional environment: An australian case study of older volunteers in the contemporary non-profit sector. (2009). Ageing and Society, 29(5), 823-840. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X09008484

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1. Between State and Market: The Non-Profit Workforce in a Changing Local Environment

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Abstract:

This article explores some impacts of relationships between the third sector, the state and the market on the non-profit sector workforce in Reading, England. We argue that: the growth of state influence has brought forth paid and unpaid workers to represent the sector to the state; in most non-profit organisations paid workers create the conditions for unpaid work. For a minority the opposite is true; labour in the non-profit sector is influenced by competition from the private sector for workers and 'clients'; workers' paid work, family commitments and market services limit volunteering, especially for what we term 'lifestage' volunteers. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

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The non-profit sector, the state and the market

In this article, we explore some impacts of the relationships between the third sector, the state and the market on the non-profit sector workforce in the town of Reading, England. We start with a discussion of current conceptualisations of the relationships between the non-profit sector, state and market and their implications for volunteering. This is followed by a description of our data and methods and next a discussion of some findings. We end by discussing the challenges now facing the sector in Britain. We have chosen to use the term 'non-profit sector' (henceforth NPS) as our interest is in the 'workforce' (i.e. both paid and unpaid workers) of formally structured organisations that provide goods and services on a non-profit basis. We are not discussing the services provided to help others by neighbours and friends.

Since the 1980s, in most western countries state services have been transferred either to the NPS (typically welfare services) or to the private sector (typically utilities and justice and control services). The state has developed a closer relationship with the NPS through direct funding and subcontracting services (Evers and Laville, 2004). These moves are argued to have pressured NPS organisations to adopt business management techniques leading to increased professionalisation, bureaucratisation and the standardisation of services (for example, see Wolch, 1990; Fyfe, 2005; Jenkins, 2005). There has also been encouragement of social enterprises - businesses who operate for social objectives and who reinvest their profits in the enterprise or the community (Hunter, 2009; Social Enterprise Coalition, 2009) - thus blurring the boundaries between the private and the not-for-profit sectors.

During the 1990s and into the 2000s, politicians and academics began to promote the role of volunteers as a means of involving people in their community, encouraging social inclusion, promoting the development of social capital, self help and self reliance while providing volunteers with useful skills for the paid labour market. In Britain these ideas, already adopted to some extent by the Conservative Party, were taken up enthusiastically by New Labour as part of Third Way politics and they launched the start of a new era of state support for charities and volunteerism in the UK (Kendall, 2009).

In 1998, 'The Compact' between the voluntary sector and government was developed. It provided a set of core principles for facilitating and supporting the relationship between the state and the NPS. Local Compact agreements resourced new intermediary bodies designed to develop, liaise and represent the NPS, and the ChangeUp programme (Home Office, 2004) simultaneously attempted to improve the sector's skills base. The UK's charity sector grew both in terms of income and size during the noughties (Backus and Clifford, 2010b) producing funding increases for large service delivery NPS organisations. Commentators have raised concerns over what they see as the 'Tescoisation of the third sector' and its negative impacts on smaller community-based organisations (Backus and Clifford, 2010a; Phillimore et al., 2010). Statutory funding has been accompanied by a rise in public support for the voluntary sector through organisations such as the Big Lottery Fund. The third sector has become mainstreamed into government policy with volunteerism firmly placed on the national policy stage (Kendall, 2009; Alcock, 2010a), a trend that seems likely to continue under the Coalition government, but with one key difference.

David Cameron's concept of the 'Big Society' advocates a move away from Labour's 'Big State'. It champions community empowerment and local collective action and also seeks to encourage further a shift to market-based public service delivery (Alcock, 2010b). In May 2010, David Cameron pledged his continued support for the Third Sector and The Compact but stated that they would 'refresh and renew' the partnership between the NPS and the state to produce a more market driven, less bureaucratic, decentralised and independent NPS delivery framework that is more responsive to the needs of local communities. Volunteer workers remain central to the new government's notion of finding more productive ways of 'doing business' with the NPS.

Starting with Wolch's seminal text on the shadow state (1990), academics have sought to understand the changing relationships between the state and the NPS (Mitchell, 2001; Fyfe and Milligan, 2003; Hodgson, 2004; Fyfe, 2005). Recently Trudeau (2008) has argued that NPS organisations should be conceptualised as operating from a 'location between state and civil society' (Trudeau, 2008: 673, original emphasis). He suggests that such organisations must be thought of as responding to or resisting pressures not only from the state, but also from civil society social groups. The variety of contexts in which these relationships arise will result in varied responses. In particular, NPS organisations will operate at different points along an axis measuring the degree of state influence - ranging from extensive, limited, to marginal. We find this approach helpful but suggest that the liminal space which NPS organisations occupy is located not only between state organisations and civil society groups but also between these and market organisations. Market organisations may be alternative purveyors of services offered by the state or third sector, and the social valuation of market relationships also affects the ways in which private sector practices and attitudes are adopted or resisted by state and NPS organisations.

The importance of the market is further emphasised in Glucksmann's influential set of ideas summarised as the Total Social Organisation of Labour (TSOL). The TSOL framework highlights that the organisation, social meaning and amount of work in any given socio-economic mode must be understood in relation to work in other socio-economic modes. Glucksmann (2005:19) suggests that the TSOL should direct our attention, amongst other things, to the interconnections between 'paid and unpaid work, market and non-market, formal and informal sectors' and between 'work activities and relations with non work activities and relations'. For example, she argues that changes in particular forms of both unpaid and paid child and elder care work in the NPS are linked to the subcontracting of the provision of welfare services by the state to the NPS and to moves by private sector businesses into (and out of) particular aspects of such care and to family provision of care. She shows that the roles of the state, NPS, private sector and family vary strikingly between different countries (Lyon and Glucksmann, 2008).

The combination of NPS, state and private sector provision occurs in several areas, not only care provision. Sports and fitness training is provided by public, private and NPS organisations, and the same is true for transport which is supplied by the private sector, by the state and by the NPS. Similar mixtures of services are found in after-school care and holiday activities. In these areas, the NPS is often filling in the gaps left by the absence of (adequate) state services for those who cannot afford to pay for privately provided services.

The TSOL framework suggests that how and why voluntary work is done must be examined in relations to the influence of both market and state on the definitions, understandings and content of this work as well as to the relations between paid and unpaid work within the NPS. The TSOL also emphasises the importance of examining the degree to which such work is 'fused' with other roles, relationships and emotions (Taylor, 2004 and 2005). Taylor (2005) has argued that attitudes to working in the NPS relate to both its two, rather different, social roots - of working-class self-help organisations and middleclass philanthropy - and to individuals' class position and habitus. She suggests that it becomes taken for granted in different sub-cultural groups that volunteering is either 'something you do' or 'something you don't do'.

Much of the academic literature has focussed on the influence of the state on the aims, services and political role of the NPS. Rather less attention has been focused on how state influence affects the NPS workforce in general and volunteering in particular, apart from the important discussions of professionalisation referenced earlier. There has also been relatively little attention given to the effect of private sector provision on the NPS services and workforce. In the following sections, we use data from a study of volunteering in Reading to examine the ways in which relationships with the state and the private sector and the demands of family influence the nature of the work done and the organisation and rewards of both paid and unpaid work.

Data and methodology

In this article, we draw on data from a consultancy study carried out in Reading in 2006,1 which focused on assessing the 'value' of volunteering in the town. We also draw on interviews we have carried out in 2010 with NPS organisations in Reading: a service delivery organisation which receives about half of its funding through grants from the local authority and a central state funded organisation that is intended to work with local community groups. In Reading, this has been achieved through involvement with our third organisation which provides services to local VSC groups.

The 2006 study

Reading is a town about 40 miles west of London, which, over the last thirty years, has had a buoyant local service economy. Our study focussed on organisations within an area roughly coterminous with the boundaries of the Reading built-up area, encompassing a population of approximately 235,000. This study involved a questionnaire survey of 547 non-faith-based voluntary organisations 2 asking about amounts and types of volunteering within each organisation. Eighty replied - a response rate of 16 per cent. The majority (60 per cent) of the organisations were independent local organisations. Of the 40 per cent who were branches of larger organisations, most (79 per cent) were members of national organisations (see Bowlby and Lloyd Evans, 2007, for further details). The organisations who responded appeared to be representative of the 547 organisations contacted, apart from those serving BME groups who, despite our best efforts, were under-represented. However, it is likely that the sampling frame itself under-represented very small organisations.

The questionnaire survey was followed up by interviews with the principal local organiser or manager of twenty-two NPS organisations, drawn from a wide range of sectors, to explore the importance of volunteering to their organisation, their views on recruiting and supporting volunteers and people's motives for volunteering. The twenty-two organisations were selected to represent a wide range of types and sizes of organisation from those who said they were willing to take part in a follow-up interview. We analysed our interview material by identifying themes in the discussion in conjunction with quantitative data on each organisation from the survey.

The NPS and volunteering in Reading

Linking the NPS and the state

There are well-established formal bodies in Reading that create cross-cutting links amongst NPS organisations and between NPS organisations, the local authority and partnership agencies. For over twenty-five years, Reading Voluntary Action (RVA) has been a stable presence in the town, working to knit together the local voluntary sector. More recently, RVA established The Forum to provide an opportunity for NPS organisations to exchange views and work together. Forum Voices are paid staff, volunteers or trustees of local NPS organisations elected to act as representatives on fourteen partnership/local authority bodies. Representatives from the Forum and RVA serve on The Reading Compact which was established in 2000. In 2008, RVA, The Forum, Reading Faith Forum (representing local religious organisations), Reading Children's & Voluntary Youth Services and Sakoma (an organization supporting BME voluntary organizations) formed The Stronger Together consortium with a grant from the Big Lottery Fund. The consortium has both paid and voluntary staff who support the Forum Voices and provide a wide range of events and training to ensure that 'that the voice of the voluntary and community sector is able to influence strategic decision-making' (Stronger Together, 2010).

The effort to ensure that the Reading NPS can 'influence strategic decision making' has required the development of paid and unpaid NPS workers with a 'professional' knowledge of national and local policy development and funding opportunities. One local organisation argued that the Reading NPS is extremely reliant on a cadre of highly skilled workers whose main aim is to support the sector and manage its links to state sponsored bodies. Many of these workers are volunteers, but the demands of the role mean that NPS organisations want some paid workers to provide consistency. However, the exigencies of funding mean that many of these are on short-term contracts.

Importantly, while some organisations were well connected to the local authority and partnership bodies, others were, as Trudeau suggests, only marginally connected to the state. In particular, we found that many of those we interviewed in smaller organisations providing for local needs felt disconnected from the established voluntary sector networks and unrecognised by local government agencies: 'Reading Borough Council really doesn't know what's going on here - we are the workhorse of volunteering . . . not a big show event like others' (National Youth Group). As we will discuss further below, some of these organisations face severe problems over recruiting and supporting volunteers

Doing the work of the NPS

Our survey illustrated the variety of combinations of unpaid and paid work that were used to provide services within the NPS in Reading. Despite national growth in paid employment in the NPS (Moro and McKay, 2010), most organisations we interviewed had more volunteers than paid staff. About a quarter of our sample had no paid staff at all - the majority of these were small organisations with fewer than twelve volunteers; however five of them had over thirty volunteers. Ten organisations had fewer than five paid staff but more than twenty-five volunteers, while fourteen others had more than five paid staff and fewer than twenty-five volunteers.

The roles of volunteer workers within organisations were varied. Direct service delivery was the largest single type of labour carried out by volunteers, but in total more were engaged in management, administration or fundraising (see Table 1). We identified four distinct types of organisation in terms of the role of volunteers and paid workers.

(i)

Organisations which exist to promote volunteering in other workplaces. We interviewed three organisations in this category who hoped that volunteering would help young people's personal development and employability. They also hoped to instil favourable attitudes to future volunteering.

(ii)

Organisations where volunteers were primarily a means to the end of providing services. Examples are a group providing occasional transport for elderly people and an ethnic minority social welfare organisation. Where paid workers existed, they were used to recruit and organise volunteers and to do administration but did not provide services themselves. In some of these, such as a family support organisation, the fact that workers were unpaid was seen as intrinsic to the quality of the service. These organisations claimed their clients felt that unpaid workers had more empathy and commitment than paid workers.

(iii)

Organisations where volunteers delivered services but where part of the service was to provide opportunities for volunteering. Paid workers were used primarily to organise volunteers and manage the organisation. Examples are community groups, one youth group and an organisation operating charity shops.

(iv)

Organisations which had few volunteers in relation to paid workers. These used paid staff to provide their main service because they needed trained workers available from eight to twenty-four hours every day. For example, one provided full-time live-in help for people with a mental impairment.

Table 1

Proportion of time spent by volunteers on 5 activities*

* Note: Based on replies from 80 NPS organisations in Reading.

Twelve out of the twenty-two organisations had paid staff who worked on recruiting and managing volunteers whilst the remainder relied solely on part-time volunteers; however, some of these 'part-timers' seemed to be working over thirty hours a week. The claim that 'volunteering is always at a critical point' (Sports Organisation) summed up the majority view of the organisations we interviewed. Some organisations faced specific skill shortages: 'there are a lot of people who can help at the lower end but it is difficult to find people with strong skills' (Counselling Organisation with a focus on ethnic minority groups). Organisations that needed volunteers with knowledge of the language or culture of ethnic minority groups and/or who needed professional skills found recruitment particularly difficult.

Recruitment practices varied from informal, word of mouth and 'previous client' strategies to more formalised application and interview processes. There was evidence of a move towards the increased professionalisation referred to in the literature - this seemed to stem partly from attempts to manage recruitment effectively and partly from state requirements, such as CRB checks. This increased formalisation was felt to improve the quality of recruitment, but added to the work pressures on staff.

The training and retention of volunteers also generated many work demands. 'We provide three sessions of formal training plus a period of shadow training. Training gives confidence to volunteers and helps retention. You need to constantly support your volunteers and mentor them' (Community Group A). Some organisations 'bought-in' training, although funding could be a difficulty and one of the ethnic minority group organisations faced problems in finding trainers with appropriate cultural knowledge. Other on-going support for volunteers, such as social events and buddying, also loom large in organisations' everyday activities. Furthermore, some volunteers were themselves vulnerable people who needed considerable support, 'we can only manage one or two people like that' (Community Group B).

Many interviewees considered that recruitment, training and retention of volunteers could best be organised by paid workers who provide long-term consistency of input. Some of this work entailed administration, but much involved emotional labour. An important element of recruitment and retention was to provide a 'family-like' environment in which friendships and a sense of mutual obligation between volunteers could flourish and promote what interviewees described as a sense of 'attachment', 'belonging' or 'loyalty'. Similarly, NPS organisations in Reading employing paid workers find it hard to compete with private sector pay. They said the non-monetary rewards of working for a 'good cause' and favourable conditions of service were one way of recruiting and retaining these workers.

Paid work and unpaid work are closely related in NPS organisations. For the majority, paid workers exist to create the conditions for unpaid work to take place. For a minority, the opposite is true. Engagement in volunteering was felt by many organisations to be a good in itself in addition to the provision of services. Managers felt that emotions of altruism and the desire to belong to an organisation that 'cares' for staff as well as clients were important to both paid and unpaid workers and could compensate workers for lack of money or for lower wages than in the private or state sectors.

Who were the volunteers?

Sixty-six per cent of the volunteers were women, with the majority aged between forty and sixty four, and they outnumbered men in all activities, but especially in direct service provision. With the exception of sports and youth-related organisations, women tend to work in the more 'hands on' roles, such as care work, shop work, 'front of house' service delivery and practical fundraising, whilst male volunteers are more likely to be involved in management and committee work.

The discussion with the organisers of the twenty-two NPS organisations suggested to us that in terms of recruitment and retention there is a significant distinction between what we term 'lifelong' and 'lifestage' volunteers. We suggest that volunteering always plays a significant part in the lives of some people, for others volunteering is something that they do as part of a specific lifestage.

Some volunteers have lifelong motivations for volunteering that are associated with altruism and feeling that volunteering is 'something you do' (Taylor, 2005; Cloke et al., 2007). Some lifelong volunteers are involved with groups with few connections to the local state-NPS initiatives, but many work within widely recognised groups and are embedded in the Reading Compact networks. They sometimes move between paid and unpaid work for the NPS and bring essential skills and time to the sector. In a recent interview with a state-sponsored organisation, the manager argued that this group of volunteers tend to be of middle or retirement age and often white and middle-class:

Many volunteers with high levels of community intelligence can monopolize local decision making at both the state and voluntary sector level. They turn up everywhere, sit on lots of committees and have high levels of power. This may not always be democratic and doesn't lead to innovation and change. Therefore, you also need ways of engaging with new volunteers from a wide range of communities but this is difficult. Many families in the current financial climate work long hours and don't have the time to volunteer. (Reading NPS Organisation, 2010)

Lifestage volunteers are more socially differentiated and less networked than lifelong volunteers. Some are retired people who seek to replace the friendships and structure of paid work or widow(er)s who seek friendships and activities outside the house. Others are fulfilling social expectations and obligations based on a particular role as a parent, or group participant: 'Many of our volunteers are women, aged twenty-five to forty, with small children, who've given up work but want to keep themselves busy and do something outside the home that's valued . . . they miss the reward that work brings' (Disability Organisation).

Lifestage volunteers are drawn into volunteering in a specific context and this volunteering is quite likely to be the only volunteering they will do.

Between a rock and a hard place: lifestage volunteering, the state and market

Lifestage volunteering tends to be localised and is essential to the running of everyday activities, such as sports clubs, youth centres and community-based associations. Many such organisations are located in 'socially excluded' communities where they play a key role in fostering local social cohesion and facilitating community engagement. Some of these grass-roots organisations have been overlooked by the state-NPS partnerships in the town. Recent national research also concludes that much of the new state funding has by-passed these 'below-the-radar' (BTR) groups in favour of larger public service delivery NPS organisations with strong partnerships to local and national government (Phillimore et al., 2010).

Approximately 40 per cent of our twenty-two organisations could be called BTR organisations - they felt their everyday existence was a battle against poor funding, health and safety regulations like CRB checks, escalating operating costs, dilapidated premises and stressed volunteers. Despite several of them having a long history in the town, some groups had never heard of NPS umbrella organisations such as RVA or the Reading Compact and felt excluded from local state-NPS initiatives. Having worked in one of Reading's most deprived neighbourhoods for twenty years, one passionate but disillusioned lifelong volunteer commented that: 'We want people in power in the Borough to recognise what we do . . . they don't know we exist! We're here to do basic things for the community . . . we never turn anyone away even if they can't pay the weekly subs. I would like the council to recognise what we do and that we're not just here for the sport but helping this community . . . it's somewhere to come in off the street, talk to people, share their troubles' (Sports Organisation 2).

Whilst large NPS organisations may continue to attract lifelong and lifestage volunteers, the more local types of lifestage volunteering are being squeezed by time and money pressures. 'Having the time' to help out at the local youth club is increasingly set in opposition to prevailing economic pressures for people to engage fully with the labour market for longer. We were told that with the demise of full-time semi-skilled manufacturing work in Reading, some local people who had previously volunteered after their nine-to-five jobs have moved to shift-work in the service economy, which reduces their time for volunteering. Some organisations commented that, between them, family members were increasingly involved in twenty-four hour working in poorly paid, contract jobs which curtailed their involvement in community activities:

People used to help because of their love of [the sport]. Used to be lots of fathers, but not enough do bits and pieces now; can't get committee members. Years ago, every father wanted to do something, but it's thinned out over the last ten years . . . Mums used to help out as well, sell raffle tickets or organise events, but all the Mums round here are working now . . . people are too busy now . . . too stressed, disillusioned with life and their help fades out. (Youth Group)

Our survey, carried out before the start of the economic crisis of 2008, suggested that pre-retirement lifestage volunteers, particularly men from all classes, were withdrawing from volunteering in order to cope with the everyday pressures of work and family life. Several organisations said that some trained male volunteers were inactive largely because they were 'too busy [with paid work] to do anything anymore' (Sports Organisation 3). The demands of child or elder care and travel costs were further obstacles, particularly for women who tend to spend more time on care than men (Sullivan, 2006; Commission for the Compact, 2010).

In addition to funding and volunteer pressures, some organisations increasingly need to 'compete' with the market. Local sports and youth organisations find themselves competing with private sector providers that offer good facilities for those who can afford to pay. One organisation that provided activities for disadvantaged youth felt they were often treated by parents as unsatisfactory 'paid employees'. The same organisation reported a 10 per cent 'drop out rate' of volunteers who leave because they find dealing with abusive parents too stressful. The availability of private sector provision creams off more affluent participants, thus reducing the potential pool of volunteers.

In the current economic downturn, individuals with a disposition towards lifestage volunteering may increasingly find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, families must negotiate their household livelihood strategies within a society which increasingly expects both men and women to engage in full-time paid work. On the other hand, the economic crisis appears to be leading to a withdrawal of public support mechanisms and secure jobs that freed up time for community work.

The NPS workforce: between state and market

In an earlier section, we suggested that the NPS should be seen as occupying a position between the market, the state and civil society. Using the TSOL as a lens, we have sought to show how labour performed within the NPS is influenced by the demands of the state, competition from the private sector for labour and 'clients', as well as workers' family commitments.

The increased importance of state funding and influence has led to the creation of a cadre of paid and unpaid workers dedicated to representing the interests of the NPS to the local state and partnership bodies. However, some 'Below the Radar' organisations are not well connected to this potential support. The increased demands for men and women to do full-time paid work in the market as well as the existence of private sector services for those who can afford to pay has made it increasingly difficult for these organisations to recruit and retain volunteers, and they lack the funding to employ paid workers.

The growth of state influence has increased bureaucratic demands on organisations who get state funding (such as for financial accounting and reporting) and the need for professionally skilled labour (for example, to write funding bids and prepare accounts). Other demands, such as CRB checks and insurance, created particular organisational problems for smaller organisations. The NPS also relies on the emotional skills of workers - both in delivering services and retaining its workforce in the face of competition from private sector waged work and family commitments. One of the perceived advantages of volunteering is that it can offer positive 'work-like' rewards and a sense of belonging without the long hours, inflexibility and stress of some paid work. In some organisations, lack of funding, pressures to meet bureaucratic demands and competition from private sector firms were eroding these advantages.

Recruiting, training and retaining volunteers are three activities that all organisations found very labour-intensive and many desired to have paid workers for these tasks. Difficulties in recruitment are linked to the role of the private sector as a source of both paid employment for potential volunteers and of competing service provision. We suggest that volunteering by what we term 'lifestage' volunteers is most likely to be reduced by the demands of paid work, family commitments and the attractions of services provided by the private sector.

It seems probable that in the immediate future far less funding will be available to the non-profit sector. The chances of organisations gaining funding for paid workers to support volunteers will decrease. Some non-profit organisations that are highly dependent on state funding may cease to exist. More private sector organisations may start to provide welfare services and this again may lead to the closure of some NPS organisations. There will be further pressure on NPS providers of welfare services to adopt 'market disciplines' and reduce costs. The reduction of state funding will have little direct impact on organisations who have only a marginal relationship with the state; however, the demands of paid work and the loss of other state support services aimed at poorer groups, such as after-school clubs and family welfare support, are likely to make it harder to find volunteers. At the same time, such organisations will continue to find themselves in 'competition' with services provided by the private sector and their services judged in relation to such services.

We have emphasised the importance of direct competition from private sector businesses to some NPS organisations. It is also important to recognise that the marketisation of state procurement and employment influences the demands made by the state on the NPS. Marketisation stresses ideas of efficiency - of lowering costs, improving services and reducing unproductive work time. This language comes from a different world to ideas of attracting paid or unpaid workers into NPS organisations by enlisting emotions concerned with morality and belonging. These ideas link to the arenas of the family and community. It is not clear that the two worlds can be comfortably reconciled.

Notes

1 The study was funded by The Reading Volunteer Centre and Reading Voluntary Action with funding from the ChangeUp initiative.

2 Our sampling frame was a list of NPS organizations in Reading compiled by Reading Voluntary Action which we supplemented through: local searches of publically displayed leaflets; internet searches: the Yellow Pages: and personal contacts. A survey of faith-based organisations was being carried out at the same time as our survey and we considered that we would not have a good response rate if we also approached these organisations.

Footnote

1 The study was funded by The Reading Volunteer Centre and Reading Voluntary Action with funding from the ChangeUp initiative.

2 Our sampling frame was a list of NPS organizations in Reading compiled by Reading Voluntary Action which we supplemented through: local searches of publically displayed leaflets; internet searches: the Yellow Pages: and personal contacts. A survey of faith-based organisations was being carried out at the same time as our survey and we considered that we would not have a good response rate if we also approached these organisations.

References

References

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AuthorAffiliation

*

Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading, Reading E-mail:  [email protected]

**

Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading, Reading E-mail:  [email protected]

Subject: Social policy; Nonprofit organizations; Workers; Volunteers

Publication title: Social Policy and Society; Cambridge

Volume: 10

Issue: 3

Pages: 417-427

Number of pages: 11

Publication year: 2011

Publication date: Jul 2011

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Place of publication: Cambridge

Country of publication: United Kingdom, Cambridge

Publication subject: Sociology

ISSN: 14747464

Source type: Scholarly Journals

Language of publication: English

Document type: Feature

DOI:  http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1474746411000133

ProQuest document ID: 869507711

Document URL:  https://search.proquest.com/docview/869507711?accountid=10932

Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Last updated: 2015-08-15

Database: ProQuest Central Essentials

Bibliography

Bowlby, S., & Sally, L. E. (2011). Between state and market: The non-profit workforce in a changing local environment. Social Policy and Society, 10(3), 417-427. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1474746411000133

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1. ORGANIZED COOPERATION: A BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVE ON VOLUNTEERISM

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Abstract:

In 2014 in the United States, an estimated 62.8 million people, or 25.3% of the population volunteered their time and money to a nonprofit organization, spending around 7.9 billion hours of volunteer time ("Volunteering in 2014," 2015). Volunteerism accounts for a significant portion of the workforce, particularly among nonprofit organizations that rely heavily on community support to provide necessary, yet usually unprofitable services. Despite the importance of volunteer practices, volunteer retention is a pervasive issue and can be a time-consuming and costly endeavor for the organization. The current paper provides a review of behavior analytic literature to discuss how behavior science is suited for empirically investigating the origins and maintenance of volunteer behavior. Furthermore, although behavior systems analysis has not specifically addressed volunteerism, this analytic approach could be beneficial to investigate ameliorating volunteer retention on the large scale. The conclusion explores research suggestions and likely implications of expanding behavior analysis further into this domain.

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There is no shortage of societal ills. Anyone can look around their cultural environment and find social issues jeopardizing the quality of life for either themselves, those around them, or those to come. To name one example in the United States, the care and support of our nation's youth is a constant struggle. In 2013, 20% of all children (0-17 years old) lived in poverty (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2015, p. 14), and among those living in poverty, 46% of households were classified as "food insecure" (p. 17). In 2014, nearly one quarter (24%) of U.S. 12th grade students reported illicit drug use in the past 30 days (p. 43). In a recent international student assessment study, 17% and 26% of 15 year olds in the U.S. did not meet baseline proficiency in reading and math literacy, respectively ("Selected Findings from PISA 2012", n.d.). While some of these trends are declining, the numbers are fairly stable from year to year. Clearly, there is a strong need to support at-risk youth to develop skills to navigate an unstable, and sometimes unforgiving, social system. Thankfully, many dedicated institutions and individual volunteers have committed themselves to improving these statistics.

Volunteers annually donate thousands of hours, worth millions of dollars, to the American workforce to benefit local communities at virtually no cost. Through the dedication of volunteers, government and nonprofit agencies continually provide unprofitable, yet needed social services economically distressed populations. For example, Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) is an international organization that relies on the efforts of its volunteers to support and serve as mentors to at-risk youth in their respective communities. These services would likely not exist without the donation of time and money from volunteers. The scale of the financial contribution is staggering. In a 2013 summary of nonprofit data, 1.4 million nonprofit organizations registered with the IRS; and in 2014 over $358 billion was donated by individuals and households (McKeever, 2015). In 2014, roughly 25.3% of residents volunteered their time resulting in 8.7 billion hours of service estimating around $179.2 billion worth of service (McKeever, 2015).

Volunteering has also been shown to contribute to the overall health of a community and its members. Articles in social work and social psychology journals discuss the putative impact of volunteering on individuals and their community (e.g., Brown, Nesse, Vinokur, & Smith, 2003; Harlow & Cantor, 1996; Post, 2005, to name a few). These reports cite a variety of benefits to the volunteers, such as increased life satisfaction (Harlow & Cantor, 1996), decreased mortality (Brown, et al., 2003), and better mental and physical health (Post, 2005). In a 2012 report presented at the National Conference on Citizenship, the density of nonprofit organizations within a community was found to be negatively related with unemployment rates (Kawashima-Ginsberg, Lim, & Levine, 2012). The negative correlation is in part due to the larger nonprofits who are also significant employers in their communities (e.g., universities, healthcare institutions); however, considering that 85% of U.S. nonprofits have no employees (Gross & Page, 2013), the impact of volunteerism in a community is detectable. Given the individual and community benefits of volunteer activity, supporting and maintaining volunteers within our local and national organizations is an important factor when considering community well-being.

Focusing primarily on the majority of volunteer-dependent nonprofits, it becomes apparent that continued success is a delicate balance. Despite the benefits to society and massive contributions to the American economy, many nonprofits struggle to stay fiscally solvent, meet demands, and keep volunteers engaged. According to the 2015 State of the Nonprofit Sector Survey by the Nonprofit Finance Fund, 53% of respondents reported that their nonprofit agency had three months or less of available cash, and 32% indicated "achieving long-term financial sustainability" as one of the top challenges for their organization ("State of the sector surveys," 2015). Additionally, since the 2008 recession, the majority of respondents (76%) reported an increased demand for services, and 52% of the agencies admitted that they are unable to meet the demand.

One contributing factor to the financial challenges of these nonprofit organizations is the loss of volunteer resources. An estimated $38 billion is lost annually due to volunteer attrition (Eisner, Grimm, & Maynard, 2009). The cost of the volunteer can be estimated by both the cost to the organization to train the volunteer as well as the market value of the service performed. According to the Independent Sector, the average value of non-agricultural, non-managerial work for 2015 is $23.56 per hour ("The Value of Volunteer Time," 2016). Furthermore, if the volunteer performs skilled or specialized work (e.g., accounting, IT services), the value of that volunteer increases dramatically. Although volunteers are unpaid, nonprofits spend funds on the training, maintenance, and recognition of volunteers. For example, BBBS reports that setting up a "Match" between a youth and mentor costs an average of $1,000 in the first year. Every year the Match between the youth and mentor is sustained, the annual cost to BBBS significantly decreases. Thus, losing trained volunteers comes at a significant cost to a nonprofit organization. From 2005 to 2006, roughly one-third (about 20.9 million) of the nation's volunteers did not return ("Volunteer Retention", 2007). Other reviews have noted an increasing trend of episodic volunteering, where people volunteer for brief, intermittent periods (Hyde, Dunn, Scuffham, & Chambers, 2014). There are many factors contributing to why a volunteer decides to participate or not, but the aforementioned reports highlight the importance of effective management (Eisner, Grimm, & Maynard, 2009). For example, Eisner and colleagues report that only a quarter of nonprofits regularly provide volunteers with "training and professional development," only 35% of nonprofits regularly "recogniz[e] the contributions of volunteers," and less than half (45%) match "volunteers' skills with appropriate assignments" (p. 34). Behavior science has repeatedly shown the effectiveness of training, positive social reinforcement, and tasking individuals with activities within their fluent behavioral repertoires. Behavior analysts have the research to support best practices in organizations. Creating opportunities for collaboration could lead to optimization of volunteer resources for invaluable social change.

The challenge of promoting volunteerism in organizations provides an opportunity for behavior analysts to apply behavioral principles to create positive social change on both the individual and social level. Doing so fits well within the pragmatic foundations of behavior analysis (Hayes & Brownstein, 1986; Hayes, Hayes, & Reese, 1988), and the social values many behavior analysts have historically described (Baer, Wolf, & Risley, 1968; Dickinson, 2000; Holland, 1978). Despite the importance of studying volunteerism, there is little behavior analytic literature to discuss this practice, potentially due to philosophical and conceptual issues surrounding its altruistic and sociological ties.

This paper aims to discuss how volunteerism can be studied within the field of behavior analysis and elucidate the possible perspectives the field can take to develop a comprehensive and scientific understanding of volunteering behavior origins and maintenance. The first section begins with a brief overview of how volunteerism is discussed in other fields. The discussion then transitions to the relevant units of behavior at both the individual and group levels of analysis, finishing with a suggested behavioral definition of volunteering. A review of the current behavior analytic literature follows as it applies to the function of individual volunteer behavior. Then, we describe how organizations utilizing volunteers function as a behavioral system and how behavior analysts have the opportunity to serve as cultural engineers. The discussion concludes with future research suggestions and various implications as a result of expanding behavior science to this domain. To better illustrate the conceptual account of volunteer behavior, we use the nonprofit organization, Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) as an example.

Survey of Volunteerism outside of Behavior Analysis

Building a program of volunteer research from a behavior analytic perspective will come with challenges. While behavior analysts have written on volunteer training (Howard & Digennaro Reed, 2014, 2015), and sometimes mention volunteering in their conceptual papers (Hayes, Bunting, Herbst, Bond, & Barnes-Holmes, 2006), volunteerism as its own domain for behavior analysis has been largely neglected. The same is not the case in other fields. Volunteer management has generated discussions throughout many fields including applied psychology (Boezeman & Ellemers, 2008), consumer psychology (Mowen & Sujan, 2005), organizational psychology (Vantilborgh et al., 2011), social psychology (Clary et al., 1998; Cornelis, Van Hiel, & De Cremer, 2013; McBride & Lee, 2011; Nenga, 2012; Thoits & Hewitt, 2001), economics (Govekar & Govekar, 2002; Lee & Brudney, 2012), marketing (Randle & Dolnicar, 2011; Starnes & Wymer Jr, 2000), as well as what seem to be interdisciplinary fields dealing directly with the study of nonprofits and volunteerism (Farmer & Fedor, 1999; Liao-Troth, 2005; Nichols, 2012; Shye, 2009). Before diving into a new analysis of volunteerism from a behavior analytic perspective, some recognition should be paid to the valuable work done outside the field.

Despite the diversity of fields represented in the volunteerism literature, there is a generally consistent view of what constitutes volunteer activity. Some focus on the agency of the volunteer in that they specify that volunteering is purposive (Brennan, 2007), subject to free will (Cornelis et al., 2013; Thoits & Hewitt, 2001; Vantilborgh et al., 2011), and cannot be compelled (Bandura & Lyons, 2012). Others specify beneficence as a key aspect of volunteerism (Cornelis et al., 2013; Han & Hong, 2012; Mowen & Sujan, 2005; Vantilborgh et al., 2011). A third noticeable trend is the appeal to unpaid work (Ganesh & McAllum, 2011; Lee & Brudney, 2012; Starnes & Wymer Jr, 2000). Snyder and Omoto (2008) provide a comprehensive treatment of the definition of volunteerism, in which they state that volunteerism: (1) occurs based on the individual's "free will" and not due to coercion, (2) deliberately serves others, (3) occurs as a pattern over time, (4) is based "on the person's own goals without expectation of reward or punishment," (5) serves a population or cause that acknowledges and asks for help, and (6) commonly occurs through an organized agency (p. 2). Much of the Snyder and Omoto definition fits well within a behavioral framework, barring the purposive language (e.g., "without expectation of reward"), which serves to lay a foundation for behavior scientific research.

Within the volunteerism literature exists the "functionalist approach" which will provide familiarity for behavior analysts who do not recognize free will as a scientific explanation for motivation. The functionalist perspective "focuses on individual motivations for helping" (Finkelstein, 2008, p. 10). Snyder and Omoto (2008) refer to the functional analysis as an approach that "emphasizes the purposes served by action and the role of such purposes in initiating, guiding, and sustaining action" (p. 11). For example, Snyder and Omoto describe their Volunteer Process Model, which accounts for antecedents, immediate consequences (to which they refer as "experiences"), and cumulative consequences (to which they refer as "consequences") both at the individual and the behavioral systems levels. Regardless of one's philosophical position on causality and purpose, the functional orientation in volunteer literature fits well within the empirical analysis of behavior which also emphasizes the function of behaviors based on environmental conditions and relevant consequences. The existing functional volunteer literature sets up a launching point for any behaviorist to make meaningful contributions to this elaborate body of work.

As an interdisciplinary endeavor, care needs to be taken to avoid repeating the good work that has already been done in other fields. The aforementioned literature on volunteerism and volunteer management is just a small sample of the ocean of conceptual and empirical articles available. Behavior analysts, with a pragmatic scientific goal and commitment to lawful principles of nature, can play a special role in participating in this discussion. Currently, the discussed antecedents in non-behavior analytic research include personality traits, demographic variables, and what are commonly referred to as "motivational" variables. Many of these factors are made inaccessible by defining them as private, or subject to free will, and others are elaborate interpretations of the role of verbal behavior as it applies to volunteering. Behavior analysis seeks variables that can be manipulated in order to predict and control behavior. For example, behavior scientists have difficulty with definitions of behavior as requiring no consequence, such as in Snyder and Omoto's (2008) definition wherein they claim volunteering to be based "on the person's own goals without expectation of reward or punishment" (p. 2). Claiming that behavior maintenance is beyond the realm of contingency management leaves little space for the behavioral engineer to intervene, thus we will adopt a perspective of volunteering that is subject to environmental antecedents and consequences. Another example of a somewhat inaccessible variable is empathy, as it relates to impacting volunteer behavior (Stürmer, Snyder, Kropp, & Siem, 2006; Stürmer, Snyder, & Omoto, 2005). Work has been done to establish empathy as a variable of importance, however there is less said regarding the conditions under which empathy is learned. This is the stuff of behavior analysis. Training behavioral components, like perspective taking (Houmanfar & Ward, 2012), could be a missing link for recruiting and retaining volunteers.

For the remainder of the paper we will focus on how behavior analysts could approach volunteer behavior. First, the units and relevant controlling factors are considered, followed by a conceptual analysis of volunteerism at both the individual and systems levels. Within the discussion, we address the role of verbal behavior, specifically rule-governed behavior, as a vehicle for connecting the interdisciplinary models with behavioral principles.

Units of Analysis for Studying Volunteerism

When exploring a new area, identifying appropriate units of analysis directly impacts the integrity, generalizability, and external validity of the data produced with respect to their generalizability to the events as they occur naturally. Thompson and Lubinski (1986) eloquently describe the importance of carefully setting the parameters on complex behavioral events: "it follows that the way continuous behavioral repertoires are divided into fundamental units is critically important in determining the success of the entire scientific study of behavior" (p. 220). Both behavior analysis and behavioral systems analysis provide units that suitably address volunteer behavior at both the individual and group levels. Utilizing functional units in researching volunteer behavior at the individual and systemic levels has pragmatic value for the nonprofit agencies, policy makers, and other consumers interested in using scientific results to inform their decisions. This section will suggest an analysis of the volunteer event as a measurable unit and explore how volunteerism can be examined based on a functional definition.

Before suggesting some perspectives on volunteering, note that ultimately these parameters "must be shown empirically" (Thompson & Lubinski, 1986, p. 220). Defining the behavioral event based on topographical features loses the functional element, and may eventually prove ineffective. Thompson and Lubinski suggest that complex behavior is likely to fit within a combination of functional response classes and functions. Higher order reinforcement schedules likely play a role (i.e., multiply controlled behavior on multiple, concurrent schedules). That is to say, studying a complex pattern of behavior, volunteering, cannot be examined with unidimensional analyses. Experimental investigation will ultimately determine this notion, but it is reasonable to expect that when individuals volunteer, their behavior is not solely controlled by one particular reinforcer on one isolated intermittent schedule. As such, the reader should first exercise caution when reading this conceptual account of volunteer behavior, and recognize the need for experimental work.

Several factors need to be considered when identifying the parameters of a volunteer event. Defining volunteering as "unpaid work," as some have, fails to account for examples of prosocial activity that would not meet the common-sense criteria. While performing civic duties like jury duty or stopping at an occupied crosswalk are unpaid and service for the good of others, there are multiple legal contingencies maintaining that behavior. Philanthropic activity, too, although similar to volunteering, does not require the commensurate response cost. Donating money to a cause is presumably prosocial, but not necessarily an ongoing activity typically thought of as volunteer work. Regardless of what it may look like, volunteer behavior is generally accepted as action occurring outside of formal governmental contingencies and implies some time and effort spent.

Even excluding civic obligations and donations, volunteering can still take many forms. The topography of volunteer behavior varies depending on the context (e.g., culture, learning history, establishing operations) and the function (e.g., tangible, social, verbal) of that behavior. Volunteer behavior can be a solitary event (e.g., organizing a meal train for a family experiencing a recent loss) or could reflect a pattern of behavior (e.g., weekly mentoring through BBBS). In considering the aforementioned features of a volunteer event, a suggested behavioral definition of volunteering is any ongoing human behavior reinforced by improving the reinforcing conditions for others, outside of personal relationships, professional responsibilities and civic duties.

On the individual level of analysis of volunteer behavior, the behavioral unit fits into the threeterm contingency. The antecedent conditions that set the occasion for this operant response remain to be tested empirically; however, one may hypothesize that both general and specific factors influence volunteerism. Generally, the volunteer has a learning history in which positive social attention often follows volunteer behavior. Specific to the immediate volunteer event, establishing operations, such as deprivation of social attention (positive reinforcement) or a request made by a respected peer (negative reinforcement; e.g., to avoid judgment) could be responsible for evoking volunteer behavior. Other socially-mediated factors, such as modeling, may set the occasion for others to volunteer, in that seeing others contacting reinforcement for volunteering might make it more likely for the observer to volunteer in the future. Depending on the social and organizational context in which the individual volunteers, a number of positive and negative reinforcers are at work. Social praise, public recognition, and tokens for participation are all common examples of positive consequences for volunteering. For example, when volunteering for BBBS, public recognition is likely when Bigs, the mentors, are out with their Littles, in addition to seeing Littles explore new opportunities and contact new reinforcing conditions. Using units like the three-term contingency work best to describe the conditions under which individuals learn and maintain volunteer behavior.

At the systemic level, volunteer events could be examined as existing within both macrocontingencies and metacontingencies, the major units discussed in behavioral systems analysis. Malott and Glenn (2006) define a macrocontingency as, "the relation between the operant lineages of all people engaged in the cultural practice and the aggregate product" (p. 37). With a macrocontingency, the behavior analyst can evaluate how many individuals across organizations and cultures may be engaging in the same behaviors, despite separate functions and contingencies. For example, when many people mentor through BBBS, regardless of the conditions under which they volunteer, their volunteered time with their Littles have a measurable and cumulative impact on a societal scale.

The metacontingency as Malott and Glenn (2006) describe involves "contingent relations analogous to those in a [sic] operant contingency and it contains many operant contingencies within itself' (p. 38). The metacontingency relies on the notion of multiple individuals acting in an interlocked manner producing an aggregate product. The key feature of this unit is that "the recurring interrelations are due to operant contingencies in which the behavior of some people repeatedly function as the environment in the operant contingencies maintaining the behaviors of others" (p. 38). Using the metacontingency describes how one could assess individual impact on other's performance and how that interaction impacts the larger system (e.g., management practices, communication networks).

BBBS as a nonprofit organization is a part of a metacontingency, as shown in Figure 1. At the top of the figure, the "Socio-IBs" refer to the interlocking behaviors (i.e., where the consequence of one person's behavior acts as the antecedent for another person's behavior) of BBBS recruiting new Bigs and Littles. The BBBS employees interact with the Bigs, the Littles, and the Littles' families. If effective, the socio-IBs produce effective mentoring, and increase positive opportunities for impoverished children (i.e., the aggregate product). The more successful the aggregate product, the more visible the impact. This creates opportunities for communities to begin or continue supporting BBBS (which includes both Bigs and Littles). Consumer practices such as participating in the BBBS programs can be considered the macrocontingency of volunteering, contributing to the cumulative impact of volunteer services on the societal level. It is then through changes in donations, participation in fundraising events, and other outcomes that BBBS receives feedback which can alter both the initial interlocking behavioral contingencies for recruitment and how the organization continues to develop policies and strategies for growth. The process wherein organizational rules shape the Socio-IBs that produce the aggregate product is informed by the context of the organizational milieu" (Houmanfar, Rodgrigues, and Ward, 2010).

The metacontingency framework also takes into account the cultural milieu which sets the occasion for the metacontingency to be selected within the larger context (Houmanfar & Rodrigues, 2006). That is, using the ongoing example, the BBBS metacontingency operates and adapts based on what appropriate interventions and mentorship looks like in the region in which it operates. The more successfully BBBS functions at the metacontingency level, the more likely it will survive and flourish as a feature of larger cultural practices. The fact that BBBS has existed for more than 100 years in the United States suggests that its contribution to society is useful, effective, and appreciated. Using the macro- and metacontingency units becomes especially important when the desired outcome is large-scale change.

Having identified the parameters of investigative units, we will discuss the controlling factors responsible for volunteering on an individual and behavioral systemic level. The following sections suggest possible analyses for both levels given the current behavioral literature.

A Behavior Analytic Account of Volunteerism

The function of volunteer behavior is likely to be multiply controlled and maintained by a combination of verbal and social means. This section explores how related behavior analytic literature on cooperation, altruism, and contemporary theories of verbal behavior contribute to the conceptualization of volunteerism.

Volunteerism as Cooperation

Cooperation serves as a parsimonious explanation for volunteer behavior. It must be noted that the concept of cooperation is rarely specifically defined, nor is there much coherence among the definitions in the published literature (Guerin, 1994). Cooperation is generally conceived as behavior that collectively benefits the individual and the group. Or, as Skinner (1953/1965) described it, "the reinforcement of two or more individuals depends upon the behavior of both or all of them" (p. 311). Keller and Schoenfeld (1950) coined the earliest behavioral definition: where "the combined behavior of two or more organisms is needed to procure positive, or remove negative, reinforcement for either" (p. 357). The variations of these definitions all include the concurrent behavior of multiple individuals wherein a consequence is shared collectively; which Skinner summarizes concisely. As such, this paper will default to Skinner's definition of cooperation to analyze the class of behaviors known as "volunteering."

Both the colloquial conception of volunteerism and volunteer studies align with the behavioral definition of cooperation. As previously mentioned, volunteering benefits the volunteer as well as the community (Brown & Ferris, 2007; Brown et al., 2003; Harlow & Cantor, 1996; Post, 2005; Thoits & Hewitt, 2001), which seems to fit the behavioral account of cooperation. The relationship between the Big and the Little, referred to as a Match, is the basis for successful volunteer efforts within this particular non-profit organization. In addition to highlighting the numerous benefits for Littles resulting from a quality Match, BBBS lists the benefits Bigs can also expect. From providing "an excuse to do kid things again, like go to animated movies and ride go-carts," to "networking," to "the chance to make a difference," Bigs have the opportunity to contact reinforcement while arranging positively reinforcing conditions for their Littles ("The Benefits of Mentoring," 2012). In addition to contacting immediate positive reinforcement while being together as a Match, the longer and the higher quality the Match, the more the benefits accumulate over time to improve the lives of both parties.

Just as volunteerism can be conceptualized as cooperation, it can also be studied empirically with similar measures and procedures accepted in the cooperation literature. Cooperation has been discussed in behavior analysis, and typically quantified and measured according to the prisoner's dilemma game, which is a metaphorical situation to evaluate one's tendency to work for personal gain or mutual gain (Jones & Rachlin, 2009; Locey, Jones, & Rachlin, 2011; Locey, Safin, & Rachlin, 2013; Rachlin, 2002; Rachlin & Locey, 2011). In the prisoner's dilemma game, two individuals have two alternatives: to cooperate or defect. These two choices can create three results: high payout, no payout, or a moderate payout. In a one-time play of the prisoner's dilemma game, defecting results in the highest individual payout, provided that the other player selects the "cooperate" option, in which case the cooperator gets no payout. Over multiple trials, however, the highest payout for both parties is to continually select the cooperate option.

The results of these types of studies show that individuals are more likely to cooperate in situations that are eventually rewarded, perhaps at the expense of immediate individual rewards. Similar delayed consequences are observed in terms of volunteering. While a single outing of a Big with a Little may produce a small, temporary impact, regular activity for a prolonged period will produce cumulative positive effects, such as lasting behavior change in the Little (i.e., attending school more often, valuing education more, avoiding risky behaviors like drug and alcohol use). When the Big dedicates time to the Match, seeing visible improvement in their Little's academic and personal lives can be a powerfully reinforcing consequence.

Having a quantitative measure for cooperation for a simple choice task is helpful to investigate the conditions under which individuals cooperate. Using the empirical work already conducted, like with the prisoner's dilemma game, is a potential launching point for studying volunteerism. If it is the case that prolonged exposure to a social group promotes cooperative behavior, similar procedures could be adopted to investigate the role of social contingencies on volunteer retention.

Despite the behavioral work that has been done on cooperation, classic tasks like the prisoner's dilemma game do not fully capture the complex variables involved with volunteer behavior. The limited nature of the task and the extensive work done on it may also suggest that more should be done to create newer, more complex models for studying and understanding volunteerism. In particular, volunteer activity generally occurs without any programmed, tangible reinforcer. To enhance external validity of future cooperation studies, behavior analysts would do well to include more elaborate procedures utilizing more naturalistic contingencies.

Volunteerism as Altruism

Altruism is another potential framework to analyze volunteerism. Behavior analysts have explored this concept despite the potential barriers many scientists have with the notion of "altruism." Traditionally, altruism is defined as "behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species" ("Altruism", n.d.). A deterministic scientist would reject an explanation of altruistic behavior in terms of free will, and functionally speaking, behavior analysts would object to persistent behavior in the absence of reinforcement, if not the presence of highly punishing consequences. As such, the altruistic phenomenon can appear more like folklore than science.

Rachlin (2002) frames altruism in a way that can be studied empirically, without assuming supernatural entities. He states that "a truly altruistic act is always part of a pattern of acts (highly valued by both the actor and the community) particular components of which are dispreferred by the actor to their immediate alternatives" (p. 244). As he describes it, altruism consists of not a single act, but a pattern of behaviors that occurs under three specific conditions. When comparing a larger "whole" activity with a smaller "brief' activity, altruism occurs when the individual selects the whole activity under the following conditions: 1) the whole activity is preferred to a certain number of occurrences of the brief activity, 2) the brief activity is preferred to a fraction of the whole activity, and 3) a group benefits from the engagement with the whole activity, rather than the brief activity. Put in a volunteering example, Rachlin would call volunteering altruistic based on his three factors: 1) over a long time, the sum of volunteering would be preferred over the sum of shorter, easier, potentially more enjoyable activities (e.g., staying home, watching TV), 2) over a short amount of time, watching TV would be preferred over sustained volunteering, and 3) a community would benefit from volunteering over time, but not from staying home and watching TV. Rachlin's conditions for altruism are based on the philosophy that under certain situations the whole produces a more reinforcing consequence (i.e., teleological behaviorism). Rather than accepting that altruism lacks a reinforcing consequence, Rachlin indicates that the reinforcing value of altruistic acts, "is obtained only when such acts are grouped in patterns that are, as a whole, intrinsically valuable" (p. 244).

It is possible to conceive of volunteerism as working within the altruism construct, in that the larger, longer, less immediately reinforcing activity benefits a group and may be preferred by the individual over a smaller, briefer activity that may not result in the same social outcome. Like Rachlin's description, volunteerism is more likely to be a pattern of behavior, acting for the good of the group, in which a history of volunteering and acting consistently with social values provides the context for future volunteer actions to be reinforced. For example, one instance of working with a child at BBBS is not likely to produce much impact for either the Little or the Big; however, repeated outings are more likely to produce visible outcomes in the child's life and would more likely be supported and praised by the community.

Researchers interested in applying the methodologies from the altruism literature will find a wealth of information in delay and social discounting research. Rachlin and colleagues have set the precedent to study altruism within the delay discounting paradigm (Jones & Rachlin, 2009; Rachlin, 2002a; Rachlin & Jones, 2008; Rachlin & Locey, 2011; Yi, Charlton, Porter, Carter, & Bickel, 2011). Social discounting "measures the value to a person of a reward to another person at a given social distance" (Jones & Rachlin, 2009, p.191). Social discounting has been demonstrated in many studies by using a public goods game. A public goods game requires all participants to cooperate in order for the outcome to have the greatest benefit to the group. For example, a group of people are each given $10 dollars and are told they can contribute any part of that money to the group. Whatever contributions made by each individual to the group pool will be doubled and equally distributed back to the group, regardless of their contribution. The most utilitarian option is that all participants will contribute their entire amount, as that will yield the largest reward for the entire group. However, by choosing to keep the $10, the participant will still receive money back if others choose to contribute to the pool. It is important to note that anonymity, group size, and contextual factors are all variables to consider when observing the conditions under which people behave with respect to social discounting (Jones & Rachlin, 2009). Therefore, rather than viewing altruism as a dichotomous variable, delayed discounting procedures allow the investigator to study the degree to which individuals select altruistic options under certain conditions.

Empirically, volunteerism could also be studied using delay and social discounting methodologies. For example, using similar choice procedures, one could assess one's willingness to volunteer by asking participants to hypothetically donate different durations of time to a particular cause. Potentially such measures may correlate with volunteer maintenance. Similar to the weakness of the prisoner's dilemma game, however, these procedures do not help us understand the conditions under which volunteer behavior maintains. Developing a methodology for setting the occasion for altruistic behavior to occur, if possible, would greatly advance not only behavior science but also mainstream understanding of selfless acts.

In short, cooperation and altruism may contribute to future research in the volunteerism literature, but the methodologies developed in these areas do not fully overlap with the main focus of articles on volunteering. Investigators have already identified "values," "esteem enhancement," and "agendas for action," to name just a few, as primary functions for volunteer behavior (Snyder & Omoto, 2008). From a behavior analytic perspective, these factors would be evaluated as verbal stimuli and verbal behavior. Since the behavioral accounts of cooperation and altruism have not yet provided empirical analyses of verbal behavior within their frameworks, we will briefly review how verbal behavior, specifically rule-governed behavior, plays a role in developing and maintaining the volunteer repertoire.

The Role of Verbal Behavior

While some make the case that cooperative and altruistic acts occur among non-human species (Burkart, Fehr, Efferson, & van Schaik, 2007; Clutton-Brock, 2009), volunteering is a uniquely human activity, implying that verbal behavior plays a significant role in repertoire development and maintenance of elaborate prosocial and cooperative behaviors in humans (Hayes & Sanford, 2014). As previously discussed, volunteering rarely results in achieving the end goal, earning rewards, or even social recognition. Verbal behavior is, in many instances, governed by rules, both explicit and implicit. Rule-governed behavior may be able to explain the conditions under which individuals volunteer when no direct-acting contingencies are apparent. For example, an individual might generate the implicit rule, "If I volunteer, I am a good person." Therefore, the consequence of volunteering is being a good person, which reinforces the rule follower's volunteer behavior.

In addition to rule-governed behavior, relational responding can explain one's history of responding to certain verbal stimuli. Relational responding involves the relation between two (or more) stimuli in arbitrary ways (Mattaini, 2013). Though the word, "volunteer" has no inherent connection to the behavior of volunteering, the relationship between the two has been established by language. This relationship is called an "equivalence relation" and in most cases involves words, concepts, conditions, and entities. To expand our example, perhaps the word "volunteer" is in a relation with the concept of "good." Given that the word "volunteer" is already associated with the behavior, volunteering is now associated with "good." The three stimuli are now in a relational network with each other (Mattaini, 2013). Relational responding based on arbitrary equivalence relations is one of the foundational components of Relational Frame Theory.

Relational Frame Theory (RFT) can begin to explain the acquisition and maintenance of volunteer behavior when more traditionally conceived reinforcers are not immediately present. The distinct advantage of taking an RFT approach is that it allows for a fully functional account of verbal behavior for both the speaker and listener, and affords experimental analysis of verbal behavior to a greater degree than the Skinnerian approach (Hayes, Gifford, & Hayes, 1998, p. 255). Thus, this paper will analyze the influences of verbal behavior as interpreted through an RFT lens.

Part of RFT posits that verbal stimuli are inherently arbitrary and take on functional stimulus properties given a learning history associated with those stimuli (Hayes et al., 2006; Hayes, 2004; Steele & Hayes, 1991). Simply put, verbal stimuli can function as reinforcers (via transfer of stimulus function) given a history of those particular verbal stimuli being paired with reinforcing consequences. From this perspective we can look at words as a potential verbal reinforcers, which refer to "events that function as reinforcers because of their participation in relational frames" (Hayes, Gifford, & Hayes, 1998, p. 262). Through transformation of function, the statement on the BBBS website, "By helping children develop supportive relationships with positive role models, we make a direct and lasting impact on their lives," may have reinforcing properties when a person fills out an application to become a Big. Likewise, working with a child at BBBS, Bigs are told, "Littles matched with Bigs are 46% less likely to use illegal drugs" ("Big impact-Proven results," 2016), which may maintain volunteering even when it becomes inconvenient, and even though they will likely never come into contact with the "lasting" consequence of their efforts.

The issue of morality fits well into the RFT framework, as well. Morality, through a behavioral lens, would not be considered a cause for cooperation or altruism (Soreth, 2011), but perhaps a mediator of verbal behavior. Viewing morality as a subset of cooperation is also consistent outside of behavior analysis (Tomasello & Vaish, 2013). Hayes, Gifford, and Hayes (1998) discuss the development of moral behavior from the perspective of RFT, which relates to a similar, more contemporary article on the evolution of cooperative behavior as is relates to language and cognition (Hayes & Sanford, 2014). By reviewing the role of language in cooperative and moral repertoires, a greater understanding about the origins and maintenance of volunteer behavior emerges. Hayes and colleagues offer an in-depth analysis of moral behavior as rule-governed behavior (RGB). In their analysis of moral development, Hayes and colleagues discuss moral behavior based on RFT's three classes of RGB: pliance, tracking, and augmenting. Space precludes a thorough overview of the article; however, the main points will be summarized below with definitions as they pertain to the development of volunteer behavior. Readers interested in a more thorough introduction to rules from an RFT perspective are encouraged to read the original article (Hayes, Gifford, & Hayes, 1998).

Volunteering functions as pliance if the mediator of the contingency is social, usually a respected person, particularly if that person is in a position of authority. An example of this would be when a boss offers opportunities for employees to engage in extra "voluntary" activities, the colloquial work expression being "voluntold" to do something. Just as Hayes, Gifford, and Hayes (1998) liken moral behavior to tracking, volunteering could be analyzed as a form of tracking, provided that the volunteer activity led the individual to more efficiently contact naturally occurring and available reinforcers. Tracking fits well with many reports on volunteerism, in that volunteer activity correlates with improved health and well-being and increased social support networks.

What seems to fit the best, however, is using the framework of augmentals for understanding the verbal influence on volunteer behavior. The augmental "is most important for the establishment of abstract consequences such as fairness, justice, peace, or righteousness" (Hayes, Gifford, & Hayes, 1998, p. 262). If people attribute their volunteer behavior to the notion of improving the community, minimizing disparities, or otherwise some sentiment of "giving back," they engage in verbal behavior as a derived verbal relation which enhances the reinforcing value of another otherwise distant and weak reinforcing consequence. To use mentoring as an example, the BBBS organization may tell their volunteers that their mentoring influence could keep their Little off drugs. The event of preventing drug use is a potentially distant consequence, if it even occurs; thus the rule maintains or enhances the reinforcing value of a consequence that is not present.

In continuing to look at volunteerism as being maintained by rule governance, volunteering could also result from values clarification. The term values, as meant here, refers to "a type of rulegoverned behavior that specifies remote consequences and the general behaviors that ultimately (the individual presumes) result in contact with those consequences" (Herbst & Houmanfar, 2009, p. 56). As previously stated, when volunteering for a cause, the consequence is often remote, thus the value statement acts as a formative augmental. Hayes, Bunting, Herbst, Bond, and BarnesHolmes (2006) summarize the act of defining values as, "link[ing] current behavior to desired global qualities of ongoing actions" (p. 16). For example, individuals may value "social justice," and in viewing the social disparities of impoverished families may start mentoring at BBBS as a way to continuously advocate (i.e., ongoing action) for improved well-being for children in poverty (i.e., social justice as a desired global quality).

Although an analysis of an individual's volunteering allows for a more granular account, it is also useful to investigate volunteering within the larger context. The volunteer performs in an engineered environment, arranged specifically to manage multiple volunteers acting in concert with a common goal. When developing interventions that will significantly impact nonprofit agencies and their services, systemic manipulations may be more effective than conducting a functional analysis of volunteering for each individual participant. A systemic perspective provides a higher level of analysis, which may lead to the development of more pragmatic and cost-effective solutions to the issues surrounding volunteer management.

A Behavioral Systems Analysis of Multiple Volunteers

Although the size of the group may vary, all volunteers belong to a larger system. Unfortunately, as discussed in the introduction, many leaders in organizations underestimate the value of volunteers and how to manage them more effectively (Eisner et al., 2009). Ultimately, this is a systemic issue not a problem with individual volunteers. If the system in which individuals volunteer is not capable of reinforcing the pattern of volunteer behavior, people leave, resources deplete, and the agency bears the burden of understaffed, underpaid workers.

Behavior systems analysis (BSA) has a strong foundation based on the principles of behavior science that would allow organizations to apply evidence-based systemic procedures in order to create nurturing environments necessary for people to thrive. Prosocial leadership and organizational rule generation reinforcing prosocial behaviors are integral factors to consider when evaluating strategies for cultural change (Houmanfar, Alavosius, Morford, Herbst, & Reimer, 2015). In order to do so, a larger cultural analysis of creating and sustaining prosocial environments is necessary. As Biglan and Glenn (2013) note, the science of BSA is poised to translate its existing knowledge on how to create prosocial environments into widespread cultural benefit.

Volunteerism within the Macrocontingency

Volunteerism fits within a macrocontingency framework, as described in M. Malott and Glenn (2006). Viewing collective volunteer behaviors within the scope of a macrocontingency may be helpful, if the goal is to take a wider view of social issues and assess the global impact volunteering may have within a culture. Since all volunteers have separately developed their own repertoire with respect to donating their time and money to a larger formalized group, the volunteer repertoire of the individual has an "operant lineage." M. Malott and Glenn state that a macrocontingency "does not imply that the product functions as a consequence that maintains the behavior constituting the practice [...] The individual lineages of the various people can be selected by local contingencies applied to the relevant behavior" (p. 37). From the macrocontingency framework, we can better appreciate how the volunteers' aggregate product has a substantial impact on our community.

However, M. Malott and Martinez (2006) comment, "a behavioral contingency is to organizational change like a drop of water is to an ocean" (p. 2). In other words, behavior within a macrocontingency consists of individual behavioral repertoires that are functionally unrelated. Intervening in a way that would change the cumulative product would result in setting contingencies for each individual. The underlying function of volunteering relies on a larger, aggregate goal that can only be achieved by the group of individuals working toward a common outcome. The product of one volunteer at BBBS is the support of one child, which is no doubt meaningful to the volunteer and the child, but has no larger effect. However, the consequence of many volunteers, across many cities, produces a larger aggregate product, which in this case is a generation of supported children. Biglan (2015) shows that the common outcome of this nurtured, aggregate product results in benefits that far exceed the individual.

Volunteerism within the Metacontingency

Placing coordinated volunteer activity within a metacontingency will better allow for systemic interventions that can be applied at one level and trickle through the organization. Metacontingencies involve interlocking behavioral contingencies, where the consequence of one person's reoccurring behavior serves as the antecedent for another person's reoccurring behavior, within a cultural context (see Figure 1 for an example). Houmanfar and colleagues (2010) suggest three processes of selection within the metacontingency: socio-interlocking behaviors within the organization, aggregate product by the consumer, and effective-group rules by the organization. Effective group rules within the organization requires a communication network in the organization that is clear, unambiguous, and open (Houmanfar & Johnson, 2004). Explicit, wellestablished rules within the organization set the occasion for interlocking behavioral contingencies that enhance productivity and lead to more accurate self-generated rules (Johnson, Houmanfar, & Smith, 2010).

At the metacontingency level, due to interlocking behavioral contingencies, it is possible to intervene at one level of the organization, which then sets the occasion for behavior change in individuals who work within that level of the hierarchy but are not directly influenced by the program change. This way one can look at multiple levels of the volunteer system, the interlocking behavioral contingencies necessary for volunteering to take place, and how successful volunteer activity can contribute to the overall aggregate product that is produced to the receiving system (e.g., the public).

Using the perspective of the metacontingency, one can examine volunteers behaving within the context of the nonprofit organization. For example, explicit and accurate feedback from consumers facilitates more effective rule generation within the organization to which volunteers can more effectively respond. When a BBBS supervisor provides feedback to a Big, the Big can then provide higher quality mentorship to the Little. Higher quality mentorship may lead to better Match rapport with a Little. Satisfied families then are more likely to provide positive feedback to the organization. A breakdown within the metacontingency can result in an array of negative consequences such as high turnover rates of Bigs, dissatisfied Littles, and difficulty recruiting new Bigs.

Attempting to establish individual contingencies for people to engage in volunteer behavior is hardly feasible as opposed to changing the organization in which volunteer behavior occurs. 90

According to the national survey in 2014 ("Volunteering and Civic Engagement in the United States," 2014), more than 62 million people in the United States volunteer their time to local and national causes. The primary issue with volunteerism then appears to be one of volunteer retention rather than volunteer recruitment. Our culture values participating in nonprofit endeavors, and there are many people willing to participate. By taking a BSA approach, nonprofit agencies could assess their greatest barriers to volunteer retention and arrange proper contingencies to manage employee and volunteer performance alike. By setting up interlocking behavioral contingencies, connecting the paid staff and the volunteers, the organization is more likely to be successful in producing a higher quality, more cost-efficient aggregate product (e.g., supported youth).

Volunteerism within a Cultural Analysis

There has been a significant amount of theoretical and case study work conducted in creating meaningful change at the larger, cultural level (Biglan, 2009; Biglan & Glenn, 2013; M. Malott & Glenn, 2006; M. Malott & Martinez, 2006; Mattaini, 2013). When looking at current social issues, one may focus on prevention (Biglan, 2003, 2009; Biglan & Glenn, 2013), or, reinforcing sociallyvalued practices (M. Malott & Martinez, 2006; Mattaini, 2013). Either way, social and cultural change is inevitable. By employing the work of BSA, it may be possible to arrange the environment in ways that guide positive cultural change more swiftly. One way to arrange the environment to promote positive social change is to create advocacy groups that Mattaini (2015) suggests be, "grounded in behavioral systems science committed to the intentional construction, shaping, and maintenance of behavioral systems dynamics" (p.9).

An important part of the behavioral system is the cultural milieu that provides the context for a metacontingency to occur. The contextual variables may be any number of environmental factors (i.e., laws, policies, traditions, competition). As Houmanfar and Rodrigues (2006) point out, an important factor in analyzing any metacontingency is to look at the first term of that contingency, which is the cultural environment. Consider that there are 3 million children under the age of 6 living in extreme poverty in the United States (Robbins, Stagman, & Smith, 2012). The cultural milieu, therefore, influences both organizational practices and the reinforcing effectiveness of certain products. This context establishes the demand for organizations like BBBS. Metacontingency is therefore a way to examine organizational processes that respond to cultural selection and have a larger impact on cultural survival and practice. While we look to cultural selection as a means to analyze patterns of consumer and cultural practice, we must examine individual patterns of behavior and the immediate reinforcing consequences within organizational practices. Figure 2 is a model introduced by Mattaini (2013) that highlights the key contextual, structural, and consequential variables associated with recruiting and retaining individual volunteers. The key factors in successfully recruiting and supporting volunteers within an organizational setting include the promotion of prosocial behavior within the cultural setting, the organizational setting, and the individual reinforcing consequences associated with doing so.

Volunteering, like other socially-maintained activities, lacks conspicuous contingencies that shape and maintain the behavior, unless specifically programmed by the institution. Many cultural practices are described by R. Malott (1988) as being shaped by indirect contingencies which are "too delayed, too improbable, or too small, though they may be of cumulative significance" (p. 185). In lieu of more tangible reinforcers that are delivered directly with performance, one's learning history with respect to helping others, and serving an abstract cause, seems to be mediating both social action and volunteerism (Mattaini, 2013). Just like the cultural practices that form with a nonviolent activist group, groups of volunteers create a social network that can develop cultural practices that influence volunteer participation. Volunteers, and similarly those involved in collective nonviolent efforts, most often behave with respect to immediate issues rather than the ultimate outcome (Mattaini, 2003). Houmanfar and colleagues (2015) suggest shifting the emphasis to establishing organizational practices that support and maintain prosocial behavior and eliminate aversive conditions. Leadership practice is essential in shifting organizational values through communication, motivating the workforce, and ensuring the necessary resources to do so (Houmanfar et al., 2015). When leadership cultivates a more reinforcing system, volunteers can then respond to immediate contingencies resulting in long-term benefits to the system and ultimately those served.

Conclusion

Investigating volunteer behavior and the conditions under which volunteers sustain their engagement within a system of volunteers aligns well with behavior analysis. While many contributors in various fields have developed models to predict prosocial behavior, there is still a need to consider the controlling variables that shape and maintain volunteering as a unique class of behavior within arranged organizational contingencies. The current paper has provided a conceptual account of the volunteer event, speculated potential relevant antecedents and consequences, and provided a suggested functional definition from a behavioral perspective. With a framework in place, behavior analysts are well poised to study volunteerism empirically. More behavioral research is needed to help identify the behavioral principles related to volunteerism and how to utilize the principles to better shape and maintain volunteer behavior.

There are numerous opportunities to design and implement empirical studies in the area of volunteerism both at the individual and systemic levels. At the individual level, replication and extension of the discounting work on altruism could prove helpful in identifying how contextual variables influence the likelihood of individuals to participate and maintain engagement in a volunteering activity. Much could be done in the assessment of volunteer behavior such as detailed descriptive analyses and functional analyses, which could then lead to new interventions for volunteer retention. At the systemic level, potential basic and applied work could be orchestrated to study volunteer activity within the context of a macrocontingency or a metacontingency. Various manipulations within a real or hypothetical organization may reveal important interrelations between hired and volunteer staff, or the necessary interlocking behavioral contingencies that cumulatively produce an aggregate product.

Studying volunteerism via basic, applied, correlational, or experimental means poses some legitimate barriers. When considering the unique issues of measuring volunteer activity, the limitations in the literature thus far become instantly understandable. For one, external validity in highly-controlled laboratory experiments is difficult to achieve. Producing predictably sustained volunteer activity in an analogue study is arguably different than in an applied setting with greater time delays and more salient competing contingencies. Given the difficulties, it may be a more efficient and effective approach to study volunteerism in applied settings, following the mainstream volunteerism studies. From an applied perspective, however, controlled experiments are also difficult. Feasibility often comes into question since many non-profit organizations are small in size, overworked, underpaid, and traditionally underequipped with proper technology to measure the target behavior. Additionally, the inability to pay competitively and excessive workloads result in challenges for retention ("2015 Nonprofit Employment Practices Survey Results", 2015). Perhaps, the best option for effective research in this area would be to work with an organization that not only has a history of success and sustainability within a tight financial market, but also values the collection and analysis of behavior patterns within its system.

If behavior analysts, specifically those interested in organizational behavior management and BSA, developed a behavioral perspective on volunteer behavior and how volunteers function within systems, the potential benefits could be limitless. Biglan (2014) argues that the significance and level of meaningful change of any social movement, which includes the behavior of volunteers, is contingent on the effectiveness of advocacy organizations to mobilize people to take action. There is clearly a societal need for the maintenance of volunteer activity, yet we know comparatively little on how to effectively sustain volunteer engagement.

In expanding analysis to the realm of volunteerism and non-profit agencies, the field of behavior analysis may find new opportunities to become more accessible to the public. Behavior science offers newly established interventions geared toward cultural change, and examines the conditions responsible for establishing lasting behavior change (Mattaini, 2006). Dissemination of behavior analytic principles, however, is a common concern among academics and practitioners alike (Freedman, 2015; Hayes & Thomas, 2004; Hyten, 2009). The more we can produce research and programs for organizations that rely on volunteerism, the more likely non-behavior analytic populations will consume and appreciate behavior analytic work. By using behavior science to improve our understanding of volunteerism, the field of behavior analysis may potentially expose a new population to its pragmatic perspective. Dissemination of scientific principles is paramount to the field's survival; the more behavioral research proves to be necessary for solving complex social issues, the more likely behavior analysis will be demanded in the future.

As behavior analysis and behavioral systems analysis become more robust, behavior analysts are in a prime position to start tackling larger societal issues that to date have not been resolved in other disciplines. Volunteerism, viewed from both the individual and systemic levels, is one such area where behavior science could contribute substantially. The present paper showcased one such area in dire need of improvement: the significant proportion of children living in poverty who lose out on necessary educational and social supports. While organizations like BBBS contribute significantly to supporting and educating at-risk youth, unleashing the power of behavior science could lead to more rapid and focused societal interventions. If behavior scientists can develop the procedures and technologies needed by these integral institutions, our culture will be all the better for it.

Subject: At risk youth; Behavior; Quality of life; Polls & surveys; Cooperation; Studies; Community support; Personality; Youth organizations; Systems analysis; Community service; Retention; Altruism; Morality; Social psychology; Volunteers; Public sector; Nonprofit organizations

Location: United States--US

Publication title: Behavior and Social Issues; Chicago

Volume: 25

Pages: 77-98

Number of pages: 22

Publication year: 2016

Publication date: 2016

Publisher: Walden Fellowship, Inc.

Place of publication: Chicago

Country of publication: United States, Chicago

Publication subject: Sociology, Psychology

ISSN: 10649506

Source type: Scholarly Journals

Language of publication: English

Document type: Journal Article

DOI:  http://dx.doi.org/10.5210/bsi.v.25i0.6739

ProQuest document ID: 1914859901

Document URL:  https://search.proquest.com/docview/1914859901?accountid=10932

Copyright: Copyright Walden Fellowship, Inc. 2016

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1. CORPORATE VOLUNTEERING: TRENDS, BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES. CURRENT SITUATION IN ROMANIA

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Author: Păceşilă, Mihaela11 The Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Piata Romana, 6, Bucharest, Romania  [email protected]

Publication info: Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management ; Bucharest  Vol. 12, Iss. 2,  (May 2017): 19-29.

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Abstract:

Corporate volunteering supports and encourages employees' involvement in community. The paper provides a better understanding of how volunteering can be used in business practices and summarizes the key benefits and challenges of corporate volunteering. Furthermore, the paper offers a broader perspective to the current corporate volunteering practice in Romania highlighting that although it shows an upward trend, it is not as prevalent as in other countries in the world.

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Abstract

Corporate volunteering supports and encourages employees' involvement in community. The paper provides a better understanding of how volunteering can be used in business practices and summarizes the key benefits and challenges of corporate volunteering. Furthermore, the paper offers a broader perspective to the current corporate volunteering practice in Romania highlighting that although it shows an upward trend, it is not as prevalent as in other countries in the world.

Keywords: corporate volunteering, Romania

1.INTRODUCTION

The contemporary society is facing many difficulties with regards to social problems solving (Begum and Moinuddin, 2010; Burlacu, 2011, Becerra Alonso et al., 2016). In this context, the volunteer activities promoted by the three sectors (nonprofit, public and business) have recorded significant participation growth (Basil et al., 2009; Paço and Nave, 2013). Moreover, increasingly more companies undertake voluntary work as part of their corporate social responsibility policy (Etzioni, 1999) in order to support nonprofit organizations' causes or to answer some of the society problems (Allen, 2003; Paço and Nave, 2013).

Any effort made by business organizations (we can also include public institutions and nongovernmental organizations) for stimulating and urging employees and/or former employees (currently retired) to perform voluntary work in community as part of corporate social responsibility projects, is called corporate volunteering (Kotler and Lee, 2005; Päcesilä, 2016). In general, corporate volunteering is regarded socially as the purest and beneficial form of corporate involvement (Iamandi and Filip, 2014).

Corporate Volunteering has various name in literature such as employer supported volunteering/workplace volunteering, community volunteering or employee volunteering, as well as employee community involvement. It facilitates collaboration between business and nongovernmental sector and helps the profit sector to integrate social and environmental issues in the business structure and to interact with stakeholders (Procopie, 2012; VSA and RCS, 2014).

Many companies consider that volunteering is an integral part of the overall business plan because it contributes to achieving and maintaining a high level of employee participation. It could also bring certain benefits for companies, employees and communities in which they live and work. Moreover, corporate volunteering enables companies to show their commitment to the community and thus to their customers who are community members (VOLUM, 2016). Corporate volunteers undertake various activities, depending on their skills and talents, while companies allow them to work as volunteers during the program and offer them additional material or logistical assistance (CVE, 2011).

Corporate volunteering is usually found in large corporations and companies (Bäbutäu, 2014). However, the small and medium-sized companies also involve their employees in such activities. In all cases the company is the one who will bear the expenses on voluntary actions. Nevertheless, not all companies are interested in volunteering, and each company has a different policy on volunteer programs (VOLUM, 2016).

Practicing corporate volunteering, as part of corporate social responsibility, transforms companies into organizations with a positive impact in society (Muthuri et al., 2009; Gligor-Cimpoieru and Munteanu, 2014). The employers provide information in the field and allow the employees to dedicate their working time to volunteer programs.

Taking into account the type of the program, employer supported volunteering takes the following forms (Federatia VOLUM, 2014a):

1. Activities organized entirely by the company.

2. Activities organized by the company in partnership with a nonprofit organization

3. Activities organized by nonprofit entities without company involvement

In the first two cases the companies develop social responsibility activities alone or in partnership, and employees engage in volunteer activities during their working time. However, the company establishes the period and the field of volunteers' engagement.

The society expects NGOs carry out projects in order to address social needs that the state cannot satisfy, but their resources are limited. That is why, the economic actors should develop partnerships with them in order to provide the nonprofit sector with the resources needed for projects (Bortun et al., 2011).

In the third case, companies give employees days off or time off in order to involve in volunteering activities in nonprofit organizations chosen by them. Moreover, the employees can choose the field as well as the period of volunteering, provided that they prove those hours were dedicated to volunteering. However, it is recommended that employees involve in volunteer programs consistent with the strategic directions of social responsibility established by the company. Each company should decide freely on this aspect.

Corporate volunteering raises some questions. Taking into account that the employer provides paid time to employees to participate in such activities, the question is whether this situation can be regarded as volunteering activity. The answer is positive because the organization contributes to community development by offering paid time off, and the employee involves on its own initiative. That is why the literature uses the words employee involvement in community or employer supported volunteering instead of corporate volunteering.

Any corporate volunteer program should take into account the employees' desire to take part or not. The social responsibility activities carried out with employees' compulsory involvement cannot be considered volunteering activities, but team building or leisure and relaxation activities.

Any employee has the right to engage in the company's volunteer programs depending on the places available. Before the involvement, he should have enough information about the beneficiaries and responsibilities assumed. Moreover, even if the action is carried out by the company or in partnership with an NGO, the employee is entitled to occupational safety training in accordance with his duties.

At the end of the volunteering activity, the company should focus on two aspects:

■ Recognizing the employees' contribution (internal gala ceremonies, letters of gratitude from the general manager, etc.), in order to enhance the desire to be involved in the future;

■ Evaluating and monitoring the results of volunteering, in other words measuring the impact of activities carried out by nongovernmental organizations, beneficiaries and employees.

2. THE CHALLENGES OF CORPORATE VOLUNTEERING

Corporate volunteering should face several challenges (Cîmpeanu, 2013; Tara lui Andrei, n.d.):

■ limited time regarding employee engagement

In general, the companies involve in volunteer projects because employees show a greater willingness to such activities. However, it is possible that corporate volunteers do not have the same availability as nongovernmental organizations' volunteers. That is why the development of projects should take into account this aspect.

■ identification of suitable volunteer programs

The areas where employees can usually volunteer are those where the company has defined its strategic directions of social responsibility. It is obvious that every company has autonomy in this regard (VSA and RCS, 2014), especially since some risks may occur: the activity may have little impact in the community or negative effects. Moreover, as regards the community needs, an improper volunteer program could significantly reduce the company's scarce resources and even ruin its relationship with the community (Volunteering Victoria, 2014).

Although in some cases the employees can choose their own area of involvement, they are not allowed to take part in racist or discriminatory actions, religious and political events or meetings affecting public order, etc.

■ identification of NGOs having capacity to receive volunteers

Although the voluntary work is not paid, volunteers' involvement in NGOs' activities requires a lot of expenses (workspace, volunteer coordinator, etc.). Therefore, any volunteer program requires the development of a budget accurately detailing the costs involved (Pro Vobis, 2003). However, some organizations cannot cover the program costs, opting either for its cancellation or for its reevaluation (Päcesilä, 2016).

The implementation of corporate volunteering will lead, inevitably, to changes in the organization's procedures (Sanchez-Hernandez and Miranda, 2011). Moreover, in order to avoid difficulties, the company should establish rules concerning the following issues (VOLUM, 2016):

■ the maximum number of a department's employees who can volunteer at the same time without disturbing the company's activities.

■ the maximum number of voluntary hours established with the chief consent and notified to Human Resources Department.

■ the employees eligible for this type of activity (with employment contract of definite and indefinite period)

■ a certain level of employees qualifications in order to be involved in voluntary work (for example, the truants should not be accepted)

■ submission of evidence regarding the involvement in volunteering activities.

Any volunteering activity requires assessing and monitoring the results. The benefits of volunteering activities involving employees are difficult to quantify. Therefore, it is important to measure the impact of the activity on the nonprofit organizations, beneficiaries and employees (VSA and RCS, 2014).

3. THE BENEFITS OF CORPORATE VOLUNTEERING

Corporate volunteering has several benefits (Samuel et al., 2013), both for the community and for employers and employees (Walsh, 2005; Sanchez-Hernandez and Gallardo-Vazquez, 2013; Procopie, 2014). Thus, this type of volunteering contributes to meeting certain needs of employees in the business sector:

■ improving professional performance;

■ generating change;

■ meeting new people;

■ contributing to society development;

■ learning new skills (Allen, 2003; Bartsch, 2012; Paço and Nave, 2013) which could be used in various fields (the transition to other jobs), especially to create and work in team (Volunteering Victoria, 2014).

The person is taken out of the comfort zone, required to work under completely new conditions, build relationships with different people and develop special skills later used in the company (Sgarcitu, 2014). Moreover, Allen (2012) finds an increase in employees' self-esteem due to using their skills for useful projects and for other people's benefit.

As regards the community, the contribution of corporate volunteering refers to: reducing poverty, increasing prosperity, strengthening social cohesion, generating trust and solidarity, identifying and solving community problems, enhancing civic-mindedness and interaction in the community, generating similar initiatives among other organizations, etc.

Corporate volunteering has long-term beneficial effects on the company leading to: (Procopie, 2012, Päcesilä, 2015; Päcesilä, 2016):

■ developing a better prepared workforce as regards the company's activities

Corporate volunteering allows employees to develop new skills (communication, work in team) which are difficult to acquire through traditional formal training. According to studies, employees' involvement in volunteer programs increases their morale and loyalty to the company. Other advantages refer to acquiring skills in management time, data collection and analysis (Procopie, n.d.; Tuffrey, 1995).

■ motivating employee

The employees become more committed to the company and to its values and interact more with each other (Sgarcitu, 2014).

■ increasing organization's visibility in the community

Corporate volunteer programs contribute to improving community perception regarding the company's activity (Allen, 2003; Mittal et al, 2008; Nies, 2011), increasing trust and attracting new investors to its projects.

■ making efficient investment in the community where the company operates

The companies want to invest and operate in stable and healthy communities, with effective education systems (Trequattrini et al, 2015) as well as low poverty and crime. Therefore, their interest across the development of the community is very high. The employee involvement in community enhances social support and increases understanding of the challenges in the community. On the other hand, it could create opportunities for volunteers who do not have a job. Moreover, it could build stronger partnerships between business and nongovernmental sector, with substantial gains for both sides: sponsorships, workspaces, advertising, etc.

Other advantages for the companies with tradition in corporate volunteering refer to: strengthening employees' relationships, increasing employees' attachment to the organization, thereby reducing their migration to competition, increasing employees' efficiency, reducing the hierarchical barriers between senior management and the execution.

4. OVERVIEW OF THE CORPORATE VOLUNTEERING IN ROMANIA

Taking into account the population ageing, corporate volunteering becomes more important. In a few decades, its practice in Romania could provide a mass of pensioners volunteers, still in power, with satisfactory income, with higher education. This people could provide support to the other elderly people, which, according to predictions, will make up one third of the population in 2050 (Sgarcitu, 2011).

Romania's first corporate volunteer programs were developed by multinational companies that had come up with models used by other countries. The activities carried out by employees were seasonal and more frequent during the holidays. Like almost every important concept quickly assimilated, this type of volunteering was initially imposed more as a trend, than as a result of full awareness of community needs. However, more and more companies have realized over time that these activities could bring an important image capital and began to develop strategies and programs.

Currently, according to studies, corporate volunteering is not as widespread in Romania as in other countries in the world. Furthermore, it is used mainly in urban environment and for local projects (Centras, n.d.). However, corporate social responsibility is on an upward slope in Romania, especially in renowned companies ( lmparte.ro , 2012).

This upward trend is due to the involvement of an increasingly number of companies which gradually leads to increasing corporate volunteer initiatives. This category includes large nationwide coverage companies as well as corporations which borrow CSR policies from parent companies or identify volunteering opportunities for their employees and allocate resources for this purpose. ln addition, there are also sporadic initiatives among SMEs which are annually involved in one activity (Marcu, 2014).

However, currently, there are few companies supporting volunteering in Romania. According to a study about corporate social responsibility conducted by Centras (n.d.) in five (Bucharest Ilfov, North East, North West, West, Centre) of the eight development regions in Romania, only 10.96% of companies are interested in community volunteer programs. As regards the area of involvement, most of the companies have opted for education, health, environment and employment because of many problems that have been lately reported.

In Romania, the use of this type of volunteering is not very easy because of the existing lacuna in the legal framework. Moreover, the labor legislation is quite rigid in some aspects. In general, NGOs and companies operate in parallel because they do not interact each other or fail to identify a common way of action beneficial to both parties (Federatia VOLUM, 2014b).

However, the companies interested in corporate volunteering may contact the nongovernmental organization Pro Vobis. In light of its mission to develop volunteering in Romania as a solution to the society problems, Pro Vobis is aimed at unlocking the potential of companies, responsible actors in the communities where they operates, in order to jointly develop innovative effective corporate volunteer programs (Pro Vobis, 2016).

This organization provides a range of services to companies (Marcu, 2014):

■ organization of corporate volunteering activities (during the working program);

■ evaluation of the employees' interests and consultancy for developing volunteer programs in accordance with the employees interests and the company's CSR policy;

■ training for employees (volunteers, coordinators, CSR experts) on different subjects: development of civic competences, volunteer program management in CSR context, employer supported volunteering;

■ non-formal and teambuilding activities through volunteering;

■ matching services to organizations or institutions that need volunteers;

■ development of customized databases (information or multimedia) on topics of volunteering;

■ presentations, seminars and conferences on volunteering topics, knowledge events for companies wishing to engage employees in volunteering and for NGOs developing programs for these needs.

Although in Romania there is not a culture of corporate volunteering and especially of corporate social responsibility, there are a lot of prerequisites for its development: multinational companies with a long tradition in the development of social programs, journalists interested in writing about companies involved in social activities, citizens interested in solving the communities' problems (Dobrea, 2006).

5. CONCLUSIONS

Corporate volunteering has massive potential to build positive business outcomes and to increase employee morale and retention. It also produces positive effects on NGOs and citizens. More and more companies develop their business taking into account its contribution to the environment or society. In this context, promoting volunteering among companies' employees becomes a necessity. It should be seen both as a way to implement corporate social responsibility and as an integral part of the business strategy, especially for increasing the employees' loyalty to the company.

Given the human, material and financial resources involved, corporate volunteering could cover the demand for social services in society. Its success or failure depends on the entities involved (companies, NGOs), but also on employees and citizens. Moreover, legislative framework, economic, social and political context could contribute to raising awareness of the society on the importance of this type of volunteerism.

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Subject: Nongovernmental organizations--NGOs; Economic value added; Community; Working hours; Volunteers; Employees; Social responsibility; Management reviews; Society; Employers; Nonprofit organizations

Location: Romania

Publication title: Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management; Bucharest

Volume: 12

Issue: 2

Document URL:  https://search.proquest.com/docview/1915760524?accountid=10932

Copyright: Copyright Research Centre in Public Administration & Public Services May 2017

Last updated: 2018-05-17

Database: ProQuest Central Essentials; Publicly Available Content Database

Bibliography

Mihaela Păceşilă. (2017). CORPORATE VOLUNTEERING: TRENDS, BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES. CURRENT SITUATION IN ROMANIA. Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management, 12(2), 19-29. Retrieved from  https://search.proquest.com/docview/1915760524?accountid=10932

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