LITERATURE REVIEW

Transformational Leaders and Adolescent Volunteers: Their Visions, Our Children

Uzi Sasson

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Hagai Katz Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Organizations that employ adolescent volunteers matter, since these are mission-driven organizations, which represent certain visions. These visions are expressed in every aspect of their management, including how they mobilize, socialize and lead adolescent volunteers. We analyze these visions and how they are manifested the treatment of adolescent volunteers through in-depth interviews with the organizations’ leaders. Different approaches were identified which carry ethical repercussions for the adolescent volunteers, including confounded ends and means, tension between respect and paternalism towards volunteers, and even intentional manipulation and deception. We suggest self-assessment, reflection and transparency to avoid unethical leadership and management of volunteers. INTRODUCTION

Many adolescents wish to make a difference in their own life and the life's of others through volunteering. In Israel, around 40% of the Israeli adolescents aged 15-17 volunteered in 2008, and in the U.S. in 2011 26.4% of all adolescents aged 16-19 volunteered (BLS, 2012). The organizations where the adolescents volunteer matter, since these organizations embody certain visions inherent in every aspect of their management, including how they mobilize, socialize and lead their adolescent volunteers. Nonprofit organizations are most often characterized by transformative leadership, also called mission-driven leadership (Riggio, Bass & Orr, 2003; Thiagarajan ,2003) where leaders drive the organization’s work and its relations with internal and external stakeholder, according to articulated vision and values. The value laden nature of such leadership may have ethical implications for the volunteers in such organizations, which are particularly important when these volunteers are teenagers. The transformational leadership strategies of the leaders, in the current study, are directed by visions which aim to recruit the youth for the benefit of the organizations' missions or ideology. However, when these visions concern children's wellbeing, these visions should be carefully evaluated. The main interest in our study is in the ethics of leading adolescent volunteers in mission-driven organizations. Specifically, we examine these visions and their organizational manifestations, in order to understand how they affect adolescent volunteers.

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LITERATURE REVIEW Transformational Leadership

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the transformational leadership agenda. Being a transformational leader means to pursue a vision which portrays a better future (Bass, 1998; Bass and Steidlmeier, 1999; Burns, 1998). Moral vision and values are the fundamentals of the transformational leadership. Transformational leaders reinforce the visions and values that are embedded in them in the organizations' behavior (Bass, 1985; Burns, 2003; House, 1977).

One of the characteristics of the transformational leadership approach is the ability to define and aspire towards a vision of the future community (Berson et al., 2001; Haslam & Platow, 2001; Sashkin, 1988). This vision defines the identity of the community, its goals, and the path of achieving them, as well as the guiding values and approaches. The theoretical research in transformational leadership has been growing steadily (Bass, 1997; 1998). The implication of research to the practice of transformational leadership conceptualize the vision of leadership as a complete unit which leads to questions of effectiveness of implementation (Avolio, 1998). Vision, therefore, is a dream, an image that portraits an idealized future, whether it is the organization, the society or the followers (Bass, 1990; Conger, 1989; Conger & Kanungo, 1998; Tichy & Devanna, 1986). Vision challenges norms, conventional process and policies, while setting ambitious, high expectations and clear achievable goals (Conger & Kanungo, 1998; House, 1977; House et al., 1991; Shamir et al., 1993; Tichy & Devanna, 1986). Vision gives purpose to actions, and meaning to the job done along with the hope for a better reality (Daft & Lengel, 1998; Nanus, 1992).

In contrast, unethical transformational leadership, or pseudo-transformational leadership, promotes unethical visions and values (Sartre, 1992). The differences between ethical transformational leaders and pseudo-transformational leaders have three main dimensions: the vision and the values that guide behavior (Price, 2003), the motivations of the leader that can be unethical and selfish (Bass, 1985), and the misuse of leader-followers' power relation (McClelland, 1985). Studies on ethics and leadership have used three different aspects that define the morality of leadership: (1) the morality aspect of the leader's characteristics (Conger & Kanungo, 1998; Greenleaf, 1977; Kouzes & Posner, 1993; Wren, 1998); (2) the legitimacy of the vision and its values (Burns, 1998; Kanungo & Mendonca, 1996); (3) the process in which leaders and followers achieve the goals illuminated by the vision (Bass and Steidlmeier, 1999; Kanungo & Medonca, 1996; Sartre, 1992). The moral character of the leader is evaluated by the moral acts and outcomes of her behavior (Conger & Kanungo, 1998; Greenleaf, 1977; Kohlberg, 1981; Kouzes & Posner, 1993; Wren, 1998). The literature suggests that ethics in leadership has been studied mostly from the point of view of the values and goals of the nonprofit organization. No article has reported on the consequences of nonprofit organization’s leadership for its volunteers, and particularly for the impressionable adolescent volunteers. The present article is an attempt to consider some of the above issues.

Youth Volunteering

The literature on youth volunteers normally focuses on its psychological and future career or civic development benefits for the adolescents. In a study of adolescent child care volunteers Hamilton and Fenzel (1988) reported a small but positive generalized impact of volunteering on the social development of both the volunteers and their adult advisers. Lee, Olszewski-Kubilius, Donahue and Weimholt (2007) found greater awareness of civic issues and a stronger connection and commitment to the community among adolescent volunteers. A meta-analysis of impact studies from 116 youth volunteer projects in 33 European countries (Powell and Bratović, 2007) showed various positive impacts of volunteering, such as social and communication skills, sense of belonging, civic values and even decreased criminal and risk- taking behavior. Other studies characterized the profile of youth volunteers by their social and demographic affiliations, or by their values, such as did Sundeen and Raskoff (1995) who showed that non-material values encourage volunteering. Yet another group of studies looked at youth motivations to

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volunteer, ranging from utilitarian motivations such as career development (Handy, 2009), to altruistic or mixed motivations in a Palestinian refugee camp of Beirut, Lebanon (Makhoul, Maysam & Afifi, 2012).

These studies and the many other studies like them are based on a very benign and optimistic conception of youth volunteering organizations and programs. Few took a more skeptical approach. Metz, McLellan, and Youniss (2003) indicated that the link between community service and civic development depends on the specific nature of volunteer activity that adolescents perform. Powell and Bratović (2007) argue that the positive impacts of youth volunteer programs depend on the right kind of service, placements, pre-departure training and mentorship. The question of ethics in youth work in general is raised in the youth work professional literature (Roberts, 2009; Sercombe, 2010), and some studies were done on the ethics of teen-mentor- relations (Rhodes, Liang and Spencer, 2009). However, we believe that the discussion of ethics, and specifically the ethics of managing adolescent volunteers, should be more prominent in the literature of nonprofit management and leadership.

METHODS

The research presented here is part of a wider study that focused on the social engagement of

youngsters in Israel, and particularly four organizational case studies of major nonprofit organizations that engage adolescent volunteers in Israel. The study consisted of two elements: in-depth interviews with organizations’ leaders, and a survey of the adolescents volunteering in these organizations and of a control group on non-volunteer adolescents. In this article we report and analyze our findings from the in- depth interviews with organizations’ leaders.

Sampling

We identified 133 nonprofit organizations that employ adolescent volunteers on the “GuideStar Israel” database using a keyword search: 16 religious organizations, 77 welfare organizations, 18 healthcare organizations and 22 cultural and leisure organizations. We selected one organization in each group based on the following traits: (1) prominent actors in the adolescent volunteer field; (2) that aim to influence or educate their adolescent volunteers; and (3) are generally regarded as highly effective.

Organization A assists adolescents dealing with different types of crises: pressures, trauma, risk and distress. Since adolescence is a period rife with problems, which are exacerbated by the economic, social and security difficulties in Israel, this organization provides the youth with support, guidance and counseling.

Organization B is a religious organization which employs high school seniors in weekly volunteer activities. The volunteers come from all across Israeli society and contribute approximately 250,000 hours in the areas of education, health, and welfare. The educational staff supervises the volunteers and provided a broad range of educational activities for them.

Organization C provides emergency relief services throughout Israel and works with its volunteers to provide primary medical treatment. The volunteer program, gives adolescents the opportunity to save lives and spend time gaining hands-on first-aid and emergency care experience.

Organization D aims at creating strategic partnership within and between local governments in an attempt to promote volunteering programs for adolescents. The organization provides opportunities for challenging volunteering experiences while placing volunteers based on their abilities and interests.

Participants

We interviewed five leaders from the four organizations. Two leaders came from the same organization; a leader and a deputy. These 5 leaders were paid employees, their duration of employment ranged from 5 years to 30 years at the same organization. They all have university degrees and are middle to upper-middle class. Two are male and three are female and two are religious, one traditional, and two secular.

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Data Collection Data were collected using a short survey which was followed by an in-depth interview (following

Gubrium & Holstein, 2003). The survey included background demographic questions. Participants were interviewed in their usual environment. The respondents were asked to describe their roles as leaders, the vision and values of the organizations, their attitude to the vision and goals of the organization, the influence of the vision and goals on the adolescents who volunteer for their organization, their interactions with the adolescents who volunteer, and the ethical dimension of their leadership. All interviews lasted 45-120 minutes, were recorded and transcribed for maximum accountability (Mertens, 2005; Patton, 2002), and coded the data from the interviews and classified it into the appropriate categories. The themes that emerged from the leaders' statements dictated the categories rather than seeking to confirm a set of preconceived perceptions of the leaders’ vision, values, and the influences on the adolescents who volunteer.

FINDINGS

The content analysis yielded that the four organizations had four clear and distinct approaches to

adolescent volunteering: therapeutic, missionary, elitist and nationalist. The analysis demonstrates that their leadership vision is constructed according to their approach to adolescent volunteering. Each approach has a specific reference to the way volunteering is being utilized for the purpose of implementing their vision. The organization and the adolescent volunteers in it become a functional vehicle for executing the vision.

The Therapeutic Approach

The well-being of the adolescents' volunteers is a recurring theme in the interview of the leader from organization A. Although the volunteers recruited for the organization are told that their job is helping youth in need, the hidden aim of the organization is to give psychological therapy and support to the adolescent volunteers themselves. Thus, all of the activities are directed and aimed towards this goal. Volunteering is the platform to influence the adolescents and provide therapy without adolescents being aware of that.

The Therapeutic Approach as a Vision

The therapeutic approach envisions the concept of volunteering as a platform that enables to practice psychological therapy, and the volunteers as an objective for therapy. The leader of a youth at risk organization, a woman over 40, with over 10 years in her position and previous experience in working with youth said: “Looking from our side, volunteering is one of our vehicles to give our treatment. We use volunteering as a therapeutic tool.” Yet, she noted a dilemma “whether adolescent volunteers should be perceived as adolescents who come to volunteer, or should we perceive them as adolescents without the volunteering with all the implications that the life of adolescents involve.” A second leader was interviewed in the same organization, a senior manager over 50 years old. For her, the dilemma was quickly resolved: “Many times people say that volunteers are here to serve the other, and not for themselves, and we say that volunteers are here for themselves, for going through a process for them, not to give to others, but to give for themselves!”

The Role of the Organization in the Vision

The organization, according to the therapeutic approach, has the role of attracting adolescents at risk that are generally reluctant to get help. The way to overcome this obstacle is to entice adolescents to volunteer with the organization even if this involves presenting the organization in a specific (if not completely accurate) way. As the first leader said: “We showcase the existing hierarchy, because hierarchy means differentiation of the status of our adolescents. So like in a pyramid the more you have underneath you in hierarchy the higher status you have. This idea motivates them to volunteer, so they will not lose their status, and help in recruitment, so their status will be higher in the organization.” The

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second leader was more direct: “At the end of the day, we are some sort of manipulators. We know what kind of decisions we want them to take, and what kind of ideas we want them to say and to think, and accordingly we manipulate them in our interactions to choose the organization's favorite direction.”

The Focus of the Vision

The focus, according to the therapeutic approach, is the adolescents themselves. The vision is to help adolescents, as they are considered to be in varying levels of risk, and to change something in their lives. The organization exists for the adolescents and the therapy they get. Everything else is only a means to deliver the therapy. The first leader assured us that “The adult volunteers truly arrive to give some service to the adolescents, but they (the adults who volunteer) are not the focus, they are not the center. The adolescents' volunteers, who are being assigned as volunteers for the organization, are the focus. We do not pay much attention to the specific work assigned to the adolescents' volunteers. Attention is carefully placed on the process they are in, and that is our focus.” Moreover, she added, “In many cases nonprofit organizations that employ adolescents as volunteers do not perceive and view adolescents as the focus, rather, the nonprofit organizations are the focus. It is as if the adolescents are there to help and give a helping-hand when the organizations need them … but in our organization it is the other way around, the adolescents are the focus.”

The Missionary Approach

The missionary approach is a prevalent theme in the interview of the leader from organization B. Although the stated goal of the program is to have adolescents acquire the important habit of dedicating a portion of their lives to being sensitive to the needs of the less fortunate, de facto the agenda is to indoctrinate the volunteers. Leaders who adopt the vision of the missionary approach channel their efforts and resources to achieve the objective of spreading their ideology, or their 'light'. The ideology is defined by the leaders as the 'ultimate good', and the way to achieve this good is envisioned by continuing the volunteering involvement. As long as adolescents continue to volunteer and participate in the organizations' activities, the missionary leaders argue, there are more chances that adolescents will get closer to the 'light', the understanding of the 'good'.

The Missionary Approach as a Vision

The leader in the missionary approach envision volunteering as a vehicle to promote and propagate the religious ideology: “It is clear that as soon as you started to volunteer it started to influence your soul.” This religious man over 60 with rabbinical education, proclaimed: “I believe that if we open the path to volunteer in a meaningful job, meaningful for them, and they can understand what doing the job makes them feel, it makes them realize the change in them.”

The Role of the Organization in the Vision

The organization places adolescents in hospitals, elderly homes, school or any other places in which they can contribute to society. However, during the placement process, the training period and the volunteer work, the missionary agenda (religious, in this case) is incorporated in the interaction between the organization and the volunteers. As the leader clarified: “The role of my organization is to awake the adolescents spiritually. We talk to them in schools; we prepare 'happy evenings' for them, and bring movies that promote our ideology. We also get the teachers involved.” To corroborate, he shared with us that one of the schools' principle told him that when the organization just started to work with his school, the principle hesitated to let the organization work with the school kids: “His concern was that we will influence the kids' religious thinking, that the kids will embrace the Orthodox religious values."

The Focus of the Vision

The focus of the missionary approach is the ideology itself. The places where volunteers are placed, as well as the people for whom adolescents volunteer for are byproducts of the new values and ideology the volunteers are expected to assume. As the Rabbi explained: “We use the platform of volunteering to

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initiate an inner change, an emotional change, and a personal change, whatever the word you choose, something is moving inside the volunteer's head.” He further explicated how the inner change is achieved:

When a person volunteers it means that he moves backwards a little. You do not have to give your ego away, but you have to leave Facebook for that time, to leave yourself somewhere else and to talk to the other person and make yourself listen to his needs. When I use the Internet when I am occupied in a chat I am invested in myself. When I am invested in myself I lose something. I lose my humanity. But when I go outside I let myself enrich others and I get richer because of it. My emotional world becomes something else.

The Rabbi also added an example to make his point clear:

“I give you an example of a girl who volunteers for an old woman a couple of hours a week. She comes to the nursing home and reads a story, and made some minor errands. One day she invited her for the holiday dinner, she told us that her grandmother passed away and by volunteering for that old woman she understood how happier she could turn her grandmother's life if only she had treated her grandmother the way she treats that old woman. All were surprised by the strength of the story. I told them what's the surprise? She made the change in only a couple of hours a week. After we left one of the teachers that had previous experience with the girl, told us that the girl refused to cooperate and volunteer her time. At this point, I was surprised. But just look what a turnover in half a year. You asked me what volunteering does to the kids, of course it makes a change, it cannot be otherwise, it has to move the volunteers.”

The Elitist Approach Empowering the adolescent's volunteers by focusing on the competitiveness of the volunteer program

is a prevalent theme in the discourse of the leader from organization C, who is a senior manager, in his late 60s, with a graduate degree. This organization recruits adolescents to volunteer, despite the organization's knowledge that the volunteer work will expose them to potentially traumatic situations with very possible long term post-traumatic effects for the volunteers. The organization is branded as highly demanding, very unique and hard to get in to. The selective recruiting process, in which only applicants who are recommended by other active volunteers are accepted, promote the organization as highly popular. In addition, adolescents have to pass a preliminary exam, a long course, and a qualifying exam at the end of the training period. At the end of that period they are officially considered volunteers. The ratio between the adolescents who ask to volunteer and those who are actually accepted is very small. The adolescents who function eventually as volunteers are cherished as the elite of the adolescents in Israel, so the organization can enjoy their work for a long period of time. The Elitist Approach as a Vision

A key theme of the elitist vision is the purpose of serving the organization and its needs. The organization is striving for power and uses adolescents' motivation to belong to a powerful organization which might help them in a future career. Entering the elitist organization is not easy since the organization’s power is reflected by its capacity to dictate the terms of entering into as a volunteer. Fundamentally, conformity to the standards of social background, educational attainment and commitment to the organization's interest and ideology are the basic premises of passing the gates of the organization. As the leader noted, “We work with adolescents who want to be in an organization that is more than other organizations. We do not accept everyone.” And he added, “At the beginning of our way, when we wanted to recruit volunteers, we went to schools to talk to the kids, we had to print flyers and we invested in marketing. In recent years we do not have to market, we get more adolescents than we actually need, and of course we do not accept everyone.”

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The Role of the Organization in the Vision The assumption that runs through most of the narrative is the idea that the interests of the organization

become the goal. The purpose is to occupy the organization's voluntary positions in channeling adolescents' ambitions to belong to organization that eventually identify the adolescents as better people. And so, “Volunteering is about the action, the adrenaline that runs in their blood; this is why those adolescents are volunteering for us.” Then he explained the strategy to achieve such high-energy engagement: “We get volunteers that are more aggressive more combative, that make the more combat- like volunteering, and that the essence of what we give them to make our volunteering important to them.”

The Focus of the Vision

The focus of the elitist vision is in increasing the power of the organization. The organization is powerful enough to act and set norms according to its own values and logic. It is powerful enough to be selective, and being selective in turn increases the organization’s power: “We recruit using 'friends of friends' and we accept only 1 out of 5 or 6 that apply.” And in addition to that, added the leader, “We do not call them volunteers, we recruit them. They are recruits and there is a long orientation process and personal interviews. This is a process that enables us to choose those we really want.”

The Nationalist Approach

The view that volunteering in their organizations will help adolescents form a better society when they are older is a recurring perception in the interview of the leader from organization D. The vision is based on the belief that there is a connection between volunteering in their organizations as adolescents and being a proper citizen, e.g. one who pays his taxes, completes his military service, and participates politically. As these goals are aligned with national government goals, and as 17 year olds can vote for local government, it is no wonder that organizations demonstrating this approach collaborate with and are funded by government. The Nationalist Approach as a Vision

The vision of the nationalist approach, as emerging from the interview with the leader of organization D, a woman in her fifties, who established the organization some twenty years ago, is that volunteering is a way to achieve social goals. The assumption is that adolescents who volunteer will eventually volunteer to a more demanding military service, and will contribute to society as an adult. This vision is usually affected or even directed by government officials and according to governmental policies. As she noted: “Volunteering career should be developed, so that the adolescent will start as a volunteer and he will become a staff member, and a leader of other volunteers and even in other cities or they may developed in different way. Eventually, all ways should lead directly to significant military service.” She emphasized the organization’s alignment with national priorities by adding that “There is a national objective, directed by the government, to tie between adolescents volunteering and motivating them to service in the army. A lot of funds are directed to support the mission and many people are involved in promoting it.” She was very clear in how adolescent volunteer programs can be an instrument in a reciprocal political game, sometimes also in the municipal arena: “Adolescent volunteers are a political asset for us. The local political system allows 17 years old adolescents to vote and actively participate politically in elections. They can definitely be a critical mass and move their support from one candidate to another and influence the results. This is why the funds are going mainly to the older layer of teen volunteers.” The Role of the Organization in the Vision

The organization, according to this vision, is to recruit the adolescents, initiate the activities and prepare the adolescents for what the government regards as good citizenship. The organization’s role is to constantly generate new and more volunteering opportunities in order to keep the volunteering apparatus running, for the accomplishment of the final goals relies on big numbers: “To gain the aim of recruiting adolescents and invest in them, there are massive processes of adolescents' education frameworks.” The

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focus on productivity, is not only in the numbers of recruits, but also in the financial and eventually political leverage that employing the adolescent volunteers can generate: “If you invest in adolescents they give you an enormous amount of working hours to the community. Take, for example, 1000 adolescents that give 2 hours a week, multiply the 2000 hours in 4 weeks a month. Multiply 8000 hours in 12 and see how many hours are going to the community in only one city.” This requires a great effort, as the leader described the work needed:

It is a crazy and intensive process, because after half a year that the adolescent is doing something, we have to find something new and be very innovative and creative and catch their interest. We have to carefully find special channels of volunteering opportunities for them, such that the adolescents will want to volunteer and participate in. so we have to think and invent more and more programs.

The Focus of the Vision

The vision focuses on the best interests of the official authorities: the municipal government, the national government, and the army authorities. And so, “The correlation between volunteering and serving in the army is positive and linear. If the adolescent volunteers he probably will make an important military service. We can also see that in their eyes, our volunteers want to serve in a combat unit.” This is seen by the leader of the organization as a service that the state would be well advised to pay for: “The need for adolescents to volunteer is one of the topics that are in consensus. We are being paid to make sure that they (adolescents) will volunteer and serve the country.”

DISCUSSION

The findings show that nonprofit leaders have varying visions and distinct opinions regarding the

objectives of volunteering, the role of their organization, and the focus of their vision. For example, the nationalist and missionary approaches were more concerned with achieving larger scale social change, while the therapeutic and elitist approaches stressed organizational needs and the need to maintain a smaller quota of volunteers that is needed to fulfill them. However, the leaders also exhibited many shared conceptions about both their ability to make a change in the future of the adolescents who volunteer as well as the utilization of the volunteers for the organization’s ends. All the visions described in this section reflect the high commitment of nonprofit leaders to increase the phenomenon of volunteering among high school students. Another commonality is the understanding of adolescent volunteer recruitment as a means to an organizational and ideological end, that is not always explicit, and sometimes may include manipulation or even put the adolescent volunteer at risk.

These findings are consistent with previous research that emphasizes the importance of transformational leaders in implementing a practical vision (Avolio, 1998; Bass, 1997; 1998). They use an appealing vision to recruit and mobilize for their cause. However, as it is evident here, it may happen that the ends are confounded with the means. In the elitist approach the organization and its survival may become the end when the adolescent volunteer is just the means. For the leaders which demonstrated the therapeutic, missionary or the nationalist approaches, the organization is the means for achieving a change in the volunteer’s life. This difference is also demonstrated in the focus of the vision. While the elitist vision is focused on the organizational own immediate operational objectives and organizational survival, in the therapeutic, missionary or the nationalist approaches the goal of the leaders is to gradually transform the adolescents.

The visions of the organizations’ leaders for the adolescent volunteers and their organizational application reflect a tension between an expressed and authentic respect to the capacities and the potential of adolescent volunteers on the one hand, and paternalism on the other. The interviews often reflect intentional manipulation and deception of the volunteers, reportedly for their own benefit. In the context of the parameters of ethical leadership discussed above, this raises issue with the legitimacy of the means used for getting the mission done (Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999; Kanungo & Medonca, 1996; Sartre, 1992). For example, according to the elitist vision exercised by the leader of organization C, recruitment of volunteers to the organization is promoted through presenting this volunteering option as elitist, when in

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fact, the volunteers and their parents are not aware of the fact that over the course of volunteering in this organization, they can be exposed to events that may cause post-traumatic stress (Yaffe, Sasson, Knobler, Aviel, & Goldberg, 2012). Another example is the therapeutic approach reflected in the vision of the leader from organization A. When volunteers are convinced to join the organization they are being told that their job is to help running a coffee shop for teens. They are not aware of the fact that during the time they spend in this coffee shop they are being treated by professional consultants and therapists who specialize in teen psychology.

Although we only studied four organizations, these are very visible and influential organizations and have multiple branches which attract thousands of adolescents as volunteers. As such, these nonprofit organizations operate as mass educational centers. This study points to the need for such leaders or organizations to openly engage in deeply critical self-evaluation and ongoing development and improvement of their vision and how it translates into actions and behaviors. Additionally, this study raises a concern which should be shared with parents of the volunteers, and be open for societal discussion. We believe that parents should carefully investigate the vision of organizations and their leaders when they consider where to encourage their children to volunteer. Further, the morality of the vision should be questioned in the public sphere. Such self-assessment, reflection and transparency are fundamental to avoiding unethical leadership and management of adolescent volunteers.

This study looked only at how the organizations’ vision for adolescent volunteers and their application are seen from the leaders’ point of view. It revealed some points of discomfort when judged against ethical leadership criteria. However, we did not examine how these visions are perceived by the adolescent volunteers themselves or by their parents. Manipulation only works when the manipulated do not see through it. To get a fuller picture, future research requires us to interview adolescent volunteers and their parents about the reasons they join their places of volunteering, and what they believe the motivations of the organizations are.

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