Volunteers: The Organizational Behavior of Unpaid Workers

We know very little about how and why individuals volunteer to work in organizations, and we know even less about how their efforts are organized and directed once they are at work. Some organizations utilizing volunteers waste the human resources they have; others manage to work effectively and provide invaluable services. Yet there has been little attempt to understand the organizational behavior of volunteers and make better use of their talents.
Volunteers is the first comprehensive book on the organizational behavior of volunteer workers. It explores why people volunteer for organizational work, drawing upon original research and the existing scholarly work in this field. A central theme of the book is the uncertainty volunteers have of their own roles in the organization in which they work, with all the potential frustration that this can elicit.
However, much of the existing advice to volunteers or those employing them can be misleading or unhelpful. In her study, Jone L. Pearce looks at successful and unsuccessful organizations in areas such as the arts, social services and health care. She discusses the implications of volunteers on general theories of organizational behavior, and also outlines the practical effects of an understanding of volunteer workers for all organizations employing them. Volunteers will be valuable to managers and also to psychologists interested in organizational behavior.