The Manager of Volunteers - Privileged or Powerless? A case study on motivating volunteers
(2009)Department of Business Administration
- Abstract
- Motivation is a hot topic in the corporate world and managers are searching for ways to motivate the workers in order to improve performance. Profit-seeking organizations are able to control the workers motivation and actions, because they are usually in higher power and employees are often dependent on the organization for monetary reasons (Sayer, 2007). But what about managers in voluntary organizations? In the absence of a monetary contract, how can managers motivate the volunteers? Managing volunteers in everyday practice is an under-researched field and the aim of this thesis is to provide an insight of how managers attempt to motivate volunteers in 'real life'. We have explored to what extent managers’ attempts are perceived to... (More)
- Motivation is a hot topic in the corporate world and managers are searching for ways to motivate the workers in order to improve performance. Profit-seeking organizations are able to control the workers motivation and actions, because they are usually in higher power and employees are often dependent on the organization for monetary reasons (Sayer, 2007). But what about managers in voluntary organizations? In the absence of a monetary contract, how can managers motivate the volunteers? Managing volunteers in everyday practice is an under-researched field and the aim of this thesis is to provide an insight of how managers attempt to motivate volunteers in 'real life'. We have explored to what extent managers’ attempts are perceived to influence the members’ motivations to participate and to remain in the organization. The research is based on a interpretative approach as we were interested in gaining a deeper understanding of motivation from the respondents’ perspectives. Our empirical material is based on 12 semi-structured in-depth interviews with managers and members. From the findings we conclude that the managers' attempts to motivate volunteers are perceived to have limited effect on the members. Although social activities were perceived to influence on members motivations, it is questionable to what extent the manager can create and control the socialization process. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/1437571
- author
- Ghanem, Malin and Gebremedhin, Maaza
- supervisor
- organization
- year
- 2009
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- motivation, nonprofit organization, management, volunteer, retention, Management of enterprises, Företagsledning, management
- language
- Swedish
- id
- 1437571
- date added to LUP
- 2009-06-02 00:00:00
- date last changed
- 2012-04-02 17:24:18
@misc{1437571,
abstract = {{Motivation is a hot topic in the corporate world and managers are searching for ways to motivate the workers in order to improve performance. Profit-seeking organizations are able to control the workers motivation and actions, because they are usually in higher power and employees are often dependent on the organization for monetary reasons (Sayer, 2007). But what about managers in voluntary organizations? In the absence of a monetary contract, how can managers motivate the volunteers? Managing volunteers in everyday practice is an under-researched field and the aim of this thesis is to provide an insight of how managers attempt to motivate volunteers in 'real life'. We have explored to what extent managers’ attempts are perceived to influence the members’ motivations to participate and to remain in the organization. The research is based on a interpretative approach as we were interested in gaining a deeper understanding of motivation from the respondents’ perspectives. Our empirical material is based on 12 semi-structured in-depth interviews with managers and members. From the findings we conclude that the managers' attempts to motivate volunteers are perceived to have limited effect on the members. Although social activities were perceived to influence on members motivations, it is questionable to what extent the manager can create and control the socialization process.}},
author = {{Ghanem, Malin and Gebremedhin, Maaza}},
language = {{swe}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{The Manager of Volunteers - Privileged or Powerless? A case study on motivating volunteers}},
year = {{2009}},
}