Abstract
Although a voluminous literature addresses organizational change, employee stress, and organizational behavior, we have little understanding of employees’ responses to being assigned the role and responsibilities of a volunteer manager. Because many public and nonprofit organizations seek to incorporate more volunteers—especially during times of fiscal stress—employees’ responses to an influx of volunteers and additional volunteer management responsibilities can affect organizational performance. We use data from a case study at a large public library system to illustrate how role theory helps advance our understanding of these responsibilities in a human resource context. Our findings suggest that role perceptions, expectations, and conflict all inform the effectiveness and dynamics of managing important unpaid human resources: volunteers. We discuss the organizational implications of inadvertent volunteer managers—employees assigned to the volunteer manager role without prior training and experience.
Many public and nonprofit organizations face constraints of reduced budgets and hiring freezes. When these organizations lay off workers and cannot hire new employees, existing employees often assume additional roles and new responsibilities in order to maintain service levels. When public and nonprofit organizations seek to incorporate more volunteers as a retrenchment strategy (Brudney, 1990, 1993; Dover, 2010), one such set of additional responsibilities is often volunteer management. Employees’ responses to an influx of volunteers and additional volunteer management responsibilities generate important questions that have implications for shaping human resource management (HRM) strategies in public organizations.
How do employees react to these changes in work duties? What effects do such changes have on their job motivation and performance? What activities and strategies, for example, training and development, work best to mitigate the stress caused by adding volunteer management duties to an employee’s workplace role? How do additional responsibilities to manage and interact with unpaid workers shape the motivation to perform? How does management of the volunteer resources within an organization affect overall organizational performance?
Although answering all of these questions lies beyond the scope of this study, we use a rich case study to develop and increase knowledge about volunteer management. We investigate three research questions exploring employees’ responses to being assigned the role and responsibilities of a volunteer manager:
As we investigate these questions throughout the rest of the article, we will refer to employees who have been assigned volunteer manager duties as inadvertent volunteer managers (IVMs). Our findings suggest that IVMs are often given volunteer management duties with little preparation and training. We also find that IVM perceptions of this role and the role of volunteers vary greatly and that their experiences and perceptions influence investment in the volunteer manager role. We begin by framing our investigation in the larger HRM literature; we then describe our use of role theory and the study used to investigate the preceding questions. We then discuss our findings and their implications for research and practice.
Connecting Human Resources Management and Volunteer Management
In 2010, Perry inventoried the research topics in three leading human resources management journals including the Review of Public Personnel Administration. He found that prominent topics in human resources management research included training and development, culture, motivation, recruitment and selection, accountability, and communication. The volunteer management literature—stemming from both public administration and nonprofit studies—also addresses these same topics in relation to the management of volunteers—an unpaid human resource (Connors, 2012; Seel, 2010). Often overlooked, however, is the role of volunteer management within the larger HRM strategies of public organizations: Researchers and practitioners have largely ignored the nexus of volunteer management and HRM, particularly how good HRM should be applied to those employees who manage volunteers.
Volunteers comprise a small but not insignificant segment of the public sector workforce; Brudney (1999) reports that among volunteers surveyed by the Gallup Organization across several years, 25% consistently report volunteering in government, the value of their public sector volunteer hours equaling between US$34.1 billion and US$55.1 billion in the years reported. Furthermore, volunteers are utilized across all levels of government and in a wide range of programs and policy areas (Brudney, 1999; Nesbit & Brudney, 2013). Rehnborg (2005) corroborates widespread use of volunteers in government organizations. Thus, few public organizations can afford to overlook the effective management of volunteers.
When public organizations choose to utilize volunteers, those volunteers become part of the pool of human resources that the organization must manage. As we have noted, however, management of these valuable human resources can be unintentional and mismanaged—often relegated to IVMs. Incorporating volunteers this way often means that employees are left to assume additional volunteer management duties as part of an increased or modified workload, which can induce substantial employee stress and turnover (Hellriegel, Slocum, & Woodman, 2001) and lead to feelings of disillusionment and frustration.
We see great value in extending the utility of public HRM scholarship and practice to include volunteer management considerations. Staff need to take the responsibility for managing and overseeing volunteers—recruiting them, training them, and supervising them. If this process is not purposive, HRM research and practice similarly identify the consequences for employees, organizations, and the volunteers themselves. For employees, the additional duties can violate psychological work contracts (Turnley & Feldman, 2000), exacerbate work role stressors, and negatively impact role performance (Eatough, Chang, Miloslavic, & Johnson, 2011; Gilboa, Shirom, Fried, & Cooper, 2008; Jackson & Schuler, 1985; Jex, 1998; Tubre & Collins, 2000). Furthermore, if volunteers are not taken seriously as human resources, the organization often fails to leverage a key resource that could benefit the organization. This oversight compounds a failure to train and prepare employees sufficiently to manage volunteers and can precipitate frustration, anxiety, turnover, burnout, and negative attitudes toward the organization (Doby & Caplan, 1995; Fernandez & Kim, 2013; Jimmieson, Terry, & Callan, 2004). Insufficient organizational investment in volunteers and their management can also lead to volunteer turnover and additional staff frustration (Rehnborg, Bailey, Moore, & Sinatra, 2009).
We argue that public organizations using volunteers need to consider the management of volunteers seriously as part of their larger HRM strategies. This means that the person managing volunteers needs to be carefully selected, trained, and supervised to fill that role effectively. In this article, we utilize a role theory perspective to explore the assignment of and reaction to volunteer management duties by employees in the public workplace. Ultimately, our results show a disconnect between good HRM and good volunteer management in public organizations.
Role Theory and Volunteer Management in the Public Workplace
Role theory has been applied to voluntary organizations and volunteers in several settings (Kramer, 1985; Merrell, 2000; Pearce, 1993; Schulz & Auld, 2006; Thoits, 2012); however, the role of volunteer manager has heretofore received little—particularly theoretical—attention. We combine empirical applications of role theory to formal organizations and academic and practitioner literature on volunteer management to develop hypotheses about employees’ attitudes and behaviors when assuming a volunteer management role—an understudied HRM issue. Three main concepts underlie role theory: (a) roles: patterns of behaviors typically assumed by an individual in a specific situation or context; (b) expectations: the norms, beliefs, and preferences that people attach to behaviors within a specific role; and (c) social positions: the identity and status associated with a given role, especially in relationship to others within the social system (Biddle, 1979, 1986).
In a workplace setting, a role is a pattern of behaviors associated with responsibilities for certain processes, tasks, or outcomes. Other people hold expectations (norms, beliefs, attitudes) about the behaviors that a person will perform as part of a specific role—expectations that can be either kept covert or expressed openly (Biddle, 1979). Employees also have expectations for other employees performing different roles within the workplace. Indeed, expectations for workplace roles are often formally prescribed by documents such as job descriptions. In some instances, however, the employee, the employee’s manager, and the employee’s coworkers will have incongruent expectations for the employee’s role, making the role unclear and ambiguous. In these instances, the role occupant does not have sufficient information to understand the behaviors and expectations associated with the role (Biddle, 1979). This ambiguity creates problems for employees and organizations because it leads to stress and decreased role performance (Abramis, 1994; Fried, Ben-David, Tiegs, Avital, & Yeverechyahu, 1998; Jackson & Schuler, 1985; Jamal, 1984; Tubre & Collins, 2000).
The volunteer manager role is ambiguous in many organizations, partly because it is a relatively new occupational role. Only in the last several decades have scholars and practitioners developed a core wisdom about volunteer management, begun publishing books and articles on the subject, and started professional associations and conferences for managers of volunteers (Brudney, Lee, Ockenden, & Bin Afif, in press; Perlmutter, 1982). Still, relatively few volunteer-using organizations have full-time, paid volunteer managers whose sole responsibility is volunteer management (Hager & Brudney, 2004; Machin & Paine, 2008). In organizations where the position exists, the incumbents often complain that their coworkers do not view them as managers or show respect for the role (Brudney & Heinlein, 2013). This lack of legitimacy also extends to the role’s nomenclature; notable practitioners argue that employees who manage volunteers should be called “volunteer managers” rather than “volunteer coordinators” to more accurately convey the managerial nature of the role (Brudney & Heinlein, 2013; Ellis, 2010). This reasoning underlies our first hypothesis:
Social positions are not equivalent to roles—positions pertain to identities and a person’s relative importance in the social system, while roles refer strictly to behavioral patterns (Biddle, 1979). However, roles and positions are often tightly coupled in the workplace. In the employment context, some roles are associated with higher status and position (e.g., senior management), and other roles are associated with lower status and position (e.g., custodian). Where an occupational role is placed in the organizational hierarchy (as depicted in an organization chart) conveys the relative importance and status of the position. Practitioners have noted that executives send powerful message to employees and volunteers about the value of volunteers to the organization by their placement of the volunteer manager in the organizational chart. Ellis (2010) argues that the volunteer manager should ideally answer directly to the CEO because the volunteer manager is analogous to a department head for unpaid workers (with duties roughly equivalent to the human resource director). Although this ideal may rarely be achieved, it highlights the idea that formally incorporating volunteer managers into the organizational accountability structure can both legitimize and send signals about the status of the position. When volunteer management duties are placed at the bottom of the organizational chart, the volunteer manager has little power and influence to encourage other employees to take volunteers seriously or to treat them well—a scenario that aggravates many volunteer managers (Brudney & Heinlein, 2013).
At the very least, executives need to be thoughtful about the placement of volunteer management duties within the organization chart. Machin and Paine (2008) summarize the organizational reality well: It would appear that in a number of organisations volunteer management is in effect tagged on to someone’s job, and often does not feature in the responsibilities listed within their job description. The extent to which volunteer management is given adequate status within organisations is, therefore, questionable. (p. 38)
If, as Machin and Paine indicate, the volunteer manager role in most organizations is an addendum to other roles and does not carry with it additional status or a new position in the organization, we would expect that IVMs will neither view the volunteer manager role as a reward nor a promotion because it does not enhance their position and status in the organization.
Role theory helps us understand the volunteer manager role, and we can also use it as a lens to comprehend another important organizational role—that of a volunteer. This role also carries a set of expectations—IVMs (and other employees) may expect volunteers to behave in certain ways—and social position/status. Volunteers can perform many different roles in the same organization, such as serving on a governing board, performing administrative tasks, providing direct service, conducting campaigning, or acting in support tasks (see Handy, 1988; Meijs & Hoogstad, 2001; Rochester, 2007, for typologies of volunteer roles). These roles indicate what volunteers contribute to the organization overall and are closely tied with organizational leaders’ motivations to incorporate volunteers. Organizations use volunteers for a variety of purposes, such as to raise public support, assist in delivering services, bring needed skills and knowledge into the organization, and expand services (Brudney, 1993; Brudney & Gazley, 2002; Brudney & Kellough, 2000). Rehnborg et al. (2009) recommend that organizational leaders need to develop a vision for volunteer involvement—a statement about where volunteers fit within the organization’s work and mission—as a pre-requisite for effective volunteer involvement.
Senior management officials, however, do not always adequately communicate to employees (and IVMs) the rationale for using volunteers and what volunteers are intended to accomplish (i.e., the roles they should perform). As a result, IVMs’ expectations for volunteers might be uneven across the organization and be different than senior management’s expectations. This can contribute to unclear and suboptimal use of human resources. Initial empirical evidence indicates that different stakeholders value volunteers for different reasons (Nesbit, Christensen, & Brudney, 2013). Thus, in some organizations, the role of volunteers might also be ambiguous and volunteers might not be valued, reflecting a lack of alignment between the expectations of senior management, IVMs, other employees, and the volunteers themselves.
Professional values and training might also affect the status and position that IVMs ascribe to volunteers. For example, librarianship, like many public careers, is a profession that requires advanced education and training or certification. Through the process of receiving advanced training, employees are socialized to embrace the values associated with that profession or vocation (Schein, 1967). Sometimes, professional values can be at odds with volunteer roles and status in an organization and the volunteers’ own socialization process (Haski-Leventhal & Bargal, 2008). For instance, professional librarians value confidentiality of patron records, and they might voice concerns about library volunteers having access to patron records because the volunteers do not have the same formal ethical obligations for upholding confidentiality standards that the librarians’ own professional status entails (Nicol & Johnson, 2008).
The training and educational disparity between professional librarians and volunteers can also affect what types of library jobs the library professionals believe are appropriate for volunteers. For this and other reasons, studies document that increased use of volunteers in public libraries produces tension and sometimes resistance among professional staff (Nicol & Johnson, 2008; Roy, 1984). These studies show that staff members view their own extensive training and preparation as an essential component of doing quality library work, and they worry that in an effort to cut costs volunteers will be utilized in place of professional staff, thereby undermining professional standards, values, and quality. Because of these beliefs, professional librarians may perceive that volunteer roles should be circumscribed and that volunteers should be relegated to lower status tasks within the library context.
This attitude holds true in other professional contexts as well; professionals often view volunteers as a threat to their professional standards and approaches, which creates tensions between the two groups (Romanofsky, 1973). We expect IVMs with greater professional training to have different perceptions of volunteers’ position and status within the organization, compared with IVMs with less professional training. We expect IVMs embedded in their substantive profession to view volunteers as less important to the organization.
Staff members’ past experiences with volunteers also affect their expectations for volunteers and volunteers’ status in the organization (Scheier, 2003). If an employee has worked with a “problem” volunteer in the past (i.e., a volunteer who was unreliable or had produced poor quality work, etc.), then he or she might be resistant to working with more volunteers in the future. Such prior experiences can lead to poor volunteer–staff relationships, often characterized by a lack of communication between the two groups, negative labeling, and turf battles (MacDuff, 2012). One of the causes of poor volunteer–staff relations is ambiguity about the relative roles and tasks of volunteers and staff, and turf battles could represent staff efforts to keep volunteers in lower positions. The prevailing advice is that organizations should differentiate volunteers’ and paid staff’s roles to avoid problems stemming from role ambiguity (McCurley & Lynch, 2011; Scheier, 2003). These problems can be costly; negative relationships between staff and volunteers lead to dissatisfaction, frustration, and turnover among both parties (Hobson & Heler, 2007; Kulik, 2006; Rogelberg et al., 2010). We expect that IVMs’ past negative experiences with volunteers will coincide with greater volunteer role ambiguity and lower volunteer status in an organization.
Thus far, we have discussed IVMs’ perceptions of both their own roles as volunteer managers and volunteers’ roles in the workplace, including potential role ambiguity and the uncertain status and position these roles carry. The intersection of these perceptions also merits attention, particularly in cases where an IVM perceives one or both roles as ambiguous and of lower organizational status. We argue that these perceptions can affect an IVM’s level of role investment in the volunteer manager role, or the amount of time and effort put into the role. Lobel (1991) describes a utilitarian approach to role investment; based in expectancy theory, this approach suggests that individuals invest more in a role when the balance of rewards to costs is favorable. In the employment context, perceived rewards are related to employee performance, which is a function of role clarity, effort, motivation, and ability (Lawler, 1981; Powers & Thompson, 1994).
From a HRM perspective unclear roles decrease employee motivation, resulting in decreased effort (role investment) and lower performance, thus decreasing the expected rewards for the work done. This can, in turn, serve to decrease motivation and effort further. Thus, expectancy theory would predict that when IVMs view volunteers’ status and contributions as peripheral (rather than integral) to the organization, they will likewise perceive their own role (as volunteer manager) as less important. If volunteers are not really important to the organization, then the time and effort spent on managing them will not yield much benefit, so an IVM will not invest much in the role. This negative perception is compounded when the role of the volunteer manager and the role of volunteers are unclear or ambiguous; expectancy theory would predict that an IVM would invest less in an unclear or ambiguous role. Similarly, expectancy theory predicts that IVMs who consider volunteers to have high status or position within the organization will invest more effort in their volunteer manager role because they feel that the investment/reward balance is more favorable.
Study Background
The data to evaluate these hypotheses emanate from a large public library system comprising 20 branch libraries located in an urban environment in a southeastern state. Entering 2010, the system comprised 24 locations throughout the county, including small branches in several cities. During that year, the library lost US$15 million from its budget due to the economic downturn, a 39% reduction in annual operating expenses. Because of the budget cut, the library laid-off approximately 175 staff members, or about 35% of its workforce. In conjunction with the loss of staff, the library closed four small library branches and reduced the number of hours the other branches would be open to the public. As a result of public outcry and political pressures, the library system sought to double its use of volunteers over the course of 6 months so that it could extend hours for several branches. Similar to most public libraries in the United States, this library had a relatively long history of utilizing volunteers. However, after the fiscal crisis, it aimed to double the number of volunteers and expand volunteer activities and duties.
Eight years prior to the budget crisis, the chief library executive had hired the first full-time volunteer coordinator for the library system, who built a volunteer management infrastructure at each branch library. The branch director at each location would select one (or sometimes two) employee(s) to serve as a “volunteer point person,” or volunteer manager, at the library branch. The volunteer coordinator for the library system provides support, training, and assistance to the volunteer managers. In addition, the coordinator provides some centralized volunteer management services, such as handling applications and posting volunteer job descriptions on the library’s website. This infrastructure was integral to handling the influx of volunteers in 2010. As a result of the loss of so many employees in early 2010, many library locations shifted the volunteer point person responsibilities to new employees, making the library an ideal site for this study. Because so many of the volunteer managers were thus new to the position, these employees were not too far removed from the attitudes and perceptions they held before taking on this new job role and were still sensitive to issues of role ambiguity and position in assuming new job duties. We use a case study approach in this study because of the nature of our research questions. We are interested in how IVMs respond to the addition of volunteer manager responsibilities to their other job duties. When research questions center on how or why a phenomenon is occurring, a case study approach is appropriate (Yin, 2014).
Data and Method
This research is based on extensive, semistructured, in-person interviews with the volunteer managers at each of the currently operating 20 library locations and some prior volunteer managers. Within the system, these volunteer managers are called volunteer point people, and the library volunteer coordinator provided the research team with a list of all of the current and some prior volunteer point persons and volunteer point persons who had very recently been shifted to other duties in the organization. All of these individuals participated in interviews and responded to an accompanying online survey (response rate = 100%). We conducted the 34 interviews during January and February, 2012. Through several close readings of the interview transcriptions, we allowed patterns of thoughts and attitudes about volunteer management and volunteers to emerge based on similar statements and situations discussed by the respondents (Caudle, 2004). We supplemented the qualitative analysis with quantitative data from short electronic surveys of this same group of individuals conducted during the same time period. We triangulate the quantitative and qualitative data to learn more about who the volunteer mangers are, how they manage volunteers, and their perceptions of volunteers and volunteer management.
In our sample, the typical volunteer manager is female (88%), in her mid-40s (47 years old on average), with substantial formal education (81% hold a bachelor’s degree or higher). As expected, given the changes to the library system in 2010, the tenure in the volunteer manager position was relatively short. While on average, interviewees have been employed by the library system for about 12 years (11.67 years on average), the typical length of time as a volunteer manager is just under 3 years (2.6 years on average).
Results
Perceptions of the Volunteer Manager Role
Hypothesis 1a proposes that IVMs will not perceive their role of volunteer manager as a legitimate managerial position within the organization. Legitimacy within a role is defined as gaining the power and responsibilities associated with that role by communally accepted means (French & Raven, 1959; Raven, 2008); in public organizations, these means are typically formal and established procedures for advancement. Therefore, we investigate Hypothesis 1a by examining whether the organization had established and accepted pathways for acceding to the volunteer manager position, and whether these pathways aligned with those for obtaining other managerial positions within the organization.
We find that individuals were indeed “inadvertent” volunteer managers: Their assignment to the role was often haphazard and arbitrary rather than based on a deliberative decision process with a list of important criteria. For example, a quarter (24%) of the respondents volunteered for the volunteer management role. When asked to explain her motivation for volunteering for the position, one volunteer manager stated, “It seemed like that was the best thing to do at the time, and I hate to say it, but nobody else really wanted it.” Similarly, another volunteer manager replied, “When I came on board . . . I just told the manager I would take any odds and ends and the volunteer point person was . . . one of them.”
Among those who were assigned to the volunteer manager role rather than volunteering for it, another quarter (24%) felt that their assignments were made for arbitrary reasons. Two managers reported simply not knowing why they were chosen for the role. Another interviewee felt that the volunteer point person duties fell to the most junior member of the staff as a way to help free longer tenured staff for other duties. In the most blatant example of a lack of criteria for the assignment, one volunteer manager relayed a story of simply being in the branch manager’s view when a staff member was needed for volunteer coordination: I was on the reference desk one morning and . . . [the manager] walked past me in a very hurried manner and said there will be four or five high school boys coming in within forty-five minutes, find something for them to do . . . That’s how I became the volunteer point person for the second floor . . . I was an available body. I was there at the right moment . . . when my manager walked by and laid eyes on me and said this has to be done; they’re on their way here.
The remaining 18 (53%) felt that their appointment had something to do with their personality traits, past experiences, or skills sets. However, even among these managers who felt that their qualifications merited the assignment, none reported a formal interview or assessment. At most, they described informal conversations in which their managers asked them if they were willing to take on the volunteer management duties.
Therefore, unlike other managerial positions within the library system, no explicit criteria existed for the position, and the role was often assigned to the only person who would accept it. Lack of established pathways for obtaining the position signals to IVMs that the volunteer manager role is not considered a legitimate managerial role within the organization.
Similarly, Hypothesis 1b states that volunteer managers will not associate assignment to the volunteer management role with an increase in status within the organization. Status refers to the position of volunteer manager in relation to other organizational positions. Only five volunteer managers held other managerial positions when they took on the volunteer manager role, and an additional volunteer manager was promoted to a circulation manager position after taking on the volunteer manager role. Thus, with the exception of those six interviewees, assignment to a managerial role would technically be a promotion from the staff member’s current role.
We operationalize status by asking whether IVMs felt the volunteer management assignment was a promotion. If they indicate the job is a promotion, then they are ascribing higher status to it than their current role. The overwhelming majority of interviewees (85%) indicate that they do not view their assignment to the volunteer management role as a promotion, providing support for Hypothesis 1b. This view is correlated with a volunteer manager’s education level; staff members who hold master of library science (MLS) degrees are less likely than other staff to see the role as a means of advancing their careers. Of the 12 volunteer managers with an MLS degree, only 3 report that the volunteer manager role will help them to advance their career in any way, and none of them believes that the volunteer manager role is a promotion. The lack of an accompanying pay increase likely contributes to this view as well.
In addition, this evidence regarding status of the volunteer manager role is supported by IVMs’ perceptions of whether their position as volunteer manager places them on the same level as other managers within the organization. We asked IVMs to describe their responsibilities as volunteer managers. Rather than referencing the volunteer manager role as a management position in its own right, the majority of IVMs (59%) tend to indicate instead that they view it as a pathway to obtaining a legitimate management position in the future. One interviewee states, “I felt it was . . . an opportunity to . . . show some kind of management or leadership because otherwise we don’t have that opportunity unless you’re a manager.” Another stated, “If I wanted to move up in the organization into a manager-type position, I wanted to have that management experience, so that is why I did seek out being volunteer coordinator.”
Consistent with this viewpoint, 28 of the 34 volunteer managers (82%) report gaining a variety of general managerial skills from their tenure in the volunteer manager role, including interviewing, supervising, training, scheduling and managing work flow, decision making, giving constructive feedback, and enacting discipline. Thus, although many employees see that they will use and gain managerial skills in the volunteer manager role, they do not believe that the role has enough status within the organization to be considered a true managerial position. It is merely a step toward management. Notably, the fact that the IVMs are called “volunteer point persons” rather than mangers likely diminishes the perceived status of the role.
Perceptions of the Volunteer Role
Our second set of hypotheses pertains to IVMs’ perceptions of volunteers’ roles within the organization. Hypothesis 2a proposes ambiguity about the role of volunteers; expectations for volunteers’ behaviors will vary considerably across the IVMs. Our findings corroborate this hypothesis. We asked interviewees to tell us how being a volunteer manager changed their perceptions of the role of volunteers in the library. We identified three main patterns of perceptions regarding the role of volunteers in the library system: (a) volunteers make some positive contributions but the volunteer manager still has serious reservations about their involvement in the library system, (b) volunteers enhance library services, and (c) volunteers are essential to library operations. We discuss each of these patterns in more detail.
Positive contributions, but serious reservations
The first group embraces six IVMs (18%) who believe that volunteers are capable of making valuable contributions. However, they express serious reservations about library overuse of or overreliance on volunteers. One IVM states, My concern . . . is that management starts to kind of rely on them, and you cannot rely on volunteers. You simply cannot. . . . They enhance what we do . . . [but] God forbid that you would count on them. . . . They’re there to help you and we appreciate them when they come. But we have had . . . many times when they don’t. . . . So I would never assign them a task . . . that they had to show up for.
Another IVM expresses a tension between professionalism and volunteer help, “I think there . . . [are] some emotional issues. Because it doesn’t make you necessarily feel good about your job if you see other people doing it who aren’t trained . . . [and] you know they’re not professionals.”
Other IVMs commented that although volunteers are appreciated, their mistakes have the potential to drain the time and resources of paid staff. These managers tend to report positive feelings about their initial assignment to the volunteer manager role, but the feelings were then mitigated by the problems that they encountered. The individuals in this group ascribed lower status to the volunteers than the other interviewees; they prefer to keep volunteers in tangential positions so that the library does not rely too heavily on them.
Volunteers enhance library services
The second and largest category encompasses 12 IVMs who perceive that volunteers enhance the services that the library provides. These managers duly acknowledge that others may have some reservations about extensive volunteer use, but they believe that the benefits of integrating volunteers into the library system far outweigh the costs. For example, I think throughout the system and due to what was going on at the time, there was a lot of fear around the idea that oh, they’re bring[ing] in volunteers to replace employees. And they’re going to do away with more jobs . . . I don’t know that I felt that strongly about it, but I did wonder how much can they do. You know, just being a volunteer [when there are] librarians who have very specialized training and . . . [also] very capable circulation and children’s staff . . . [But] then you realize working with these people how much they can add, [and] how much they can allow you to do aside from the typical day-to-day tasks. It enables you to offer more to the community.
Overall, respondents’ most typical response to being assigned to a volunteer manager position is a moderately positive view of the role of volunteers. These IVMs view volunteers as partners in the work of the library, so they accord them higher status than the previous group. However, they do not view volunteers as being essential to the system and as such may be hesitant to assign them more sensitive tasks such as those that require access to patron’s library records.
Volunteers are essential to the library system
The remaining eight IVMs (24%) believe that beyond enhancing what the library can provide and offering assistance to paid staff, volunteers are essential to the functioning of the library system. They feel that without volunteers, the library would not be able to serve its clientele effectively, or, in some cases, at all. One volunteer manager says, I think some locations still look at volunteers as being like an added bonus . . . where here it’s a necessity. Really, we wouldn’t be able to be open without them. We would just be so far behind; it would be horrible.
Another manager states, “As the [volunteer] point person you see exactly how this volunteer fits in and how they’re helping, and without the volunteers, I don’t think we’d have any books on the shelf.” Thus, the IVMs in this group view volunteers as having much higher status relative to the status given to volunteers by the other IVMs. These IVMs are generally willing to utilize volunteers in a broad range of library functions and programming.
To further investigate the different perceptions that IVMs hold regarding volunteers, we examine Hypotheses 2b and 2c. Hypothesis 2b links professional values to IVMs’ perceptions of the status and position of volunteers. We find support for this hypothesis. Professional values tend to condition IVMs’ perceptions of volunteers in the library. We use attainment of a MLS degree as a proxy for professional values. Every individual who indicated that she had serious reservations about volunteers (“low status”) has either an MLS or another graduate degree (five of the six hold MLS degrees). In addition, only two MLS holders considered volunteers as essential to the organization (“higher status”). Furthermore, all but one of the interviewees with lower levels of education (a 2-year degree or no BA/BS) believed that volunteers are essential to the library system. These findings suggest that professional norms and values as expressed through attainment of an educational degree are associated with perceptions of reduced importance of volunteers to the library system.
Hypothesis 2c asserts that past personal experiences with volunteers will condition IVMs’ perceptions of volunteers’ position and status in the organization. Fifty-nine percent of volunteer managers answer affirmatively when asked whether they had worked with volunteers prior to their assignment to the volunteer manager role. Half of them report having positive prior experiences with volunteers, a quarter report mixed or negative experiences, and a quarter did not report either positive or negative past experiences with volunteers.
No clear pattern emerges between previous experience with volunteers and IVMs’ current perception of volunteers. Notably, however, direct feedback from other staff regarding volunteers at a library branch is linked to IVMs’ perceptions of volunteers. IVMs who report receiving positive feedback from other paid staff tend to view volunteers more positively, whereas managers who report higher levels of mixed or negative feedback tend to have lower perceptions of the role of volunteers in the organization. Thus, while we do not find support for Hypothesis 2b, we do find evidence of another important element shaping IVMs’ perceptions of the role of volunteers: The experiences and attitudes of other staff seem to have a consistent relationship with how IVMs perceive the volunteer role.
Intersection of Perceptions of the Volunteer Manager Role and Volunteer Role
Hypothesis 3 is concerned with the IVMs’ role behaviors or level of investment in their volunteer management duties. Work role investment has been defined as “specific attitudes and behaviors associated with people’s devotion to work roles” (Lobel, 1991, p. 508). Hours spent performing a work role are often used as a measure of role investment (Greenberger & Goldberg, 1989), but other behavioral measures have been utilized as well (Lobel, 1991). Previous studies concerned with work role investment have typically compared work role investment with family role investment (Lobel, 1991; Rothbard & Edwards, 2003). However, we argue that when situations arise such as the addition of the volunteer manager role to an employee’s preexisting work role, the role investment approach is also useful for analyzing an IVM’s level of investment in his or her new role. Thus, in our study, indicators of the level of investment in the volunteer management role include the amount of time per week that a manager reports spending on volunteer management duties, the degree to which IVMs utilize volunteer management best practices, and the effort an IVM exerts to facilitate good working relationships between volunteers and library staff. The amount of time the IVM spends on the volunteer management role is captured by a survey question that asks IVMs to report the number of hours per week they spend working with volunteers.
To investigate IVMs’ utilization of volunteer management best practices and efforts to facilitate volunteer–staff relationships, we use interview responses about techniques for volunteer recruitment, strategies for volunteer retention and recognition, attempts to match volunteer skills and tasks with work assignments, mechanisms for volunteer training, volunteer supervision techniques, procedures for soliciting volunteer feedback, and approaches to improving volunteer–staff relationships. Responses to all of these questions are compiled, and each IVM is ranked relative to the other IVMs. IVMs with very similar response profiles receive the same ranking. The pattern that emerges is that volunteer managers’ role behaviors can be divided into two broad categories, high investment in the role versus low investment. We observe a few outliers as well (which we discuss below).
High investment in the volunteer manager role
Sixty-one percent of our sample falls into this category. These IVMs see the volunteer manager role as a central part of their job and make a concerted effort to implement a variety of best practices. These managers are usually evaluated regarding their volunteer manager role in their annual performance reviews, and they also tend to set personal goals throughout the year to improve their volunteer management performance. Many of these IVMs express the desire for more systematic training regarding the volunteer manager role, such as in interviewing or retaining volunteers. Some describe being overwhelmed by the combination of the volunteer manager role and their normal job within the library, but others report quickly adjusting to the assignment and their volunteer management duties.
At the extreme of this category are three managers who report investing considerably more effort than the typical IVM. These managers say that they enjoy the volunteer manager role because of the interpersonal interactions and the challenge of setting up and maintaining a volunteer program. They manage larger numbers of volunteers than most other IVMs and extend themselves in a variety of ways. For instance, one IVM reports making hand-crafted gifts for volunteer recognition. Another hosts a variety of recognition events throughout the year, including a barbecue and a garden tea, takes online volunteer management courses, and has instituted a field trip for the volunteers to visit other libraries in the system. The third IVM actively seeks volunteer feedback through surveys and makes adjustments to the program according to the responses.
Low investment in the volunteer manager role
The remainder of our sample (39%) falls into the low investment group. IVMs in the library system have primary duties in addition to the volunteer manager role, and several IVMs in this group refer to their volunteer manager duties as background tasks rather than primary duties. These IVMs practice delegation of the volunteer management function, dividing the responsibility by implementing some best practices themselves while delegating components such as training or supervision to other staff members. One volunteer manager states, “I have . . . a little volunteer team; they’re particular people in the branch that are responsible for training volunteers.” Others in this category rely on the volunteers for tasks such as training and supervision. For example, one manager reports, “volunteers pretty much supervise themselves. They know what they need to do.”
Another group of IVMs who fall into the low investment category manage specialized departments or projects. The library system handles a variety of work extending beyond circulation, with which volunteers usually assist. These tasks include outreach to the community, research projects, and special programming or events. Due to the nature of their work, these managers may not have as much day-to-day contact with the volunteers. They mainly assign volunteers to a project that is under the purview of a different paid staff member. They typically do not conduct volunteer orientation or training or regularly supervise volunteers themselves. Instead, those tasks are left to the discretion of the staff member to whom the volunteer is assigned. It is possible that the reduced attention to volunteer management may result from an inability to accommodate this role with other workplace responsibilities.
An IVM at the extreme of the low commitment category indicated that it is normal and expected for other staff to spend more time on volunteer duties than the volunteer point person. This IVM asserted that the volunteer program should not create a burden for library staff, but should require minimal effort and propel itself . . . that is to say that I think the most effective volunteers are ones that once they’ve been trained on what it is we need them to do . . . they come in and they do those things without direction.
The IVMs in this library system exhibited a range of investments in volunteer manager role behaviors. Hypothesis 3 states that IVMs’ perceptions of the status and position of volunteers will affect their behaviors in their volunteer manager role. We expected that IVMs who perceive the volunteers’ position as more integral and essential to the organization would be more invested in the volunteer manager role. The data offer mixed evidence for this expectation. At the extreme ends of volunteer manager role behaviors, IVMs’ perceptions of the volunteers’ role are positively associated with their level of investment. For most IVMs, however, we did not see much evidence that perceptions of the role and status of volunteers affected role investment.
Discussion and Implications
The focus of this article has been to shed some light on a lesser studied role in HRM: volunteer managers. In our case study of a large library system, we found these roles to be filled in a rather ad hoc fashion. We explored these “inadvertent” roles using role theory as a theoretical frame to illuminate IVMs’ perceptions of their roles and status as volunteer managers, the roles and status of volunteers, and how these conceptions may be related to role behaviors and investment.
Our first main finding is that IVMs in this library system treated the volunteer manager role as an ancillary responsibility that carried low status and position. We found that employees were assigned to this role inadvertently—without much intention, consideration for the necessary qualifications for the role, or thought about fit to the job. Our findings support other authors’ observations about the low status and attention given to volunteer management in organizations generally (Ellis, 2010; Hager & Brudney, 2004; Machin & Paine, 2008). The volunteer managers in our study were truly “inadvertent” volunteer managers.
We argue that this practice can have negative consequences for the organization. Low status and position in the organization decrease the legitimacy of the volunteer manager role and affect expectations for this position. They can also lead to role ambiguity, a lack of identification with the volunteer manager role, and role strain, all of which are common role stressors (Biddle, 1979, 1986). Dover (2010) finds that anxiety about the place of volunteers in the organization and their relationship with paid staff can lead to decreased role performance and poor organizational outcomes. Our research engages vital elements of the HRM process concerning the effect that modified and increased workloads have on employee stress, anxiety, and performance in public organizations (Doby & Caplan, 1995; Hellriegel et al., 2001; Jimmieson et al., 2004). Ironically, this library system did not use good human resource practices (selection, training, supervision, etc.) to prepare and manage those who were managing the volunteers; this underscores a disconnect between the HRM literature and volunteer management literature that we think needs to be remedied.
We found that expectations for volunteers in the library were ambiguous, surprisingly even among those managing the volunteers. The IVMs varied in their perceptions of how integral volunteers were to the organization and their expectations for the work that should be assigned to volunteers. If the role and expectations for volunteers are ambiguous, then the role and expectations for the volunteer manager will be obscure as well. Organizations that do not have coherent vision of volunteer involvement will likewise lack a solid basis for evaluating the degree to which the volunteer program has been successful or accomplished its goals (see Brudney, 1990; Rehnborg et al., 2009). To avoid this ambiguity and maximize the potential of volunteers, Evans (2010) advises that personnel, be they volunteer managers or employees, establish clear expectations for volunteers, for example, through volunteer job descriptions. Although volunteers are an important unpaid human resource to the library, the organization did not follow prescribed human resource practices to manage them.
One source of ambiguity in perceptions of roles—both of the volunteers and the volunteer managers—is professional values. Professional librarians did not see the volunteer manager role as a promotion, and few considered it a role that would be helpful for their future careers. Professional librarians were also more likely to indicate that the role of volunteers is more tangential and less integral and essential to the organization. Thus, professional values affect perceptions of volunteers. As such, professional values could be one of the mechanisms driving larger challenges in volunteer–staff relationships noted in the literature—challenges that often include turf battles between staff and volunteers (MacDuff, 2012; Scheier, 2003). Nesbit, Christensen, and Brudney (2011) note that organizations offering professional services might limit volunteer involvement because of the pressures of professionalization.
We also have limited evidence that the intersection of expectations and status for the roles of volunteers and the volunteer manager can affect IVMs’ level of investment in their volunteer management duties. Although our results are far from conclusive, they raise interesting questions about how the perceptions of one workplace role affect perceptions of another workplace role with respect to role expectations, role behaviors, and social position and status. In an earlier study of volunteer retention rates in human service agencies, Jamison (2003) found a positive relationship between status and level of satisfaction among volunteers. She notes that while low levels of satisfaction contribute to higher turnover rates, improved on-the-job training and provision of challenging and rewarding tasks by a volunteer coordinator or manager encourage volunteers to remain at the organization for longer periods (Jamison, 2003).
This relationship suggests a link between effective volunteer management and attainment of job satisfaction among volunteers that relies upon both groups having a certain level of status in the organization. According to Coursey, Brudney, Littlepage, and Perry (2011), “How an individual fits with respect to his or her goals, motives, and other criteria with an organization’s culture and opportunities will affect workplace behavior” (p. 50). Thus, although more research in this area is needed, it follows that intersecting two ambiguous, low-status roles would potentially lead to diminished organizational and interpersonal outcomes.
The questions raised by this study are important because many public and nonprofit organizations seek to incorporate more volunteers during times of fiscal constraint (Brudney, 1990, 1993; Dover, 2010). Based on this case study, these organizations may give too little thought to who will manage the volunteers and what roles volunteers will perform. IVMs may, as we witnessed in our case study, lack an understanding of the basic practices and important principles behind volunteer management (see Connors, 2012; Seel, 2010) and might not have any management experience or training. They might not be sensitive to the interpersonal and experiential aspects of volunteering, which can lead to problems in volunteer retention (Brodie et al., 2011; Gazley, 2013; Hustinx, 2010; Kulik, 2006). Penner and Finkelstein (1998) found that a volunteer’s length of service is positively correlated with his or her feelings of satisfaction. They note, “Whether volunteering continues depends largely on the relationship between the volunteer and the service organization” (Penner & Finkelstein, 1998, p. 525). According to Lynn (2003), high rates of volunteer turnover lead to organizational instability, which further impedes public employees’ abilities to perform well in the volunteer manager role and ultimately affects the overall outcomes and success of the volunteer program.
Brudney (1986) investigated the relationship between the U.S. Small Business Administration and its volunteer program, SCORE, in the 1970s. He found that over time as the organization came to rely more heavily on volunteers, employees’ job responsibilities shifted away from their technical expertise and more toward volunteer management responsibilities. This change is important because not only might public employees resent and resist such transition but also they might not have the requisite training, knowledge, and experience to make the shift to new managerial duties effectively. Sound HRM would suggest that organizations should adequately prepare and train those who will be managing others—whether paid or unpaid.
We recognize the limitations of our data. Because we rely on a case study from a single library system, we can only speculate about the extent to which our findings are generalizable to other organizations and contexts. Nevertheless, based on the results of this study and the observations of researchers and practitioners in the field of volunteer management, we suspect that the experiences in this library system are not unique, and that other organizations will likewise appoint “inadvertent” volunteer managers to deal with the repercussions of fiscal stress. Indeed, the empirical evidence indicates that most organizations do not give much consideration to volunteer management (Hager & Brudney, 2004; Machin & Paine, 2008), so our findings potentially relevant to a range of public and nonprofit organizations.
To the extent that our study is appropriate for a range of organizational settings, assisting IVMs in their new roles will be crucial to the success of the volunteer program and the continuity of organizational services. We also think that the lessons learned from this study apply to other important issues in public management, especially issues of coproduction of services and citizen participation in public administration. Because coproduction, by definition, involves a volunteer’s vested interest in the service or organization producing the service (Brandsen & Pestoff, 2006), properly managing volunteers needs to be especially intentional and purposive. Failure to do so may even impact citizen perceptions of public service organizations. Issues of role clarity and role investment—both from public managers and individual citizens—are likewise critical to the success of HRM function within organizations using volunteers (Bingham, Nabatchi, & O’Leary, 2005; Powers & Thompson, 1994). Volunteer management also touches upon other popular themes in public management, including public service motivation and how we manage individual prosocial motives.
Finally, our study has practical implications. Volunteer management constitutes a legitimate managerial role that requires extensive training, especially for those without prior managerial experience (see Connors, 2012; Seel, 2010). Yet, organizations do not treat the role as such. Systematic training for volunteer managers lays the groundwork for establishing volunteer management as a profession, including providing volunteer managers with opportunities for professional development (Brudney & Heinlein, 2013). Not all employees are well-suited to this role. Because volunteers are sensitive to interpersonal issues in their volunteer work, volunteer managers must have the ability to connect with and understand other people, as emphasized by Evans (2010). Evans identifies four volunteer personality types based on William Marston’s (1931) DISC typology of personality types, namely, dominant, influencing, steady, and conscientious, and he offers advice to library volunteer managers in dealing with each of them to minimize volunteer turnover and maximize volunteer productivity. Although this particular typology is one approach among many for classifying personality types, the underlying lesson for volunteer managers is that it is necessary to understand characteristics of individual volunteers and tailor management strategies so that these differences are taken into consideration. If volunteers are to achieve the results sought by organizations, agency leaders must do a better job of communicating the importance of volunteers, the rationale for their involvement, and the critical role to be played by volunteer managers—all components of good HRM.
Conclusion
In this article, we have explored how employees respond when taking on the role, if inadvertently, of volunteer manager. Although based on a single case study of a large library system, our research makes a contribution to knowledge of volunteer programs and their operation by enhancing our understanding of the influence of roles and status with respect to newly appointed managers of volunteers. One of the fundamental assumptions of a great deal of public HRM research is that personnel management strategies have implications for organizational outcomes and performance (Boyne, 2003; Elling & Thompson, 2006). Perry (2010) argues that empirical investigation of the connections between personnel management strategies and public organizational performance is one of the key priorities for current human resources management research. Our study highlights volunteer management, an often-overlooked aspect of public human resources management, as fruitful ground to examine these connections. These findings will inform scholarship about how to introduce volunteers into public (and nonprofit) organizations, manage volunteers more effectively, prepare and establish volunteer leaders, and design and develop the volunteer program in ways that lead to more productive and satisfied volunteers and, ultimately, better public performance.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Allison R. Russell and Anna M. Nunn, University of North Carolina Wilmington, for their research assistance. Any errors of commission or omission are solely the authors.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported, in part, by funds provided by The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.