Inadvertent Volunteer Managers
| Author | Robert K. Christensen,Jeffrey L. Brudney,Rebecca Nesbit,Heather Rimes |
| Published date | 01 June 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0734371X15576409 |
| Date | 01 June 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2015
Article
Review of Public Personnel Administration
2016, Vol. 36(2) 164 –187
Inadvertent Volunteer
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X15576409
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Perceptions of Volunteer
Managers’ and Volunteers’
Roles in the Public Workplace
Rebecca Nesbit1, Heather Rimes1,
Robert K. Christensen1, and Jeffrey L. Brudney2
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.
Keywords
volunteering, volunteer management, volunteer coordination, volunteer experience,
role theory
1University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
2University of North Carolina Wilmington, NC, USA
Corresponding Author:
Rebecca Nesbit, Department of Public Administration and Policy, University of Georgia, 203C Baldwin
Hall, Athens, GA 30602-1615, USA.
Email: nesbit7@uga.edu
Nesbit et al.
165
Many public and nonprofit organizations face constraints of reduced budgets and hir-
ing 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 responsi-
bilities 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 add-
ing 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:
Research Question 1: How do employees who have been assigned volunteer man-
agement duties view the volunteer management role?
Research Question 2: How do employees who have been assigned volunteer man-
agement duties view the role of volunteers in the organization?
Research Question 3: How do volunteer managers’ perceptions of both roles affect
their level of investment in the volunteer manager role?
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 manage-
ment 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 percep-
tions 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 man-
agement journals including the Review of Public Personnel Administration. He found
that prominent topics in human resources management research included training and
166
Review of Public Personnel Administration 36(2)
development, culture, motivation, recruitment and selection, accountability, and com-
munication. 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 govern-
ment, the value of their public sector volunteer hours equaling between US$34.1 bil-
lion 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 super-
vising them. If this process is not purposive, HRM research and practice similarly
identify the consequences for employees, organizations, and the volunteers them-
selves. 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 organiza-
tion 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 atti-
tudes toward the organization (Doby & Caplan, 1995; Fernandez & Kim, 2013;
Jimmieson, Terry, & Callan, 2004). Insufficient organizational investment in volun-
teers 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 manage-
ment of volunteers seriously as part of their larger HRM strategies. This means that the
Nesbit et al.
167
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 set-
tings (Kramer, 1985; Merrell, 2000; Pearce, 1993; Schulz & Auld, 2006; Thoits,
2012); however, the role of volunteer manager has heretofore received little—particu-
larly theoretical—attention. We combine empirical applications of role theory to for-
mal organizations and academic and practitioner literature on volunteer management
to develop hypotheses about employees’ attitudes and behaviors when...
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