Kirsten Holmes

A Cross-Cultural Examination of Student Volunteering: Is It All About Résumé Building?

This research adopts the utilitarian view of volunteering as a starting point: we posit that for an undergraduate student population volunteering is motivated by career enhancing and job prospects. We hypothesize that in those countries where volunteering signals positive characteristics of students and helps advance their careers, their volunteer participation will be higher. Furthermore, regardless of the signaling value of volunteering, those students who volunteer for utilitarian reasons will be more likely to volunteer but will exhibit less time-intensive volunteering. Using survey data from 12 countries (n = 9,482), we examine our hypotheses related to motivations to volunteer, volunteer participation, and country differences. Findings suggest that students motivated to volunteer for building their résumés do not volunteer more than students with other motives. However, in countries with a positive signaling value of volunteering, volunteering rates are significantly higher. As expected, students motivated by résumé building motivations have a lower intensity of volunteering.

Volunteers and volunteering in leisure : social science perspectives

Leisure has been widely examined within the context of social science theory. This article adopts a broad approach, examining a range of social science disciplines and applying them to specific phenomena located within the leisure field, namely, volunteers and volunteering in leisure settings. In a disciplinary sense, the sociological view focuses upon the conceptualisation of volunteering as leisure, the psychological view seeks to understand motivations driving volunteering, while the perspective of economists supplements these standpoints in terms of why people volunteer and further examines the value of volunteer contributions. Comparative analysis of the perspectives enunciated within these key disciplines provides for a fuller picture of the status of research relating to leisure volunteers and volunteering. Accordingly, this article aims to identify gaps in current knowledge, draws out conclusions for an improved understanding of this area as well as to enhance comprehension of disciplinary contributions to the study of leisure phenomena.

Developing the dimensions of tourism volunteering.

Volunteers within tourism settings are of growing interest. Research to date has been fragmented either focusing on individuals volunteering in their community (i.e., hosts) or tourists volunteering at a destination (i.e., guests). In this paper, the tourism and leisure literature on volunteering is synthesized and the host and guest streams of volunteering critiqued according to four defining dimensions: setting, time commitment, level of obligation, and remuneration. These dimensions are refined using interview data to propose a model of tourism volunteering where host and guest volunteering are related rather than distinct. A simple host-guest dichotomy misses the shared and distinct complexities of tourism volunteering.

Patterns of Voluntary Participation in Membership Associations: A Study of UK Heritage Supporter Groups

Previous studies of membership associations identify differences between passive and active participation and also identify both sociodemographic and motivational factors as influencing participation. Extant research has, however, relied on cross-sectional survey data which does not capture the whole picture of an individual’s memberships. This article reports on a mixed-methods study of members of voluntary associations in the UK heritage sector to examine patterns of participation. The data reveals intensity of participation ranging from passive to active membership and we identify a new form of engagement: substituters. We find motivation to be the main influence on participation level and identify a new group of members based on their motivation: hobbyists. The data also reveals barriers to participation, including distance to the heritage site, aging, work and family commitments, and participation in other membership or voluntary associations. Last, members display varying levels of participation over time within the same association.

Service-Learning: Findings From a 14-Nation Study

Service-learning literature has been dominated by studies from North America with little cross-national comparative work. This article reports on a survey of university students conducted across 14 different countries. The study examines the relationships between service-learning programs (both compulsory and optional) at high school and university, along with current volunteering, study subject, and sociodemographic variables. The survey found variation in service-learning across the different countries along with relationships between service-learning participation and gender, family income, and study subject. By contrast to previous research, however, both mandatory and optional service-learning at high school and university led to higher participation in general volunteering.

Researching volunteers in Tourism: Going beyond

Abstract Volunteers make contributions across the breadth of tourism, both as volunteer tourists and as volunteers supporting tourism within their local community, such as through visitor attractions and events. While tourism volunteering as a research field is growing, these two groups of volunteers have largely been considered separately with little crossover of research or researchers. This paper proposes a model of tourism volunteer engagements as a means of conceptualising types of tourism volunteering, settings, and time contributions more holistically and inclusively. Using this model as a framework, we set out the current state of research on tourism volunteering, demonstrating that, to date, researchers have concentrated on key types of tourism volunteering and settings, and within these, focused on dominant time contributions, roles, and perspectives, and prevailing methods and approaches. By identifying gaps in extant research we call for more critical research and challenge researchers to ‘go beyond’ and create a wider‐ranging and more inclusive research agenda. By taking up the challenge to ‘go beyond’ we argue that this nascent research field can mature and indeed develop a wider‐ranging and more inclusive research agenda that embraces both the diversity and commonalities of tourism volunteering.

‘It fitted in with our lifestyle’: an investigation into episodic volunteering in the tourism sector

Tourism organizations are dependent on volunteers to deliver visitor services. Evidence suggests that volunteering is changing with a decline in volunteer hours per head and a rise in episodic forms of volunteering. This paper uses data from interviews with both regular and episodic volunteers in tourism-related roles to examine how volunteering fits within their working and leisure lives and how and why they make time for volunteering. The findings reveal that episodic volunteers are still passionate about the activity, but have different motives from regular volunteers who are seeking an ongoing activity with social benefits. Episodic volunteers often make a bigger time commitment in the short term and these intense roles would be difficult to sustain regularly. However, the interviews also identify that episodic volunteers are regular volunteers at other organizations and vice versa. This paper concludes by calling for a portfolio approach to researching volunteers.

Events and sustainability

Increasing concerns over climate and environmental change, the global economic and financial crisis and impacts on host communities, audiences, participants and destinations has reinforced the need for more sustainable approaches to events. Sustainability now features as part of the bid process for many mega-events, such as the Olympic Games, as well as significant regional and local events, where the event organisers are required by funding bodies and governments to generate broader outcomes for the locality. This book is the first to offer students a comprehensive introduction to the full range of issues and topics relevant to event sustainability including impacts, operating and policy environments, stimulating urban regeneration and creating lasting legacies, as well as practical knowledge on how to achieve a sustainable event. Taking a holistic approach drawing on multidisciplinary theory it offers insight into the economic, socio-cultural and environmental impacts and how these can be adapted or mitigated. Theory and practice are linked through integrated case studies based on a wide range of event types from mega events to community festivals to show impacts, best practice and how better sustainable practice can be achieved in the future. Learning objectives, discussion questions and further reading suggestions are included to aid understanding and further knowledge; additional resources for lecturers and students including power point slides, video and web links are available online. Events and Sustainability is essential reading for all events management students and future managers.

The low status of management within the UK museums sector

This commentary questions why management as a practice, skill and focus for research has maintained such a low status within the UK museums sector. The UK museums sector has a poor record of people management, which has been documented over the past two decades (Demos 2003; Holland 1997; Museums and Galleries Commission 1987; Scott, Klemm, and Wilson 1993), and this has led to a shortage of trained managers from within the sector. These shortcomings include poor pay and conditions, a lack of a clear career pathway, and low turnover limiting the progress of junior staff. In 1999, only 48% of museums had their own training budget and the museums sector was viewed as offering a distinct lack of extrinsic rewards (Demos 2003). Indeed, it could even be argued that museums offer even diminishing intrinsic rewards, as opportunities for research and scholarship decline in favour of more public services. The future of the museums workforce has been the focus of research by the UK’s Museums Association (Davies 2007), which has examined problems around entry into the workforce. A key problem identified by this report is the limited availability of management training and development opportunities. This means that not only do museums struggle to recruit middle-level managers, but also many well-trained and skilled museum workers leave the profession frustrated and disillusioned after only a few years. The lack of a trained management cadre in museums, and/or management training for museum professionals, has been consistently identified (e.g., Cultural Heritage National Training Organisation 1988; Fopp 1988; Greenhill 1984; Hatton 1989; Holland 1997), with Greenhill commenting that management is not a ‘sparetime job’ (1984, 67). The problem is also recognised within the sector, with managerial skills reported as the biggest skills gap in museums (Scott, Klemm, and Wilson 1993). The Renaissance in the Regions Taskforce reported that ‘management and leadership are thought to be of insufficient quality’ (Resource 2001, 56). Although this problem may not be unique to the UK (see also Canadian Museums Association 2000; Tyler 1984, 25), we focus on the UK in this commentary. The Hale Report suggested the dominance of curators moving into management was one factor (Museums and Galleries Commission 1987, 20), and noted that in order to improve museum performance, management training would require attitudinal shifts, as well as skill acquisition a factor still cited by respondents to Resource’s workforce development plan in 2003 (Demos 2003).

What gives? Cross-national differences in students’ giving behavior

Abstract This study is targeted to understanding the giving of time and money among a specific cohort – university students across 13 countries. It explores predictors of different combinations of giving behaviors: only volunteering, only donating, neither, as compared to doing both. Among the predictors of these four types of giving behavior, we also account for cross-national differences across models of civil society. The findings show that students predominantly prefer to give money than to volunteer time. In addition, differences in civil society regimes provide insights into which type of giving behavior might dominate. As expected, in the Statist and Traditional models of civil society, students consistently were more likely to be disengaged in giving behaviors (neither volunteering nor giving money) in comparison to students in the Liberal model who were more likely to report doing ‘both’ giving behaviors. An important implication of our findings is that while individual characteristics and values influence giving of time and money, these factors are played out in the context of civil society regimes, whose effects cannot be ignored. Our analysis has made a start in a new area of inquiry attempting to explain different giving behaviors using micro and macro level factors and raises several implications for future research.