Lucas Meijs

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.

It Ain't Natural Toward a New (Natural) Resource Conceptualization for Volunteer Management

This article presents a new conceptualization of volunteerism as a natural resource. The authors propose that volunteer energy can be understood as a human-made, renewable resource that can be grown and recycled, and whose continuation and volume of flow can be influenced by human beings positively as well as negatively. Based on this conceptualization, we describe the major features of volunteer energy and suggest that a new regenerative approach is necessary for the field to fully embrace it. We develop the new approach and contrast it with the traditional instrumental approach to volunteer management.

Monitorial citizens or civic omnivores? Repertoires of civic participation among university students

In present-day societies, the extent to which young people still participate in civic life is an important matter of concern. The claim of a generational “decline” in civic engagement has been contested, and interchanged with the notion of a “replacement” of traditional engagement by new types of participation, and the emergence of the “monitorial citizen” who participates in more individualized ways. Concurrently, this study explored the assumption of a “pluralization” of involvement, advancing a new concept: the “civic omnivore,” characterized by an expanded civic repertoire. Drawing data from a sample of 1,493 Belgian and Dutch university students, we identify five repertoires of participation such as, disengaged students, classical volunteers, humanitarian citizens, monitorial citizens, and civic omnivores. Our findings support the pluralization thesis, by showing that young citizens are not exclusively engaged in new monitorial ways, yet also expand their civic repertoire by combining traditional and new forms in more complex ways.

All in the Eyes of the Beholder

Volunteers are the cornerstone of the voluntary sector. While we are accustomed to this assumption, too little systematic work has been carried out to define the term “volunteer.” Often too many different activities and situations are aggregated into this concept (Lyons, Wijkstrom, & Clary, 1998; Cnaan, Handy, & Wadsworth, 1996; Scheier, 1980; Smith, 1995; Tremper, Seidman & Tufts, 1994; Vineyard, 1993). People presented with seemingly similar examples of volunteering perceive them differently as volunteering, for unknown reasons. The same people may perceive volunteer activities differently depending on their own context or reference. Especially for international comparative studies, a better understanding of the definition and even more important perception of volunteering is needed.

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.

Jasmine growers of coastal Karnataka: Grassroots sustainable community-based enterprise in India

The case of the jasmine flower growers in coastal Karnataka is an example of a local successful grassroots enterprise that has proved robust for over 70 years. The aim of this research is to examine the history, mechanisms, interconnectedness, and success of the jasmine growing program in coastal Karnataka and assess its compatibility with the community-based enterprise (CBE) model as proposed by Peredo and Chrisman [Peredo, A.M., and J.J. Chrisman. 2006. Toward a theory of community-based enterprise. Academy of Management Review 31, no. 2: 309–28]. We found that the existence of a natural, autonomously developed CBE without ‘western’ intervention can help to fine tune our knowledge of sustainable CBE and assist in helping practitioners learn what works and what does not when proposing a CBE.

Models of Volunteer Management: Professional Volunteer Program Management in Social Work

Several trends are leading to increased and broader involvement of volunteers in social work practice. As a consequence, social workers need to be able to manage volunteers in different settings, based on organizational/program factors and characteristics of the volunteers. Contemporary research on volunteer management can be divided into universalistic and contingency approaches. This article presents an overview of leading concepts in both perspectives and offers recommendations for social workers to select appropriate approaches to manage volunteers professionally across different contexts.

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.

Differences between paid and unpaid social services for beneficiaries

ABSTRACT In many Western welfare states, social work services that have traditionally been provided by paid employees are being replaced by family support, community support, informal networks, and volunteering. For the field of social work, it is relevant to know what it matters to beneficiaries whether services are provided by volunteers or by paid employees. The central question of this article is therefore as follows: What are the differences between unpaid and paid social services for beneficiaries? The article is based on literature review and focus groups. Our results suggest that beneficiaries do experience some differences regarding the advantages of volunteer services for beneficiaries that can be summarized in three propositions: (1) services provided by volunteers are more relational than are services provided by paid employees, and they are therefore perceived as more equal, flexible and sincere. (2) The effects of volunteer services for beneficiaries are not exclusively positive. (3) Although particular tasks may appear to be interchangeable to some extent, the relative advantages of a given task depend upon whether it is performed by a paid worker or by a volunteer. Additional research is needed in order to provide further validation.

Exploring Partnerships from the Perspective of HSO Beneficiaries: The Case of Corporate Volunteering

ABSTRACT Despite numerous studies of cross-sector collaboration, little is known about the perceptions and involvement of beneficiaries in partnerships between HSOs and companies. This explorative, qualitative study addresses this gap by offering insight into the beneficiaries’ perspectives with regard to a specific form of collaboration: corporate volunteering. Key findings suggest that beneficiaries’ perceptions are influenced by involvement in the development of the projects, the perceived quality of interaction, and the sustainability. We conclude that beneficiaries are welcoming the change in their daily routines, while acknowledging the lack of reciprocity. We argue that corporate volunteering does not necessarily produce a win-win situation.