More Than Motivation: Reconsidering Volunteer Management Tools

Abstract

Volunteers provide an essential human resource to sport organizations. Yet measures of motivation and satisfaction have had limited impact on an organization’s ability to improve their volunteer systems. This study applied the Kano Method to categorize volunteers’ perceptions of their experience into four dimensions of satisfaction: Attractive (or Satisfiers), Must-Be’s (or Dissatisfiers), One-Dimensional, and Indifferent. Four types of volunteers (44 sport continuous, 47 sport episodic, 49 nonsport continuous, 176 nonsport episodic) completed a web questionnaire including 26-paired features of their experience, 26 motives, and five key outcome measures. Although motives were deemed important, alone they were poor predictors of key outcomes and were unrelated to satisfaction. Volunteers in the four contexts classified the 26 features in different ways. No Must-Be’s (dissatisfiers) were identified by any group. Although most features were identified as Attractive, the distribution of One-Dimensional and Indifferent features varied by context. One-dimensional items were only identified among features categorized as Supportive Culture, Clear Direction, and Contribution. These features should be prioritized as managers improve volunteer management systems. The Kano Method extends our understanding of the volunteer experience by providing researchers with a tool to distinguish the way volunteers conceptualize their experience. From a practical standpoint, it provides volunteer managers with an additional tool in their efforts to recruit and retain volunteers by prioritizing features that will most immediately impact volunteers.

Generation Z’s Sustainable Volunteering: Motivations, Attitudes and Job Performance

“…Yet, despite its broad application to many various volunteer contexts, recent subsequent research has reported that all of the VFI dimensions were not necessarily appropriate and some did not fit well when applied to specific volunteer groups involving seniors, young people, religious organizations and sports supporters [26,31]. This situation has been commonly proven in many volunteer studies that identified slightly different motivations from the VFI dimensions based upon volunteer characteristics and activities (see Table 1).…”

“…Frank, Finnegan and Taylor (2004) asserted that volunteer motivation and satisfaction significantly influence volunteer retention. Subsequent volunteer studies have demonstrated that an individual's motivations for volunteering could vary according to their socio-demographics, social relationships and volunteer activities [6,26]. Therefore, the most prevalent view of the existing literature is that volunteer motivations represent multi-dimensional aspects of individuals.…”

“…Attitudes regarding a particular activity might be formed based upon motives, and thus, can possibly expect individuals to act in certain ways or to at least develop an inclination for their behavior [24]. A majority of volunteering studies following this line of thought have also embraced the important role of motivation as an initial driving force and have focused their research upon the identification of primary volunteer motivations [25,26].…”

Motivação, Satisfação E Comprometimento: Um Estudo Sobre O Trabalho Voluntário Em Megaeventos Esportivos

“…Com relação aos eventos esportivos de larga escala, o trabalho voluntário representa um núcleo fundamental na prestação de diferentes serviços e é considerado essencial para sua viabilidade e sucesso (BLANC, 1999;CUSKELLY et al, 2006;GIANNOULAKIS et al, 2008 (WARNER et al, 2011).…”

“…Além disso, como o levantamento de informações foi, majoritariamente, conduzido em grupos, a predominância de relatos positivos pode, de certa forma, ter inibido a exposição de opiniões mais críticas. Outra limitação deve-se ao fato de a pesquisa ter acontecido cinco anos após a realização do Pan, o que pode ter influenciado a memória dos entrevistados e gerado perda de elementos importantes, especialmente negativos (WARNER et al, 2011).…”