Ideal Workers, Supporting Actors, or Thrill Seekers? How Coworker Demands Influence Ambulance Volunteers’ Experiences of Freedom and Meaningful Work
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6459539 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kirstie Mcallum (0000-0002-4585-2288, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 32-42 |
| Publication date | 2024-10-22 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Voluntas Revista Internacional de Filosofia (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2179-3786 • E-ISSN: 1573-7888 |
| Publisher | Springer Science+Business Media (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s11266-024-00690-3 |
| PMID | 40060730 |
| OpenAlex | W4403625769 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 28 |
For nonprofit organizations (NPOs) struggling to attract adequate numbers of volunteers, examining what makes nonprofit engagement meaningful is essential because disenchanted volunteers can simply quit. Yet, the assumption that freedom is a core aspect of the volunteer experience and of meaningful work may not hold true in high-stakes environments where volunteers must demonstrate high levels of commitment and expertise. This study aims to analyze how freedom plays out in high-stakes volunteering and its impact on meaningful work. Drawing on interviews with volunteer and paid ambulance crew working in nine stations in Aotearoa New Zealand, the study explores how “super-volunteers” talk about freedom in the context of their on-road work and how coworkers communicatively attempt to influence volunteers’ freedom. Three volunteer profiles emerged from the analysis: ideal workers, supporting actors, and thrill seekers. Most paid staff encouraged ideal workers to strive for self-realization, a form of positive freedom in work, which led to optimal clinical performance. Supporting actors privileged self-determination or positive freedom at work, although coworkers successfully pushed them to contribute to basic emergency work. Because thrill seekers demanded freedom from boring or dirty jobs, appeals to teamwork failed to sway them. The study makes two key contributions. First, the diversity of freedoms volunteers evoked and resisted underscores the importance of nuancing the assertion that volunteering is a “free” act. Second, although the meaningful work literature is drifting in the pro-freedom direction, it shows that the freedoms enacted by volunteers or promoted by coworkers were arguably “mistaken”—for volunteers, patients, and the NPO itself
Assertion · Context (archaeology · Ideal (ethics · Political science · Public relations · Safeguarding · Seekers · Teamwork · Work (physics · Computer Science · Engineering · Law · Medicine · Nonprofit Sector and Volunteering · Psychology · Religion, Society, and Development · Social Psychology · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development
Meaningful Work
Fostering meaningful work in organizations
Meaningful work as realization and justification
On the meaning of work
Defining Who is a Volunteer
Collective and Reflexive Styles of Volunteering
Predictors of turnover amongst volunteers
Institutionally Individualized Volunteering
Meaningful Work
Top-Down Civic Projects Are Not Grassroots Associations
Delegation-based and directive mentoring relationships in high reliability organizations
A Proliferation of Liberties
How biopower puts freedom to work
Freedom, work and organizations in the 21st century
What enables us to better experience our work as meaningful? The importance of awareness and the social context
| Highly cited | No |
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