Social and cultural origins of motivations to volunteer a comparison of university students in six countries

Although participation in volunteering and motivations to volunteer (MTV) have received substantial attention on the national level, particularly in the US, few studies have compared and explained these issues across cultural and political contexts. This study compares how two theoretical perspectives, social origins theory and signalling theory, explain variations in MTV across different countries. The study analyses responses from a sample of 5794 students from six countries representing distinct institutional contexts. The findings provide strong support for signalling theory but less so for social origins theory. The article concludes that volunteering is a personal decision and thus is influenced more at the individual level but is also impacted to some degree by macro-level societal forces

Legitimacy as the Basis for Organizational Development of Voluntary Organizations

In the analysis of voluntary organizations, legitimacy and legitimation are useful concepts because they bring to light the process through which organizational entities justify their right to exist and their actions within a particular normative context (Maurer 1971; Meyer and Scott 1983; Beetham 2013). Theories of legitimacy underscore the moral basis of organizational power as grounded in the relationship between organizations and different kinds of audiences. In this chapter, we look at how those concepts and theories relate to the study of voluntary organizations. Those theories not only help us understand how voluntary organizations establish themselves, strengthen their position and survive over time despite very limited material resources of their own, but also how different organizational claims can directly impact communities, either by publicly projecting particular conceptions of community or by articulating specific interests and needs on behalf of its members In our review of the literature on organizational legitimacy, we focus on three main aspects of legitimacy: conceptualization of the term in organizational sociology, political sociology and studies of non-profit organizations; the constraining role of institutionalized normative contexts and competing audiences in the legitimation processes; the agentic role of organizations within both institutional and strategic contexts

The Philanthropic Poor:Prosocial Behavior in Rural India

The study of philanthropy has largely been the purview of the wealthy and privileged in Western societies. However, the act of giving transcends race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, and socioeconomic conditions. This article adds to the philanthropic literature by providing empirical evidence of the prosocial behaviors of rural villagers throughout India. Using responses from a large-scale, door-to-door survey (n=3,159), we found that high percentages of rural Indians regularly engage in both formal and informal giving and volunteering. Even among generally poor, rural Indian villagers, socioeconomic indicators still matter (with the exception of education), and minority religions and lower social groups tend to exhibit higher levels of prosocial behavior than dominant religious and social groups

The Philanthropic Poor:Prosocial Behavior in Rural India

The study of philanthropy has largely been the purview of the wealthy and privileged in Western societies. However, the act of giving transcends race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, and socioeconomic conditions. This article adds to the philanthropic literature by providing empirical evidence of the prosocial behaviors of rural villagers throughout India. Using responses from a large-scale, door-to-door survey (n=3,159), we found that high percentages of rural Indians regularly engage in both formal and informal giving and volunteering. Even among generally poor, rural Indian villagers, socioeconomic indicators still matter (with the exception of education), and minority religions and lower social groups tend to exhibit higher levels of prosocial behavior than dominant religious and social groups

A cross-cultural examination of student volunteering: is it all resume 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