Are young workers ready to save the US labour movement?

With union membership rates in the United States declining over the last several decades, many in the labour movement are asking whether the young workers of today could help spark union revitalisation. Members of the Millennial and Gen Z generations have led recent hard-fought union certification victories at an Amazon warehouse in New York, an Apple store in Maryland, and Starbucks outlets across the country, which has reignited the hope that unions have a real future in the hands of today’s young workers. Tina Saksida and Rachel Aleks discuss how young people’s attitudes towards unions have changed over time and what this means for unions

Are young workers ready to save the us labor movement?

With union membership rates in the United States declining over the last several decades, many in the labour movement are asking whether the young workers of today could help spark union revitalisation. Members of the Millennial and Gen Z generations have led recent hard-fought union certification victories at an Amazon warehouse in New York, an Apple store in Maryland, and Starbucks outlets across the country, which has reignited the hope that unions have a real future in the hands of today’s young workers. Tina Saksida and Rachel Aleks discuss how young people’s attitudes towards unions have changed over time and what this means for unions

Volunteer role mastery and commitment: Can HRM make a difference?

Although the literature on human resource management (HRM) has provided compelling evidence that certain HRM practices can help employees attain the competence and confidence to carry out their role, less is known about the potential impact of HRM practices on volunteers in the context of non-profit organisations. This study addresses this gap by presenting a model that situates role mastery – operationalised as role clarity and self-efficacy – as its centrepiece. Our model suggests that role mastery leads to commitment to the volunteer organisation and that role mastery can be achieved through training and supportive relationships with paid staff. A dual-mediation analysis of survey data from a humanitarian non-profit organisation in the United Kingdom (n=647) supported our theoretical model. We contribute to volunteering theory and practice by identifying tools that non-profit organisations can employ to maximise the role mastery and commitment of volunteers

Three Essays on the Individual, Task-, and Context-related Factors Influencing the Organizational Behaviour of Volunteers

This dissertation examines how various individual, task-, and context-related factors influence important volunteering outcomes. Using data sourced from a large international aid and development agency in the United Kingdom, the three studies that follow explore the organizational behaviour of volunteers and highlight several initiatives that nonprofit organizations can introduce in order to motivate and retain their volunteers.In the first chapter, I present a moderated mediation model where I show that prosocially motivated volunteers dedicate more time to volunteering. The study results further show that volunteer engagement fully mediates the relationship between the value motive and volunteer time, and that the strength of the mediated effect varies as a function of volunteers' commitment to beneficiaries. These findings provide a new perspective on the link between volunteers' motivation and active participation in volunteer activities.The second chapter presents a framework for understanding the processes through which volunteers' perceived impact on beneficiaries influences their turnover intentions and time spent volunteering. The results show that volunteers who perceive that their work impacts beneficiaries (1) report lower intentions to leave their volunteer organization due to their commitment to that organization; and (2) dedicate more time to volunteering because they are committed to the beneficiaries of their work. These findings make a significant contribution to volunteering research by uncovering two different mechanisms that explain how the positive consequences of perceived impact on beneficiaries may unfold.Finally, the third chapter presents a mediation model that explains how an organizational support framework promotes organizational commitment in volunteers. Specifically, the results show that training and paid staff support promote higher levels of volunteers' organizational commitment due to increases in volunteers' perceptions of role clarity and self-efficacy. Importantly, this study illustrates how volunteer managers can use two management practices that are under their control to maximize the commitment of volunteers.Ph.D

Active Management of Volunteers: How Training and Staff Support Promote Commitment of Volunteers

Increasing pressures for the professionalization of the third sector have put the spotlight on the active management of volunteers. We developed and tested a mediation model that explains how an organizational support framework can promote volunteers’ commitment to their volunteer organization. Our findings show that training and paid staff support promote higher levels of volunteers’ organizational commitment due to increases in volunteers’ perceptions of role clarity and self-efficacy (n=647). We make a contribution to volunteering theory and practice by showing how managers of volunteers can use two management practices that are under their control to maximize the commitment of volunteers

A decade of teaching evidence-based management: initiatives and future directions

Practitioners who apply insights from organizational research to managerial decision making can make better decisions, yet there remains a disconnect between research, teaching, and practice in management. This paper describes initiatives in the University of Prince Edward Island’s Faculty of Business to teach evidence-based management in our undergraduate and Executive MBA programs to help bridge those gaps

Committed to whom? Unravelling how relational job design influences volunteers’ turnover intentions and time spent volunteering

This study presents a framework for understanding the processes through which volunteers’ perception of relational job design influences their turnover intentions and time spent volunteering. Data sourced from an international aid and development agency in the United Kingdom (n = 534 volunteers) show that volunteers who perceive that their roles are relationally designed (1) report lower intentions to leave their voluntary organization due to their commitment to the voluntary organization; and (2) dedicate more time to volunteering because they are more committed to the beneficiaries of their work. These findings make a theoretical contribution by uncovering two mechanisms that explain how the positive consequences of relational job design unfold

Hero or Villain? A Cohort and Generational Analysis of How Youth Attitudes Towards Unions Have Changed over Time

Our study examines youth attitudes towards unions over a 40‐year period to try and understand whether today’s young workers might be the ‘hero’ or the ‘villain’ in the tale of declining union membership rates in the United States. Using nationally representative time‐lag data from high‐school seniors (N = 104,742) spanning 1976–2015, we conducted time trend, birth cohort and generational analyses to provide an ‘apples to apples’ comparison of how youth have felt about unions at different points in time. We found that contemporary youth (or Millennials) hold similar union attitudes to those who came before them, though what predicts those attitudes has changed over time. Strikingly, we also found that the proportion of young people who hold no opinion about unions has more than doubled over the period under study, steadily rising from 14 per cent in 1976 to 33 per cent in 2015. This sizeable proportion of ‘agnostic’ youth should be alarming to unions, yet it also provides them with opportunities to shape youth attitudes through targeted outreach efforts.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167848/1/bjir12571.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167848/2/bjir12571_am.pd