Intrinsic need satisfaction and the job attitudes of volunteers versus employees working in a charitable volunteer organization

By E. Boezeman, N. Ellemers. 2009

154 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This research examines how intrinsic need satisfaction during volunteer work relates to the job attitudes of volunteers (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Ryan & Deci, 2000). We distinguish between autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs, and predict these to have distinct effects on volunteers’ job satisfaction and intent to remain with the volunteer organization. We then compare volunteer workers to a matched sample of paid employees (performing identical tasks within the same organization) in the way in which they derive their job satisfaction and intent to remain from satisfaction of these three types of needs. As predicted, path analysis (N ¼ 105) shows that satisfaction of autonomy needs and relatedness needs are positively related to the intent to remain a volunteer with the volunteer organization, and this relation is mediated by satisfaction with the volunteer job. The matched samples comparison further reveals that whereas the job satisfaction and intent to remain of paid employees is most clearly predicted by satisfaction of autonomy needs, satisfaction of relatedness needs is the primary predictor of job satisfaction and intent to remain among volunteers. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as avenues for further research, are discussed.

Subfields: Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fc59f91de2b61c14860d6e351656a1990af81e7d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

1. Myung Ja Kim
2. Choong‐Ki Lee
3. Heetae Cho
4. Jinde Jiang
5. T. Lee

In Social Psychology

1. Seolmin Yoon
2. Y. Reisinger
3. Choong‐Ki Lee
4. Myung Ja Kim

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Myung Ja Kim
2. Choong‐Ki Lee
3. Y. Reisinger
4. Heetae Cho
5. T. Lee
6. Jinde Jiang
7. Heesup Han
8. Girish Prayag

Citations in the corpus

• The Effect of Volunteer Management on Intention to Continue Volunteering: A Mediating Role of Job Satisfaction of Volunteers (2020, background): “When autonomy needs are met, volunteers feel more satisfied with their roles and tasks (Boezeman & Ellemers, 2009).”
• The influence of volunteer motivation on satisfaction, attitudes, and support for a mega-event (2014, background): “Volunteer satisfaction, on the other hand, affects attitudes in organizations (Boezeman and Ellemers, 2009).”