Ideal Workers, Supporting Actors, or Thrill Seekers? How Coworker Demands Influence Ambulance Volunteers' Experiences of Freedom and Meaningful Work.

Abstract

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.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11266-024-00690-3.