Volunteers as Active Shapers of their Work: The Role of Job Crafting in Volunteer Satisfaction and Organizational Identification

Abstract

Volunteer satisfaction is a significant concern, as volunteers have lower barriers to exit than employees and tend to leave nonprofits when dissatisfied. While volunteer management predominantly focuses on the implementation of management practices, this study alters that perspective. Through job crafting, one form of proactive behavior in organizational contexts, we study volunteers as active participants in their volunteer experience. We posit that volunteer job crafting is an important, yet overlooked, factor in volunteer outcomes such as satisfaction and organizational identification. We test and (partially) confirm our hypotheses using a sample of 678 volunteers in one youth-serving nonprofit organization in the Midwest region of the United States. This study extends job crafting research further into the non-work domain by adding a multifaceted conceptualization of job crafting in the context of volunteer work. We distinguish between behavioral and cognitive crafting and provide empirical support on how those crafting forms relate to volunteer satisfaction and organizational identification.