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Anthony Fee1, Peter Devereux2, Cliff Allum3, and Phoebe Everingham4
1University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW, Australia, 2Murdoch University, WA, Australia, 3University of Birmingham, UK, 4Macquarie University, NSW, Australia
Research on international volunteering has long reported on the complex motivations volunteers bring to their international assignments (e.g., Meneghini, 2016). Yet these studies rarely consider how the decision to volunteer fits within the broader sweep of volunteers’ careers – particularly when volunteers are highly skilled professionals and when the decision to volunteer introduces substantial opportunity costs, including financial compromises and professional and personal disruptions. Why do skilled professionals accept long-term assignments as international development volunteers (IDVs) that interrupt, or set back, their career trajectories? And how do they reconcile the costs and benefits of volunteering from a career perspective?
Our study of fifty highly skilled Australian IDVs examined these questions by exploring how career and altruistic motives intersect in volunteers’ decisions to serve abroad. Research shows that volunteers whose personal needs are fulfilled report higher satisfaction, remain engaged for longer, and are more effective in achieving development outcomes during their assignments (Nencini et al., 2016). Thus, these dynamics are of interest to organisations and communities that host volunteers, as well as to the international volunteer cooperation organisations (IVCOs) that recruit, place, and support volunteers.
Several of our findings break new ground in understanding IDVs’ motivations. Almost all the volunteers in our study described being at a professional transition point when they commenced their assignment: entering the workforce, reconsidering their career direction, seeking renewal, or closing a professional chapter. Their assignment was rarely viewed as a one-off career hiatus. Instead, the participants’ narratives were characterised by a deliberate attempt to integrate their professional capability with prosocial work that they hoped to continue after their assignment. The decision to volunteer, therefore, had altruistic and strategic goals – a means of entwining their professional capability with a (more) meaningful career that would extend well beyond the assignment’s duration.
Continue reading “The Individual-Altruism Nexus: Rethinking Motivation in International Development Volunteering”
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