For the first chapter, it consisted of research background, statement of the problem, purpose and question of study, the significant contribution of study, definitional key terms, as well as the delimitation of this study.
Background of the Study
Nowadays, international volunteer became indispensable human resource in this global world. Since the United Nations General Assembly declared annual December 5th as International Volunteer Day in 1985 (Tsai, 2000), this is a critical milestone for propagating volunteer service and the culture of volunteerism in the community. In the year of 2001, it is formally set as the International Year of Volunteers. It was expected that it can call on every country to implement concrete spirit of voluntary service without borders through the announcements of policy. Afterwards, resulting from the promoting of this policy, each country not only realized the importance of voluntary service for human in the world, but also gradually put resources into voluntary service (Chen, 2013). As the booming development of volunteer service awareness, in 2001, the Legislative Yuan has approved Volunteer Service Act in Taiwan. These legislated policies indeed renovate the domestic history of volunteer record.
In terms of these three significant related security of regulations, the voluntary service is already become an essential mainstreaming value, and so do volunteer workers as being one of the important assets of the society (Chai & Lee, 2006). Lough (2010) indicated that “over
2
one-million individuals (1,032,780) reported volunteering internationally at least once in 2008— an increase of over 145,000 volunteers since 2004 in United State” (p.1). Besides, population of international volunteer were counted by Tourism and Research Marketing in 2008, which over 1.6 Million people volunteering internationally every year (Horoszowski, 2013). It referred that more and more people have willingness to participate in oversea service in the world. Moreover, the range of volunteering activities was broad, and the function of service delivery from organizations contained various areas, such as politics, ecology, philanthropy, arts, religion, sport and recreation, arts and culture, and the environment, and so on (Hall, Easwaramoorthy, Sokolowski, & Solomon, 2005). It can be seen there were such many types of service function and operation in the organization in this society. Therefore, these service types were mainly divided into four types in this study as below: education and culture, health and sanitation, environmental protection, as well as humanitarian aids (Chen, 2013; Hall et al., 2005; Lin, 2003; Palmer, 2002).
With the global economic and security tensions, international voluntary service became one of key concern and also continually expanding (Sherraden, Stringham, Sow, & McBride, 2006). Along with such growing number of international volunteer, the demand of the service has greater upward. As the increasing service demand, simultaneously, the demand for volunteer increased. Volunteers were required as resource and assets to contribute their effort to organizations, nonetheless, the lack of supply of volunteers cannot catch to the rapidly growing demands of volunteer service (Allison, Okun, & Dutridge, 2002).
Based on the limited supply of international volunteer, it is necessary to pay more attention on management to recruit an appropriate and competent volunteer for facilitating the
3
goal. As a person who was in charge of leading volunteer, Huang (2006) pointed out that the organization should set varieties of recruitment regulation, in order to arrange informal volunteer combination to be stricter. If recruiters cannot provide a complete and prudent arrangement for volunteers, it would lead to the loss from human capitals (Lin, 2006). Also, the unclear way to recruit volunteer will easily cause the possibility of incompetent volunteer with negative attitude (Su, 2010). Furthermore, managing more carefully was necessary, or volunteer would feel dissatisfied and frustrated which may fail service delivery (Australian Sports Commission, 2000a). Because it had positive effect between management practice of human resource and service quality (Chen, Kao, & Tang, 2009), the significance on effectively managing international volunteer by the right way cannot be ignored. One of management approaches, an exit mechanism was provided to help recruiters adopt a strict volunteer screening process even if volunteers had been recruited (Tseng, 2005). Based on the previous reviews, accurately adopting recruitment process can bring organization low cost and less time on managing volunteer, and making them feel satisfied and further contribute higher service effectiveness.
International volunteer is becoming a significant asset and human resource. In order to realize if the international volunteer have reached expectation, the service effectiveness would be carefully explored in this study. Moreover, the importance of the international volunteer service and effectiveness on management should be carefully concentrated in this research.
4
Statement of the Research Problem
According to the research background of this study, the importance of the role as being international volunteers become more and more relevant and well-known human resource internationally.
However, according to individual experience, there were challenge occurred when the researcher served abroad as an international volunteer for the Taiwan Fund for Children and Families in summer of 2015. Researcher found that the international volunteer recruitment process in that organization was not formal and completed, and did not ensure if the service effectiveness was performed well.
In addition, the researcher discovered there is rarely formal recruitment process for effectively selecting international volunteers, as well as the definition of service effectiveness in the previous research. Several papers explored about related information for domestic service of the most; the others specifically worked on exploring other kinds of function instead of international volunteer service. Therefore, it was still a gap since there was no standard recruitment process in order to choose suitable and competent international volunteer for the organization, and complete explanation for international volunteer.
Furthermore, there were several problems existed from the incompetence of volunteer, and this study discovered that were caused by careless and insensitive management. In some cases, volunteer felt dissatisfied and probably withdraw the service if they confronted negative management experience (Australian Sports Commission, 2000a). Or when some units were lack of careful planning and arrangement for volunteers before recruiting, it would result in the frustration and loss from volunteers (Lin, 2006).
5
These study shows that if organization desire to seek for volunteers at ease, instead of adopting careful and appropriate recruiting process on management, it would easily lead to conflict from different target and requirement; eventually, resulting in inconsistent and mistrust within organization and volunteers.
Thus, it can be seen that an inappropriate recruitment process would facilitate to select an incompetent volunteer; or a careless management would generate dissatisfaction and frustration to volunteer. In these negative situations, it can lead to the low motivation and even poor performance on service. Moreover, the poor service effectiveness would easily cause the conflict from different target and expectation between volunteer and organization;
consequently, volunteers cannot accomplish the goal of organization and fail the mission.
Research Purposes
In the light of the problem statement, the listed reasons and motives previously had prompted the researcher to explore the (1) roles and functions, (2) the recruitment processes, and (3) the service effectiveness of international volunteer from different institutions in Taiwan. Specifically, depend on the perspectives from interviewees, this study would (4) propose several solutions and implementations in order to reduce the gaps between theoretical and practical situations.
Research Questions
According to the research purpose, this study developed several questions in order to collect data. The questions were proposed as below:
1. What are the roles, tasks and responsibilities of international volunteer?
2. What kind of channels and steps are adopted in order to recruit an international volunteer?
6
3. What the whole process is adopted in order to recruit an international volunteer?
4. What does the problem and challenge occurred in practical situation during the recruiting process in Taiwan?
5. How to improve the service effectiveness of international volunteer?
Significance of the Study
Based on the background and problem statement of the research, the literature was reviewed resulting in seeking for the solution. In this study, it would contribute several key points to theoretical and practical field. For the theoretical dimension, the recruitment process and service effectiveness of international volunteer in Taiwan was seldom mentioned by previous study. Although many studies had already illustrated the importance of those, it still had limited studies to talk about their relationship. Hence, this study theoretically contributed to literatures on international volunteer recruitment process and the importance of service effectiveness, and can be adopted by the further researches in the future.
In the practical part, there were various service functions from each organization, so this study compiled and contributed the service types of organization of the most in common based on the literature reviews. Furthermore, according to the problem statement from the present researches, revealing that international volunteers‟ recruitment process had appeared problem and insufficiency. Thus, this study provided the process and strategy to select international volunteers appropriately for non-profit organization.
For the HR filed, in order to reduce the risk to loss man/ womanpower, this study proposed the comprehensive recruiting process. These integrated processes were resulting from collecting the suggestions from interviewees, and was able to allow recruiting staff,
7
interviewer of international volunteer, volunteer director, or organization who may require implementing, or being reference for future study. After adopting this careful recruitment process and specific suggestion on management, HR professionals can successfully select the more appropriate and competent international volunteers. Moreover, they can orient them in the place where can fit in, and benefit the organization to maintain the service performance to effectively achieve the goal.
On the high level management, the recruitment process can be effectively adopted to recruit a competent international volunteer. This kind of suitable applicants can create high service effectiveness and achieve the goal for organization, so they are definitely the valuable capital assets. Just as mentioned by Su (2010) mentioned that prioritize the quality of volunteer because “find right” is more importance than “find out” (p.83).
Delimitation of the Study
This study focused on international volunteer recruitment processes in Taiwan, and aimed to explore the service effectiveness of volunteers after collecting data. This research adopted qualitative method with in-depth interview in order to explain the current situation and explain the new concept in the future. The criteria of participants focused on two dimensions: (a) recruiters who had experienced to recruit international volunteers; and (b) international volunteers who had experience to serve abroad as volunteer, and the period of service experience was under one year for one time. Furthermore, one pair included one recruiter and one international volunteer, and those who served for four different service types of organization. The objectives who were entitled to be one of the interviewees if fit in those qualifications.
8
Definition of Key Terms International Volunteer
According to Sherraden et al. (2006), this study defined international volunteer as the participant who voluntarily left home country to travel to other countries for contributing their time, effort, and skill; and performing service without any payment in return.
Recruitment Process
Referred to Chen (2005) and Suen (2008), this study defined recruitment process as a procedure that announce the information which contained introduction, newspaper publication, poster posing, website announcement, and so on; attract the talent; conduct a series of selecting mechanism; eventually hire the most suitable applicants for the organization.
Service Effectiveness
This study adopted that Patti (1985), Su (2010), Yoo, Brooks, and Patti (2007) identified the definition of service effectiveness, which is the performance of service delivery. The purpose of that is aimed at satisfing the attandees with engaging program, and also accomplish the ultimate goal of organization with sufficient competence.
9