This chapter consisted of three sections which were the importance of international volunteer, the related reviews of international volunteer recruitment, and related reviews of service effectiveness.
Importance of International Volunteer
In this section, literatures of the definition of international volunteer, and the role of international volunteer, as well as the development of international volunteer service were reviewed for providing fundamental and constructional concepts for this research.
Definition of International Volunteer
“Volunteer are the foundation of a strong development program” (Lysakowski, 2005, p.
12). Within several nonprofit organizations, the participants contributed their time, skills and labor domestically were belonging to national voluntary service (Gallagher & Weinberg, 1991, p. 362). Accordding to Thoits and Hewitt (2001), volunteering was defined by President's Task Force on Private Sector Initiatives in 1982, mentioned that if the time and talent was given to deliver services or perform the specific tasks without financial compensation expectation directly was called volunteering. It is a specific form of helping behavior with commitment to benefit another person, group, or organization (Wilson, 2000).
On the other hand, “volunteers are the person who (a) often seek out opportunities to help others; (b) may deliberate for considerable amounts of time about whether to volunteer, the extent of their involvement, and the degree to which particular activities fit with their own
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personal needs; and (c) may make a commitment to an ongoing helping relationship that may extend over a considerable period of time and that may entail considerable personal costs of time, energy, and opportunity” (Clary, E. G., Snyder, M., Ridge, R. D., Copeland, J., Stukas, A. A., Haugen, J., & Miene, P., 1998, p.1517). However, when most of definitions are mainly viewed as “involving contributions of time without coercion or remuneration” (Bussell &
Forbes, 2002, p.246). It also indicated that the cost and benefit was still an element of exchange in volunteering which should be taken into consideration. The perception was based on costs and benefits for a main point of a volunteer. As so many definitions for volunteer, this study defines that volunteers make a spontaneous of help and actively provide service without requesting remuneration, and even seriously views the service as working and learning instead of playing.
Although there was no clear definition for international volunteer currently, it still could refer that volunteer did service across the country‟s boundaries through various channels (Chen, 2013). As Sherraden et al. (2006) mentioned that those who devoted effort to serve abroad with a variety of capacities and different period of time were international volunteer service. However, the number of all ages of volunteer who travelled abroad to provide service were increasing, it was still very limited on the international volunteer‟s knowledge.
In general, the international volunteer was specially defined those who voluntarily left home country, in order to travel to other countries for contributing and performing service without any payment in return. Furthermore, volunteers did not deliver only one type of service from each organization. In terms of service function, Chen (2005) emphasized that the volunteer service presented the high diversification. Even though the service organizations
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addressed the same issue and classification, the organizations still conduct a variety of activities and key item works. Thus, this research assumed that the function of service was widely raged and different from others while international volunteer was conducting service.
The Roles and Functions of International Volunteer
Mangold (2012) mentioned that lots of young volunteer who live in developing country spent time abroad to service because, in doing so, they can achieve their purpose and also feel being need. On the expectation, these international volunteers believed that could be an advantage of them, such as improving language ability, broadening new horizon and exploring diversity culture through this experience. In addition to something beneficial for individual development, they would like to help people and do something worthwhile for others. These motivations shaped these young volunteer to be interlinked and ambivalent between helping and taking action, while involving and learning in volunteering service.
Moreover, different communities in different region with different approaches can result in distinctive volunteers. Contributing and doing something worthwhile to others became one of the most common perspectives to international volunteer. Aside from engaging to service, volunteer also adopted various forms of participating and helping, such as occupational level and education. These different forms present a variety of sense of civic obligation and religious belief (Reed & Selbee, 2000).
Service can affect surroundings from a person to an institution. According to Rothwell and Charleston (2013), the influence circle of benefit included three areas: individual, community, and organization. At first, individual worked with team to develop themselves as global citizens or leaders. These volunteers need to deal with people who come from different
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background, while involving in the team group and a strange environment. Secondly, the community was focus on developing facility and building, and did conservation work on the environment in the community. They built a school, improved the facilities for health and hygiene system, and advanced the development of science or tourism. Finally, from the organization perspective, they perceived the period of service as the gap year which was distinctive than other institutions. It would benefit the organization to conduct their project smoothly and develop the employees with employability.
On the aspect of education, the institution expected to promote English learning and communication to student through international volunteer experience. After implementing, however, the original expectation had turned to the cultural exchange with students. That made applicants setting became more diversified afterwards (Chao, 2013).
Through the service, Some people looked forward to impact on their experience, and enhanced personal internal ability to benefit themselves, community, or organization.
However, some people considered that the role expectation of volunteer was unexpectedly quite distinctive than before. As to other research, they believe it is not only effect students‟
global vision, but also influence the recognition from teacher to administrator of school indirectly. Based on previous research, there is a large number of explication for volunteer service role from various experience or expectation. It refers that it is hard to limit the roles of international volunteer clearly, and the effect of various function shows a highly importance.
The Development of International Volunteer Service
According to the background of this study mentioned, Tsai (2000) pointed out that the United Nations General Assembly officially declared annual December 5th as International
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Volunteer Day in 1985; this would be the first and formal qualification for promoting volunteer service to the whole world. Until the year of 2001, the International Year of Volunteers was formally set up, too. It allowed every country implement and work on the voluntary service with other countries through the policy propagation. Because of these promoting and announcement, each country in this society realized the importance of voluntary service for human; meanwhile, Chen (2013) identified that voluntary service was gradually paid attention. Narrowing down to Taiwan, the Legislative Yuan has approved Volunteer Service Act in the same year of 2001. This legislated policy brings a new beginning for volunteer record by these regulations.
According to Deci and Ryan (1985), the motivation can be divided into three parts:
internal motivation, external motivation, and no motivation. It referred that internal motivation is going to satisfy their intrinsic need, curiosity, and learning goal; external motivation is resulting from external benefit or punishment; no motivation is referring that there is either external or internal motivation from no competition and no reason to join activity. As this finding, it can be seen that the motivation to do something, and the type of mitivation can be balanced from these result. Kuo and Chen (2013) proposed that through the changing of generation, it became more open-braoden and diversities in this society. So, the voluntary service scope in Taiwan was expanded from domestic to other conutries. It referred that the characteristic of volunteers is changing from volunteer into international volunteer.
As the participants improvement, students were allowed and encouraged to service. It would be benefitial when involving volunteer work to service in a group or community if being need (Thoits & Hewitt, 2001). The reason was that it would increase the understanding of real
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social situation and individaul performance for future preparation; moreover, it can increase the adaptation of the participants as future social development (Chen, 2013). It referred that social learning would not be the first place, but it can bring more fulfill preparation and increasing life performance for personal future.
Chang and Chen (2012) suggested that the the research direction can be conducted by tracking interview or longitudinal study to realize and understand the concrete effect for development through international volunteer service learning: development of emotional management, development from independence to interdependence, and development of mature relationships. These suggestions provided the effect for international volunteer development in this research. On the aspect of service activities, volunteering played a significant role in improving communities and the lives of individuals and involves a considerable number of activities (van Emmerik, Jawahar, & Stone, 2004). Hager (2004) identified that this researcher also mentioned that the volunteers are the valuable human resources for organization because volunteers would help charities to meet the needs of institutions no matter on service or administration. Through these reviews, the need for volunteers is definitely important and unquestioned. As the booming development and awareness of volunteer service, it can be viewed as valuable social human resource in this society.
Hager (2004) mentioned that “Long-term commitments are exemplified by training and professional development opportunities, regular communication and supervision, and liability coverage” (p.12). Volunteers have fundamental purpose with different kinds of management practices, and various scope and nature of volunteer use can affect the management choices.
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Moreover, Bussell and Forbes (2002) emphasized that volunteer recruitment was extremely important on management. However, most reviews were talking about the retaining volunteer management issue or recruiting regular employees in the corporate, there was rarely indicated the formal and strict process to recruit international volunteer.
The Related Reviews on International Volunteer Recruitment
This section illustrated three parts, including the definition of recruitment, the types of recruitment process, and the challenge of recruitment process.
Definition of Recruitment
Recruiting means that attracting qualified job applicants to apply for, participating in the selection process, and accepting engagement (Suen, 2008). Australian Sports Commission (2000a) proposed that the new recruiters had several things need to notice, “made to feel welcome and valued, and need to understand where they fit within the organization, what their role is and how the organization operates” (p.21). For above reviews mentioned that to better the employees of recruiting and retaining would be the important thing to be successful in the organization. It referred that as a recruiter required realizing the operating in the organization and orienting themselves and it would be helpful for hire volunteers in the future.
Furthermore, the program was increasing and exiting progress was also expanded, and it caused many difficulties and challenge of recruiting a new volunteer for the service nonprofit organization (Allison, Okun, & Dutridge, 2002). They needed to enhance their abilities to achieve the missions and purpose of organization. Based on these theories, referred that as a recruiter to select new volunteers has become a complicated issue, because
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it would consume the time and resources of a substantial amount for many organizations (Brudney, & Brown, 1990; Dutta-Bergman, 2004).
There were millions of people spending their large time and labor to serve others without any payment in return (Clary et al., 1998). Because the demand for service was growing rapidly, the demand for volunteer was also increasing. Many nonprofit organizations need volunteers which were one significant human resource to deliver their service and contribution, and it appeared a discrepancy between the growing demands of clients and lack supply of volunteers (Allison, Okun, & Dutridge, 2002). Thus, it referred that this situation caused many volunteers left the organizations which were not able to provide the service need or meet the expectation, resulting in the lack of number of volunteer in the organization.
Finally, Brudney and Brown (1990) concluded that it was quite important issue to recruit volunteers, because there were too many demand for service to choose an organization with inordinate amount of time and resources. Consequently, Bussell and Forbes (2002) suggested that marketing techniques were adopting by many institutions gradually in order to recruit and retain volunteers. It recommended that the recruiters should try to search and develop an appropriate method or process to recruit volunteer in this society, while such many institutions had highly demand on volunteers.
Types of Recruitment Process
General Recruitment Process.
In the profit organization, recruiting and selecting were conducted for the practical job of human resource almost at the same time. On the one hand, recruiters should attract the talent; on the other hand, they should select the most suitable one (Suen, 2008). It is difficult
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to separate recruiting and selection process clearly. So following is the brief summary emerged these two processes together:
Making sure qualification was the fisrt step, producing job description and job specification throgh job analysis. That can defined the professionl, managerial competencies, and person-job fit to the job in order to complete main mission. Besides of qalification which can be compared on the interview, organization need to consider the condition of selection as step two. For instance, the competence was too hard to obtain during on-the-job training, or to delivere on the new employees training, but these competence were still considered as part of selection. For the third step, recruiting resource can be selected through exploring recruitment pricipal, and deciding recuiting channels. In step three, it was a significant point which would be adopted in this study.
Next, the person who dealt with administration matter and implemented interview is called recuiter. Interviewees would judge if it is an approprate and good organization through the interactive with recruiter, because recruiters have highly important on attraction.
Following was delivering the information to atttract the talent, and allowed them to participate in selecting process and accept the offer. This step was like promot a commodity and attract client, so what does organization require and what information they deliver was the key factor. After ensure the source, responsible people and information of recuiting, organization would start to deal with administrative activities as a formal program. Further, they would choose recruiting tool: validity, relevancy with other tool, negative effect, success employeement benefit, reaction form applicants, and the list of recruiting tool. Step eight can showed a series of recruiting process while conducting: the score evaluation, hiring standard,
18 hiring selection, and the hiring decision maker.
Afterwards, even though the organization had offered the position for applicants, there were still uncertain if new employees would deny the job. Therefore, no matter before or after registration of administrative procedure, it cannot be ignored. Then they conducted new employees leading in the step ten. The last but not the least, the organization worked on cost-benefit assessment, starting from recruiting efficiency, qualuty, cost, reliability of recruiting tool, validity of recruiting tool, to analize the cost-benefit of recruiting tool.
This whole procedure represents the formal and rigorous selection process in human resource practical job. It refered that corporation design a series of strict process in order to attract the talent, on the other hand, searching for suitable employees as a excellent human resource. Nevertheless, there was another review argued the different kind of recruiting process from other perspective.
Australian Sports Commission (2000b) proposed that recruitment aimed to satisfy human resource necessary of organization effectively and delivered their services. There were five steps about the Human Resource recruitment process, see Figure 2.1., included: (1) recruitment objectives, (2) strategy development, (3) recruitment activities, (4) intervening job applicant variables, and (5) recruitment results (Breaugh, 2008).
The first step was establishing the recruitment objectives, and there were several point should prepare well before making any decision in the organization. For example: filing position number, seeking for each type of applicants, the time frame for filling the job openings, job performance and satisfaction of new employees, and retention rate of new comers. After having objectives, the organization next would construct several recruiting
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strategies as below: “(a) when to begin recruiting? (b) what message to communicate to potential job applicants? and (c) whom to use as recruiters?” (p.105). These questions and answers need to be consistence with the objectives which were established in the beginning.
Furthermore, the organization should conduct recruiting activities based on the strategy made previously. They can start to announce the job opening, or host the college campus recruitment in this period. In the last step, the process contains the recruitment result assessment. In order to learn from experience and improve the future recruitment effectiveness, employees would compare their recruitment objectives to outcomes.
There was one part, intervening job applicant variables, showed the important variables which included: the attention and interest from applicants, their self- insight, decision making process of applicant, message credibility, and accuracy of applicant‟s position expectation, and so on. If the applicants had willingness to searching for jobs with proper recruiting tool at the proper time, it would be appropriate job applicants to the organization, vice versa. Thus, if organization would like to provide realistic and useful recruiting information to match applicants and organization, self-insight from applicants was one of the most points should consider.
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Figure 2.1. A model of the recruitment process. Adapted from “Employee recruitment:
Current knowledge and important areas for future research” by J. A. Breaugh, 2008, Human Resource Management Review, 18(3), 103-118. Copyright 2008 by Elsevier B.V.
Nevertheless, nonprofit sport organization could not formally fit in profit human resource management policy because recruiting volunteers were the complex tasks (Sargeant,
& Wymer junior, 2007; Taylor & McGraw, 2006). However, as essential as if nonprofit organizations met client needs. Rufer (2015) also identified that a complete volunteer recruitment training program included a process and number of hours, so it was hard to implement and defer from state to state. Chen (2013) also emphasized that, through
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recruitment orientation, it would be helpful for understanding international volunteer content, promotion and learning.
Recruitment Process for Non-Profit Organization.
Due to the importance of recruitment activities, the researcher focused on this stage and provided the specific and detailed procedure as below. Chen (2005) indicated that according to the demand of organization and level expectation for volunteer, organization would obtain an appropriate candidate through following suitable recruiting process: introduction, newspaper publication, poster posing, website announcement, and so on. McSweeney and Alexander (1996) referred a series of volunteer selection process checklist during recruitment activities, included the following: (a) Prepare a list of interview questions, (b) Arrange place and time for interviews, (c) Greet potential volunteers and put them at ease, (d) Introduce interview panel, (e) Introduce the organisation and the volunteer position, (f) Find out what the potential volunteer wants from voluntary work, (g) Find out the interests, skills, and experiences of the potential volunteer, (h) Clarify the availability and commitment of the potential volunteer, (i) Ascertain any training or development needs, (j) Conclude the interview and farewell the potential volunteer, (k) Rank the volunteers from the most to the least suitable person for the job, (l) Follow-up and ensure that successful/unsuccessful volunteers have been notified. Thus, it can be seen that this process was mainly on how to select interviewees instead of comprehensive perspective on recruitment.
With regard to the review, it confirmed it is significant when potential volunteers were given abundant opportunities to search for the organization as much as possible, and
With regard to the review, it confirmed it is significant when potential volunteers were given abundant opportunities to search for the organization as much as possible, and