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How can Organization Development and Change (ODC) research and practice help create healthy, vibrant, and humane organizations and communities? This has been a guiding question for the field of ODC throughout a year-long series of activities (e.g., design meetings, webinars, and informal dialogues) linked to the 50th anniversary celebration of the ODC Division of the Academy of Management. In this paper, we provide our own reflections on this unfolding dialogue by proposing that ODC's future can be bolstered by leveraging its legacy and historical strengths as the basis to engage in a systematic approach for doing prospective theory-building ( Cooperrider, 2021 ), particularly on grand challenges like the transition to the Anthropocene. That is, we advocate for building theory that focuses on intentionally co-creating a better future rather than take it for granted or merely describing (and projecting) the past. In doing so, we believe ODC scholars and practitioners will be better equipped to create what we refer to as generative scholarship and write the next chapter for ODC as a revitalizing force in the world.

PurposeExamine and understand how an informal volunteer’s goals and actions develop from the moment they first learn about a disaster.Design/methodology/approachWe examine informal volunteerism (the activities of people who work outside of formal emergency and disaster management arrangements) through the theoretical lens of entrepreneurial effectuation to explain informal volunteer behavior and cognition and gain insight on how they develop their disaster relief ventures.FindingsWe find that informal volunteers follow an effectual logic, relying on available means to take advantage of opportunities as they are recognized or created. Application of effectuation vs causation processes depended on whether the informal volunteers were categorized as traditional, emergent or extended volunteers.Practical implicationsInformal volunteers’ disregard for the Affordable Loss Principle task governments and disaster relief organizations with the important challenge of managing and assuring the safety and well-being of informal volunteers. Their entrepreneurial behavior also invites the establishment of formal processes to counsel and guide informal volunteers, helping them fill out the necessary paperwork and funding applications to develop their efforts.Social implicationsThrough their experimentation and flexibility, informal volunteers accelerate disaster recovery, recognizing opportunities, working around bureaucracy and other roadblocks that hinder the efforts of established organizations. They also demonstrate entrepreneurial behavior that helps revitalize and jumpstart the local economy, making for stronger and more resilient communitiesOriginality/valueThis study borrows from Effectuation Theory from the entrepreneurship field in order to bring a much needed theoretical lens to the topic and greatly assists informal volunteerism research, moving from past efforts that simply define and categorize the concept.

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