Voluntary participation is connected to cultural, political, religious and social contexts. Social and societal factors can provide opportunities, expectations and requirements for voluntary activity, as well as influence the values and norms promoting this. These contexts are especially central in the case of voluntary participation among students as they are often responding to the societal demands for building a career and qualifying for future assignments and/or government requirements for completing community service. This article questions how cultural values affect attitudes towards volunteerism, using data from an empirical research project on student volunteering activity in 13 countries in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia Pacific region. The findings indicate that there are differences in motivation between countries which represent different cultural values. This article sets these findings in context by comparing structural and cultural factors which may influence volunteerism within each country.

This article examines women entrepreneurs in the nonprofit sector. Entrepreneurial activity attracts certain kinds of individuals.Such self‐selection is not a random event but is influenced by personal characteristics as well as socioeconomic and cultural factors. This article examines women entrepreneurs in a particular segment of the nonprofit sector in India to determine which factors influence such self‐selection. Our research confirms findings by other scholars that nonprofit entrepreneurs receive a high payoff from promoting social causes. Furthermore, we find that previous experience in the sector, beliefs, culture, social class, education, and family background also play an important role. We explore some policy implications of our findings.

Previous research on student involvement suggested that business and engineering students manifest lowest rates of voluntary action. Similarly, it was thought that social science students are the most involved in voluntary action, with students of natural sciences and humanities in the middle. However, there were very few studies that empirically compared these assertions. Furthermore, these assertions were not investigated from cross-cultural perspectives. Based on a study of students in 12 countries (N = 6,570), we found that even when controlling for background variables, social science students are actually less engaged in voluntary action than other students. Engineering students are higher than expected on voluntary action while students of humanities are the most involved in voluntary action. When studying these differences in the 12 selected countries, local cultures and norms form different sets of findings that suggest that there is no universal trend in choice of academic field and voluntary action.Résumé Une recherche déjà effectuée sur l'engagement des étudiants a montré que les étudiants en affaires et en ingénierie sont peu intéressés à travailler béné-volement. Parallèlement, il a été montré que les étudiants en sciences humaines sont le plus impliqués dans le bénévolat et que les étudiants en sciences naturelles et en lettres se situent entre les deux Cependant, on ne disposait que de très peu d'études pour comparer de telles affirmations. En outre, ces affirmations n'ont pas été examinées dans une perspective multiculturelle. En se basant sur une étude portant sur des étudiants issus de douze pays différents (N=6,570), nous avons trouvé que même en contrôlant les variables de formation, les étudiants en sciences humaines sont en fait moins engagés dans le volontariat que d'autres étudiants. Les étudiants en ingénierie sont plus impliqués dans le volontariat qu'on ne le pensait, tandis que les étudiants en lettres sont les plus impliqués dans l'action volontaire. En étudiant ces différences dans les douze pays qui ont fait l'objet d'une enquête, les cultures locales et les normes fournissent un ensemble différent de faits suggérant qu'il n'existe pas de tendance universelle quant au choix des matières académiques et l'action volontaire.Zusammenfassung Frühere Untersuchungen zur Studentenbeteiligung gaben zu erkennen, dass Studenten aus den Bereichen Betriebswirtschaft und Ingenieurwesen am wenigsten in ehrenamtlicher Arbeit involviert sind. Zugleich nahm man an, dass Studenten aus dem Bereich Sozialwissenschaft am ehesten ehrenamtliche Tätigkeiten übernehmen würden, gefolgt von Studenten aus den Bereichen Naturund Geisteswissenschaften. Allerdings gab es nur sehr wenige Untersuchungen, die einen empirischen Vergleich dieser Ü berzeugungen vornahmen. Des Weiteren wurden diese Standpunkte nicht unter der Berücksichtigung kulturübergreifender Perspektiven untersucht. Beruhend auf einer Untersuchung von Studenten in 12 Ländern (N=6.570) kamen wir zu dem Schluss, dass selbst bei kontrollierten Hinterg...

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