Leading Volunteer Motivation: How Leader Behaviour can Trigger and Fulfil Volunteers’ Motivations

Abstract

Events such as pandemics, natural disasters, and other social issues reveal societies’ increasing reliance on voluntary unpaid workers. However, there is a decline in people’s willingness to volunteer with established organisations. While management research has shown that leadership plays a major role in motivating and retaining paid employees, further investigation is needed to understand how leadership motivates volunteers. This paper integrates leadership literature into a widely adopted volunteer motivation model through a narrative review, aiming to distil precise leader behaviours that could be used to fulfil or trigger people’s motivation to perform unpaid work. Our goal is to draw clear conceptual links between the different facets of leader behaviours and volunteer motivation and highlight the role of leadership in triggering and fulfilling volunteer motivation and therefore sustaining vital volunteer workforces. Limitations of our chosen approach, implications, and future research directions are discussed.