Portuguese Volunteer Firefighters in the Context of the Challenges Posed by the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is producing not only epidemiological consequences on a global scale, but also political, economic, and social repercussions. The health care professionals that have been on the front lines fighting the pandemic need the support and assistance of other organizations to meet the many daily challenges. Volunteer firefighters stand out for their outreach approach and implementation of the Human2Human paradigm that has enabled them to meet the needs of the most vulnerable population that have been hit the hardest by the pandemic. This study adopts an ethnographic-action method considering Portuguese volunteer firefighters to explore the characteristics and relevance of these initiatives in areas such as combating isolation, medical assistance, containing the spread of COVID-19, and promoting public–private partnerships. The findings reveal that factors associated with altruism are central elements in the emergence of these initiatives, although some locally or nationally coordinated initiatives have been replicated in other contexts. It is also noteworthy that volunteer firefighters also present initiatives that can be fit into more than one category.

The Impact of COVID-19 on supply chain analytics: A global review

“…The pandemic has led to unprecedented fluctuations in demand and supply chains, creating imbalances in inventory management (Feuerriegel et al, 2016). This has resulted in challenges for organizations, requiring closures or adaptations of their business models to meet the challenges posed by the pandemic situation (Almeida et al, 2022). Furthermore, transportation bottlenecks and warehouse constraints have emerged as significant logistic challenges during the pandemic (Daneshfar et al, 2022;Lukong et al, 2022).…”

The Volunteer Motivation Scale (VMS): Adaptation and Psychometric Properties among a Portuguese Sample of Volunteers

“…When they are autonomously motivated, they experience feelings of excitement, interest, and pleasure [24,28], as well as a sense of participation in determining the content of life, i.e., a feeling of flow [29]. When encountering this emotional state, people experience various positive emotions and a deep sense of well-being [27,[30][31][32][33].…”

“…However, intrinsic motivation is not the only type of motivation that can regulate behavior. Behavior can also be regulated by different degrees of autonomy, from self-determined to externally controlled [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. Thus, the quality of motivation is more important than the quantity [23,28].…”

“…These orientations vary in the degree of autonomy, which is the extent to which people experience their actions as originating from the self rather than being imposed on the self [34]. Controlled orientation corresponds to external and introjected regulation, while autonomous orientation corresponds to identified, integrated, and intrinsic regulation [17,33]. Deci and Ryan [23,24] suggested that causality orientation is relevant to understanding the nature and outcomes of behavior and that it accounts for a significant portion of the variance in people's behavior and affect.…”