DET KOSTAR ATT ARBETA GRATIS! - Motivationsfaktorer och dess konsekvenser för volontärarbetare

Abstract

The factors motivating individuals to volunteer and continue volunteering is something that could be translated into non-volunteer organisations. The fact that these individuals are willing to use their own time and money to help others is quite extraordinary. This makes the author's question individual's main motives and goals for doing volunteer work, if they want to live up to society’s image of being a "good person", or if they have other ulterior motives that motivates one to do work for free. The question is if the image is based on actual facts, or if the volunteers actually are using that image for their own personal benefits. This paper will discuss motivation among volunteers and the outcome for each individual’s motivation. The data is collected by interviewing eight volunteers at a animal rescue center in Thailand, where the authors further participated for three weeks of volunteer work and observations. The aim of this paper is to distinguish the volunteer’s motivational factors for their work and what consequences these may cause for the individual. The terms volunteer work and motivation is explained to create a broader understanding of the discussed subject. Further, to gain a deeper insight for what motivates each individual, the authors will use categorisations presented from Self Determination Theory to discuss and analyze the different motivational factors identified. The volunteers’ patterns of behavior and decision making is discussed and explained by the rationalisation concept. The overall result of the thesis is that the motivational factors for the volunteers at a first glance can be seen as similar. Although when one digs deeper, the result shows many different factors that personally affects each and every individual, in different ways. These individual consequences shows that the work with motivation cannot be generalised, and emphasises the importance of an individual focus in creating a satisfying working climate adapted to a diverse workforce. Further the different types of motivational factors cannot be categorised as better or worse. The individual’s aims and goals is the main factor that affects the decision making and outcome. This result is valuable for individuals in companies to adapt motivation into their everyday work. For HR this can be argued as a highly important reason to continuously motivate the different actors of the organisation.