The context of change and modernity causing uncertainty or even fear over the future of volunteering was reflected in the Self-interested Volunteer identity, but was also used in identity work to promote the dominance of the Moral Volunteer identity. The key features of the Self-interested Volunteer identity are:
• a focus on modernity and changing demographics, • a more demanding volunteer, and
• a volunteer who is positioned in a family and social context.
Self-interested volunteers are represented as having different demographic characteristics to Moral Volunteers. They are likely to be categorised as younger and busier people who do not wish to undertake community service. The following excerpt demonstrates this changing demographic with a future fear for volunteer services:
Anonymous volunteer (295): Small country town 30 min away from professional [ambulance station]. On a major interstate highway with heavy traffic - attract large numbers of campers, tourists etc during holidays (up to 7000 at Easter). Foresee future recruitment problems - present group of 6 are between 45 and 60, younger people don't wish to commit extra time to community service.
The prevalence of older volunteers in the team described above is not linked to the lack of younger people in the service. Instead younger people are represented as not wishing to undertake community service. The description of the population needing servicing (reference to the traffic and highway is made as a pointer to the high likelihood of traffic accidents) is used to justify the volunteer’s fears for future volunteer services through inability to recruit new members. Others point to the likelihood of the Self-interested Volunteer being from urban areas and having more self-interested motivations
Manager Leroy: …stations close to metro area they’re getting a lot of people from the city coming to them, you know, the [place name]s, the …….., the ………, have got a lot of people from the metropolitan area coming to them, and some of these people are doing it for different reasons I believe. I believe they’re doing it for certainly a little bit to provide a service but they’re doing it more for a “me” reason.
The Self-interested Volunteer is represented as driven by personal interests, and by implications is different to the Moral Volunteer and is therefore an unknown
quantity. Leroy’s text piece draws on an identity of the more selfish urban volunteer though he softens this criticism with the subjectifying “I believe”. This softening could be because it is not a dominant discourse or because Leroy is uncomfortable with linking volunteers to ‘me’ motivations.
The Self-interested Volunteer identity positions volunteers in a broader social setting than the other ambulance volunteer identities. Both Moral and Professional Volunteer identities position the volunteer within communities, the Staff Volunteer identity positions volunteers within the organisation, but the Self-interested Volunteer is positioned within society. This positioning acknowledges a more holistic volunteer with social roles of family and work that are outside volunteering activity. Time constraints and lessening time commitments by volunteers can be explained partly by acknowledging these additional aspects of volunteer lives. Modernity discourses which link to the changing social situations of volunteers are also represented as creating a problem of limited time or limited finances for volunteers. The following excerpt demonstrates the linking of generational change and social change to a changing volunteer environment:
Volunteer management Gwen as far as volunteer goes another reason that it’s changing is because volunteers are different now. To when I joined in 1990 to now volunteers have huge expectations. They want answers. They’re results-driven and they’re not silly, and they have this much time that they can spare and they want value for money. Now, that is totally different from the people that were housewives, came from a one-family income and so the kids had gone to school and so they could put 24/7 on the road, etc. etc. Now we’re living in an environment that both family members, if there are two family members, it’s often casual employment, they are often sole parents. So the whole nature of those volunteers that we’re talking about has changed to what it used to be.
The limited commitment by the Self-interested Volunteer identity draws on generational discourses by stressing the impact of a more individualistic younger generation and a changing society.Gwen clearly draws on generational discourses to identify the Self-interested Volunteer and uses contrast to make her point. For example she draws a picture of a focused, intelligent group with limited time and contrasts this with the image of housewives with time to spare while the kids are at school. However, Gwen also paints a contrasting social picture of those with less financial security and less time, drawing up the image of casual employment or both family members working. The following excerpt reinforces this:
Anonymous Volunteer (344): Finding the extra time to volunteer our services is the biggest hurdle due to full time employment and family commitments.
The Self-interested Volunteer is not necessarily represented as more selfish, but instead positioned within a broader social setting where social changes have left
volunteers short on time and/or short on money. In this way the Self-interested Volunteer identity is positioned within a changing social and family context that provides rationales for why volunteers have less time and are more likely to value their time.
The limited commitment of the Self-interested Volunteer is also explained by reference to modernity discourses with images of a world moving faster and faster. The fast pace of life is used to explain why new volunteers have problems in attending training, and why the organisation has difficulty attracting recruits. This survey respondent links the fast pace of the world to problems with skill levels:
Anonymous volunteer (222): Finding time to maintain your skill level is getting harder as the world is moving faster.
The talk of a faster pace is part of everyday language, and as this excerpt shows there is a sense of increasing pace, the problem is not just that the world is faster now, but that it is becoming ever faster. The use of the terms ‘getting faster’ and ‘moving faster’ demonstrate this trend, which problematises the future. If it is harder now, what about next year?
The Self-interested Volunteer is represented as more interested in reciprocal arrangements and benefits. This links with the academic and management
generational change literature suggests shifts towards volunteers who only wish to contribute skills in short bursts of activity and who expect a reciprocal arrangement with organisations they volunteer for (Wilson 2001). This group are often represented as without long-term commitment to organisations, but instead will commit in short bursts often with an eye to the reciprocal benefits.
In ambulance services the Self-interested Volunteer identity is represented as having less commitment to ambulance services. The pressures of their lives are seen to take priority over ambulance volunteer work:
Anonymous Volunteer: Management at training level have become dictatorial and this attitude will cause volunteers to leave the service as they are unable to accept extra work loads on top of very busy committed lives. The service at large now
expects volunteers to train through to intermediate level but not all volunteers want that much commitment.
The Self-interested Volunteer identity paints a picture of a more demanding type of volunteer, who questions the organisation and status quo and who does not use patient safety as a rationale for demanding volunteering benefits. This emphasis on assertiveness and personal interests are a strong break from the dominant Moral Volunteer identity which is likely to explain why even change agents such as Gwen did not align themselves with this identity. Generally, the Self-interested Volunteer is ‘other’ to the author as in the excerpt above and below: Gwen below discusses how she perceives the requirements of new volunteers who are ‘other’ to herself:
Volunteer manager Gwen: they’ll work for it because at the end of it they’ll have certificates in assessment and workplace training, more than likely; mentoring, more than likely; any other leadership management that they can get, more than likely. You put that on a CV and you’ve got something to show for it, and that’s what we’ve been saying. If you have educated volunteer team leaders you will keep them, you will encourage other people to go because you have that piece of paper and then that can help you move on.
Gwen is using the Self-interested Volunteer identity to advocate for improved career paths for ambulance volunteers, but still positions them as other to herself. In the excerpt she argues that provision of training with recognised qualifications will assist the career aspirations of volunteers and in turn the recruitment and retention of volunteers. Her comment ‘you put that on a CV and you’ve go something to show for it’ is a reference to the benefits of a qualification in return for the work and training time committed as a volunteer. In the last sentence she posits that the training will help keep volunteer team leaders, attract other volunteers and help some volunteers to move on, which draws on the idea that volunteers won’t commit for long periods and need to be attracted by some benefit. This argument draws on the discourse of the ‘enterprising self’, life-long learning, and the self as project (Rose 1999: 161) and is in part a resistance to the Moral Volunteer identity, where the volunteer is positioned as an amateur helping the community. This life-long learning is also different to the Professional Volunteer arguments for more training as they link the need for extra ambulance officer training to competence for the benefit of the patient, though overlaps with those volunteers with paid work interests.
The Self-interested Volunteer identity problematises the future of volunteering and positions those who are ‘other’ to the Moral Volunteer in a negative stereotyping. This places the Moral Volunteer in a good/bad dualism with the Self-interested Volunteer. Self-interested Volunteers are presented as a problem firstly, because organisations requiring volunteers will increasingly struggle to attract volunteers, as people are represented as too busy and not as interested in the community. Secondly they are framed as problematic by being represented as more demanding, requiring services to increasingly reward and recognise volunteers. This framing of the Self-interested Volunteer as bad, and/or a problem helped to minimise the use of the identity within ambulance services, as managers worked to maintain the dominance of the Moral Volunteer identity or ‘new managers’ worked to introduce the Staff Volunteer identity.
Managers further problematised the Self-interested Volunteers by representing them as a future danger and threat to services. However, when managers attempted to discuss this at any length they experienced a high level of difficulty in supporting the critical argument against Self-interested volunteers. The following excerpt demonstrates a high level of difficulty in blending the Self-interested Volunteer identity with discourses of reciprocity:
Traditional manager Bob: I think volunteer expectation is going to be a huge driver of change. We have yet to see in volunteers the most significant impact of generational expectation -changes that we’re seeing in our paid workforce right now and we’re starting to see that coming through, where the expectation of the workforce, the loyalties and that are not automatic, but people I don’t think are just going to do it because that’s what’s expected and there’s going to be quite a significant demand, I think, placed by volunteers on what they expect for the time which they’re giving. Clearly they’re not in a one way and that’s coming through very strongly but that isn’t the motivator for them otherwise they wouldn’t be volunteering but they are going to look for significant recognition and support in that so that we mitigate the majority of the risks that they face and actually recognise the contribution that they’re making.
The anticipation and description of changing expectation of the new volunteer are clear in the above excerpt. The changes are clearly seen to be caused by ‘generational expectation(s)’ which draws directly on generational discourses. These changes are described as ‘loyalties are not automatic’ and that people won’t volunteer just because ‘that’s what’s expected’. However, Bob’s comment implies that there is some pressure or expectation that leads volunteers to participate in
ambulance work, which is generally a hidden/suppressed element of the Moral Volunteer identity as discussed in the earlier section. In this context talk of the Self-interested Volunteer appears to inadvertently cast light on some shadowed aspects of the Moral Volunteer identity, which Bob tries to repair. He does this awkwardly and consequently there is some lack of clarity about the meaning of the sentence containing the clause ‘clearly they’re not in a one way and that’s coming though very strongly’, though it is likely to refer to reciprocity. Bob’s final comments also unwittingly shed light on problems under the Moral Volunteer identity. Bob’s comments that Self-interested Volunteers will want ‘significant recognition and support’, risk mitigation and that the organisation ‘actually recognise the contribution they’re making’ suggest that current talk of recognition and support from the organisation for volunteers may be more rhetorical than real, or that current efforts lack substance. Overall, the Self-interested Volunteer identity does not blend easily with dominant Moral Volunteer identity but instead challenges the status quo by opening up new discourses.
In summary, the Self-interested Volunteer identity draws on discourses of generational change and an individualistic modern society. The Self-interested Volunteer is problematised by managers and volunteers and seen as a future challenge to services. This challenge is represented as driving future not current change, though a few volunteers used it to argue for current changes. The Self-interested Volunteer is represented as having strong agency in offering and withdrawing services to the organisation. The volunteer will use this agency to make ‘rational’ decisions about donating time to an organisation and will require reciprocal benefits. The Self-interested Volunteer is positioned outside the organisation within a broader social, family setting that reflects volunteers more individual needs and interests instead of those of the community. This identity is used to reflect many aspects of our changing world and the changes to individual’s interests. While not a strong identity in ambulance identity work it is likely to be incorporated into and adapted to ambulance services more fully in the future as the external ambulance service environment continues to change.
Conclusion
The four volunteer identities delineated in this chapter generate different effects in ambulance identity work depending on who uses them and the interests they reflect. Ambulance volunteers gain resources and repute in varying degrees from the different volunteer identities, but only position themselves within either the Moral or
Professional Volunteer identities, or sometimes a blend of both. Volunteers use these two identities because they reflect both personal and collective interests of ambulance volunteers including status rewards. The Moral Volunteer identity reflects the
altruistic prosocial interests of volunteers and brings them high status rewards by being positioned as good citizens. The Professional Volunteer identity reflects the personal and collective health care interests of ambulance volunteers and brings the status rewards that attach to a professional identity. Societal changes are reflected in two new volunteer ambulance officer identities as volunteers and managers adjust to changing interest priorities. It is by uncovering how ambulance volunteer identities can both reflect and constrain interests that this chapter contributes to understanding volunteer agency at the interface with ambulance services.
Key features of the identities were relevant in understanding volunteers’ agency in meeting their interests. These are summarised in Table 5 as key characteristics, positioning of the volunteer through the identity, the groups that used the identity and the strength of the identity within ambulance services.
Table 5: Summary of Ambulance Volunteer Identities
Identity Identity Key Characteristics Positioning Groups Used By Strength of Identity Moral
Volunteer
Special Rural Community ‘Doers’ No financial rewards
Community Volunteer Managers Community Politicians Dominant Professional Volunteer
Competency Need for Resource Support Service Standards
Community and Service Volunteers Managers - (competency only) Weak Staff Volunteer
Need Equitable Organisational Support Organisational members Service ‘New managers’ Increasing Self-interested Volunteer
Influences of Modernity and Changing Demographics
Society Managers Volunteers
Not all identities were used by all members of the ambulance services, but the Moral Volunteer was the most dominant identity at the time of this study and was used by most service members. There was a temporal dimension to the ambulance volunteer identity work as two identities (the Professional and Moral Volunteer) were longer standing, and two (Staff and Self-interested Volunteer) were more recent. The two newer identities constitute elements of a morphogenesis of ambulance volunteer identity that is occurring to meet changing service environments and discourses. The prevalence of different representations of ambulance identities depending on the placing of the ambulance service on the continuum of ‘Traditionals’ to ‘Moderns’, also suggest that changing managerial discourses are directly related to the morphogenesis of ambulance identity.
While the dominant Moral Volunteer identity represents the primary agency of volunteers in committing to social connectivity and achieving the high moral status of good citizens, it also brings problems.The altruistic focus of the identity assumes and therefore naturalises communities of disadvantage, and bounds volunteers with the characteristic of non-financial rewards. These features allow volunteers to be misrecognised as agents who are responsible for rural ambulance services. The implications for volunteers of the Moral Volunteer identity and the communities they serve have been alluded to. But the next chapter looks more closely at how culture and structure interplay with agency at the ambulance interface: how culture creates structure, and how structure creates culture, to generate change or maintain the status quo. Two identities were used to attempt to counter the resource barriers of the Moral Volunteer identity. Volunteers argued for resources by drawing on the Professional Volunteer identity, but this identity work came from a position of