Organizational Identity Work in Volunteer-based Organizations

An increasing body of research focuses on identity work in non-profit organizations. However, little is known about how volunteers engage in identity work in fully-volunteer organizations, i.e. how, through their actions, their discourses and behaviors they influence the core identity of the organization. Taking the case of a musical season located in a Swiss village, we led an insider-outsider research design based on 340 hours of participant observation and 16 semi-structured interviews. We identify two identity work coalitions, each of them being connected to distinct volunteering motivations and contributing to organizational identity work in a specific way, both in temporal and practical terms. Our research finally cross-fertilizes literatures about volunteering and organizational identity work in volunteer-based organizations.