Volunteerism Inside Complex Organizations: Off-Duty Hospital Personnel in a Disaster

Abstract

Although volunteering in times of crisis has received considerable attention, most studies focus either on emergent groups or on volun tary associations like the Red Cross, and studies of voluntary action within the type of organization referred to as bureaucracy are rare. This paper reports findings from a multivariate statistical analysis of off-duty personnel who reported to work voluntarily at a short-term general hospital treating victims of a major disaster in a metropolitan area. Logistic regression was used to estimate a model that explains differences between employees who participated voluntarily and those who did not participate.