Applying the psychological

contract to the management of

volunteers in sport.
Geoff Nichols, Sheffield University
Management School
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Structure
• The importance of volunteers in sport
• Application of the psychological contract to
employees
• The nature of volunteering, in contrast to paid
work
• Implications for applying the psychological
contract to volunteers

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The importance of sports volunteers

• To help achieve government policies

• Expression of individual or collective
identities
• Contribution to democratic structures.

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How many volunteers?

• 44% of adults volunteer formally (England)
• ‘sport & exercise 3rd most important type of
organization
• Sports clubs run by their members = 75% of
sports volunteers [100,000 clubs]
• Major events – 70,000 volunteers for London
Olympics

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Psychological contract for employees

• As mutual promises
• Subjective
• Studied to help manage behaviour

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Types of contract / measurement

• Content – transactional / relational

• By features – written / unwritten etc.
• By how employees evaluate it

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Content – exchange balance

Diagram 1. The Exchange Balance

Employee
under- Mutual high
obligation obligations
R
e Employee
w over-
a obligation
r Mutual low
d obligations

Effort

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Issues in application to employees

• Free engagement v conflict of interests
• Trust – a substitute for control
• Change with experience
• Usually just employees’ view – not managers’
• Dominant quantitative methods
• Attempts to generalize

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Psychological contract and volunteers

• Subjective experience – with socio-cultural

and institutional influences
• Nature of volunteering
• Contrast to paid work
• Illustrated with sports volunteers
• New research questions

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Volunteering as Leisure
• Unpaid work
• Activism
• Serious Leisure – provision and expression of
valued social identity

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Volunteering as Leisure

Unpaid
work or
service

Serious Activism
Leisure

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Unpaid work - implications

• Effort bargain – minus pay
• Manage volunteers like paid employees
• Motives a proxy for expected rewards
• A transactional contract is possible

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Activism - implications
• Focus on values of volunteers
• Aligned with those of organisation
• Values may extend to how the organization
meets its objectives

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Serious leisure - implications

• Used to understand volunteers in small
organizations
• Explains ‘stalwarts’
• Commitment – self-identity from volunteering
– strong bond
• Changes – transactional to relational

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3 types of leisure - implications

• Psychological contract understood through
qualitative research
• Might be considerable variety on one
organization e.g. a sports club
• Might be better to research them as a social
gathering

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Influence of views of paid work

• Work / leisure couplet – defined in relation to
each other
• As co-operation / or as conflict?
• Less free will than leisure

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Views of paid work - implications

• If a conflict view of paid work, volunteers may resent
management as ‘manipulation under another name’
• If a co-operation view – management is effective
organization
• But – a different style of management may be
expected by volunteers
• Need to understand volunteers’ and managers’ views

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Conclusions
• Psychological contract useful in understanding
the relationship between volunteers and
managers
• But mutual expectations will be influenced by
experience of volunteering as leisure, and
leisure as a contrast to paid work.

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Conclusions
• Difficult to generalize from employees
• Require qualitative research e.g. in sports
clubs
• Compare views of volunteers and managers
• Different between event volunteers and sports
clubs

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Some research questions

• Does a view of volunteering as leisure affect
the PC?
• How and why do contracts change – how can
management influence this?
• Do views of employment affect PC in
volunteering?

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Some research questions

• How do managers view the PC with
volunteers? Is it different to employees?
• When volunteers manage volunteers can we
understand this as a viable combination of
psychological contracts – a social relationship.
e.g. sports club?

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