Identity work, meaningfulness and volunteers

Weller, Sarah Louise; Brown, Andrew D.; Clarke, Caroline

Abstract

What identity narratives do those engaged in dangerous volunteering work on and how do they help satisfy their quest for meaningful lives? Based on a three-year ethnographic study of QuakeRescue, a UK-based voluntary, search and rescue charity, we show that volunteers constructed identities drawing on discourses of ‘helping’, ‘heroism’ and ‘hurt’. The primary contribution we make is to analyse how meaningfulness (the sense of personal purpose and fulfilment) that people attribute to their lives, is both developed through and a resource for individuals’ identity work. This approach permits analysis of how organizationally based actors attribute significance to their lives through authorship of desired identities which are sanctioned and supplied by societal discursive resources and embedded in and constitutive of local communities. In our case, the helper and hero identities dangerous volunteering offered members were seductive. However, their pursuit often had ambiguous and sometimes, arguably, negative consequences for volunteers who had seen action overseas, and our study adds to understanding of how organizational members’ quest for meaningful identities may often falter and sometimes fail.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 3, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Jul 26, 2021
• Publication Date: Aug 1, 2021
• Deposit Date: Apr 26, 2022
• Journal: Academy of Management Proceedings
• Print ISSN: 0065-0668
• Electronic ISSN: 2151-6561
• Publisher: Academy of Management
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2021
• Issue: 1
• Article Number: 12365
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.5465/ambpp.2021.12365abstract
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9184004