Volunteers in Hybrid Organisations: A Marginalised Majority?

A chapter in Hybrid Organisations and the Third Sector. Challenges for Practice, Theory and Policy, edited by David Billis (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

This Research to Practice offers something a bit different and allows author Steven Howlett to revisit some of his favourite writers: Angela Ellis Paine, Nick Ockenden and Joanna Stuart. The three recently wrote a book chapter called ‘Volunteers in Hybrid Organizations: A marginalised majority,’ published in Hybrid Organizations and the Third Sector: Challenges for Theory and Practice, edited by David Billis. As Paine, Ockenden and Stuart explain, the involvement of volunteers in an organisation does more than help an organisation achieve its goals; it offers a key statement about what the organisation is like and what it values. However, in recent times and across many countries, outside forces are not only shaping organisations but also sometimes changing the nature of that organization through the effects of hybridity – where third-sector organisations start to take on characteristics of organizations from other sectors.