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How Do Volunteer’s Experiences of Organizational Facilitators Influence Their Satisfaction and Loyalty: An Example of Hospital Volunteers

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Abstract

The volunteer experience in organizational context has received far less scrutiny. Studies have indicated specific organizational settings, such as schedule flexibility, orientation and training, empowerment, social interaction, reflection, and rewards, and each has certain influences on their satisfaction and intention of remain. But we do not know their combined impact as organizational facilitators. This study focused on a sample of hospital volunteering, which occupies the largest service hours of volunteering work in Taiwan. We explored the experience of organizational facilitators that affect the satisfaction and loyalty of the volunteers from 868 valid questionnaires in a metropolitan hospital. The results showed that volunteers with more experiences on social interaction, reflections, and rewards, were more satisfied. In term of loyalty, volunteers with higher satisfaction showed higher willing to remain, recommend, accept services, and donate. Furthermore, because of flexible schedules and preferable rewards, the volunteers were more willing to remain; because of more training, higher social interaction, reflections, and rewards, the volunteers were more willing to recommend volunteering and accept services. Additionally, less flexible schedules, better empowerment, and more reflections as well as rewards influenced volunteers to be more motivated to donate. Implications of organizational efforts toward the hospital volunteer management are discussed.

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Notes

  1. explain what do we mean by public community hospital, as it was demanded by the reviewer

  2. explain why we use a six-point scale in this study.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Department of Health, Taipei City Government (102TPECH08). We thank our colleagues from Department of Social Work, Taipei City Hospital who provided insight and expertise that greatly assisted the research. We would also like to show our gratitude to the Lih-Chu Tien, MSW for sharing her pearls of wisdom with us during the course of this research.

Funding

This study was funded by the Department of Health, Taipei City Government (102TPECH08).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Taipei City Hospital, No. 145, Zhengzhou Rd., Taipei City, 10341, Taiwan, ROC

    Yi-Ling Wu

  2. Institute for Information Industry, 9F., No.153, Sec. 3, Xinyi Rd., Daan Dist., Taipei, 106, Taiwan, ROC

    Tsai-Wen Lin

  3. University of Taipei, No. 101, Sec. 2, Zhongcheng Rd., Shilin Dist., Taipei City, 111, Taiwan, ROC

    Samuel Shih-Chih Wang

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  1. Yi-Ling Wu
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Correspondence to Samuel Shih-Chih Wang.

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Wu, YL., Lin, TW. & Wang, S.SC. How Do Volunteer’s Experiences of Organizational Facilitators Influence Their Satisfaction and Loyalty: An Example of Hospital Volunteers. Voluntas 30, 1104–1117 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-019-00096-6

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