Based on results the best part of Kuopio Steelers organization is the people within the organization. Both the experienced and the new volunteers felt that the reason why they continue to volunteer is that they have been able to make friendships. However people felt that the overall atmosphere, at least communicational wise, within the volunteers was a bit negative which is why appreciative inquiry was a good way to approach organizational development and find ways to make volunteering more rewarding for
people. Both interview groups felt that even though the club has managed to get more volunteers and the amount of volunteers is bigger than ever before, there are still things that can be improved. Based on their answers they felt that the overall feeling and cohesion could be better and especially the communication methods need to be reconsidered. The more experienced volunteers talked about how they found it stressful and straining that most of their conversations were held in Facebook or Whatsapp messengers and that the messages were hard to follow and keep up with. The second group focused more on the tone of communication and they found it a bit negative. Both groups were able to address the question from possibility-centric viewpoint and found that adding more face to face meetings and having conversations on the phone instead of messages, would make the communication more productive and that way the misinterpretations could be avoided better. They also found it important to get to know people better and to build team spirit throughout the whole organization.
If the two focus groups are assessed through the 4D model of appreciative inquiry, the two groups focused on slightly different parts. The more experienced volunteers focused more on the first two D´s, the Discovery phase and Dream phase. They were easily able to find things that work and celebrate the things that have improved over the years. In the Dream phase it was clear that they had already been thinking what they would want the future of the club to look like and it was easy for them to form an opinion on what kind of organization they would like to have in the future. Their viewpoint was in developing the whole club and they looked further in the future than just to the next one or two seasons.
They were able to come up with solutions and action plan in the Design phase, but based on their conversation they needed more time to ponder the issues that were raised in the first two phases before they would be able to come up with a more thorough action plan.
The new volunteers on the other hand went a bit further in their conversations. They mentioned the same positive aspects as the first group but it was easier for them to come up with concrete solutions and action plans. They focused more on short term development and developing their own individual tasks instead of developing the whole organization, which made it easier for them to come up with solutions. However the solutions they came up with are such that can benefit the whole organization. Therefore
the both conversations supported and complemented each other and offer a good foundation for organizational development.
Both groups also mentioned that even though they like what they are doing and find the task meaningful and interesting, the work load can sometimes be too much. There was a clear division between the first and the second interview groups since even though both groups said that the second group (consisting mainly of the members of the Home Game Organizing Committee) had a better team spirit and overall feeling, they were less committed to participate in developing the club than the first group, who saw development as an essential part of the clubs future. By utilizing the appreciative inquiry the club could involve more new members into the development process. This way they could increase the feeling of working together and make it more positive. The more actively participating members they have, the better they would be able to divide the work load. By dividing the work load the volunteers would not feel so overwhelmed and they would be able to spend more energy in finding new ways of doing things, which could lead into more innovations and creativity which could be then utilized in organizational development. The more excited people are about their tasks the more productive they will be.
Another clear difference between the groups was that where as the more experienced volunteers found it rewarding to see how the club and individual players succeed and develop, the new members on the other hand talked about the importance of thanking people and how a simple thank you and the recognition of good work is very motivating and creates the feeling of reward. They felt that by adding more appreciative communication, thanking people would become more of a normal habit and a part of daily communication which would in turn make the communication more positive and create a positive atmosphere for the whole organization. Therefore based on these results, appreciative methods and appreciative communication have a direct impact on how rewarding volunteering is for people and is particularly important in the beginning stage of volunteering.
Based on the answers the appreciative inquiry made the participants feel like they were included in the organizational development process, that their opinions were valued and
added the feeling of cohesion. The more experienced volunteers felt that the positive and innovative approach gave them new tools and ideas for their own development processes and that they got a good and concrete action plan for future. The new members on the other hand got the feeling that they are seen as important and active members of the organization and that they are included in the development process in which their opinions matter and are valued. For them it was important that they were able to help make volunteering more rewarding especially for the new volunteers they begin volunteering for the Steelers. The overall feedback and comments for the conversations were very positive and the participants had found it very useful.
Figure 3. The theoretical framework of my study combined with the key results
Based on the results, utilizing appreciative inquiry can make volunteering more rewarding. These results are align with theoretical framework of my study stating that appreciative inquiry can benefit organizational development by helping to shape communication into more positive and possibility-centric way and therefore result in creating a more rewarding feeling for the volunteers. Since the organization members were engaged into positive conversation and asked to focus on the functioning aspects
Appreciative Inquiry
Organizational Development
Communication
Increasing the feeling of
reward
Positive feeling & positive communication
Active participation
Feeling of community
Thanking and noticing effort
Creating new ideas
they were able to create an atmosphere that supported innovativeness and creativity which resulted in concrete action plan for the future. Like previous studies have showed focusing on positive matters meant that the overall feeling of the conversations was positive as well as the feeling that participants had towards the development process, which is very important especially in the volunteering context when participation can depend on the feeling person gets from volunteering.
5 CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION
In this chapter I will discuss the summary of my research, the key results that I got and evaluate the study critically. I will also discuss the possible limitations that this study has and state topics for future research.
5.1 Summary of the results
My aim was to study how appreciative inquiry could be utilized to increase the feeling of reward in volunteering. I wanted to study volunteering since I knew from personal experience that while it is rewarding and offers great experiences, it can sometimes also be very challenging. As I acquainted myself with the existing literature on volunteering, I quickly realized that although volunteering, motivation for volunteering and the feeling of reward had been studied before, there were no studies were the positive mindset of appreciative inquiry had been used in volunteer context. Since the previous studies had shown that one of the biggest reasons for volunteering is that the volunteers feel that they are having fun and on the other hand that if they stopped having fun they would also easily stop volunteering, I wanted to study volunteering from a new perspective and see what positive outlook and including organization members into organizational development would mean for the volunteers. Based on these objectives, my research question formulated in the form of “how to make volunteering more rewarding by utilizing appreciative inquiry”.
My theoretical background was built around appreciative inquiry and volunteer rewarding theories. Appreciative inquiry has been most used to create interaction and communication between the members of the organization for organizational development purposes. Appreciative inquiry aims to raise a conversation about the positive and working aspects of the organization instead of focusing on finding what is not working.
The best outcome is reached when the organization members are engaged to conversation
on what is working in the organization and how they could improve those strengths even further (Bushe, 2011). Appreciative inquiry has four phases; Discovery where the goal is to find the aspects that are working in the organization. In the second face, Dream, organization members are asked to envision what they would want the future of the organization to look like. In the third phase, Design, the goal is to come up with an action plan to reach those goals and in the fourth phase, Destiny, the idea is to strengthen the affirmative capability of the whole system, build hope and sustain momentum for the ongoing change and high performance (Cooperrider & Whitney 2005, 16). Appreciative inquiry focuses on future and on positive aspects, while engaging the organization members into a positive conversation and by doing so builds cohesion and co-operation between the members of the organization. Since positivity, cohesion and working for a common cause have been proven to be very important aspects for volunteer motivation appreciative inquiry offers a way to develop volunteer organizations so that the volunteers become more committed and feel more appreciated.
I chose to use qualitative method for my research since I felt that I would get more in-depth information by conducting interviews rather that doing a quantitative questionnaire.
I chose to utilize focus group interviews as my research method since focus group interviews support the appreciative approach and therefore I expected to get new insight on the topic. The idea of focus groups is to allow participants to share knowledge and personal experiences in order to create new insights about the topic (Reid & Reid 2005). I conducted two focus group interviews with two objectives in mind: I wanted to see if the opinions are different between people who have been actively volunteering for multiple years compared to those who have been volunteering in the organization for a shorter period of time. For this reason the groups were divided so that in group one I had people who had been actively volunteering for at least eight years and in group two were the members who had been active for less than three years. I also wanted my results to represent the whole club instead of just one team, and therefore I chose the group members so that they represented all the four different “teams” of the club. As I had predicted the two groups focused on different topics and complemented well each other´s visions. The most significant difference between the groups was that the more
experienced volunteers clearly thought about the whole organization in their answers where as the more recent volunteers approached development through their individual tasks.