Call for Chapter Proposals for Edited Book on Volunteers
Working Title: Communication and the Volunteer Experience: Exploring the Organizational Dynamics of Volunteering in Multiple Contexts
Volunteers serve a multitude of organizations worldwide in a vast array of roles. In 2009, 63.4 million Americans volunteered in their communities providing 8.1 billion hours of service that has an estimated dollar value of $169 billion. Volunteering occurs for a wide variety of motivations and in a vast array of contexts including social service nonprofits; membership organizations; advocacy and political organizations; non-governmental organizations; government and for-profit organizations and communities.
Volunteers are those who give time, effort, and talent to a need or cause without profiting monetarily. This includes board members, pro-bono professional work; member activity in all-volunteer associations; advocacy organization workers; grassroots activism; faith-based service and lay ministry; therapy group leaders and participants; community arts performers; youth league and adult league coaches and organizers; workplace-related volunteering such as loaned executives; citizen journalists; e-volunteering; episodic or event-based volunteering; stipended national service (such as the Peace Corp); and mandated (but unpaid) service such as court-ordered volunteering, service-learning, and welfare-to-work programs.
Objective of the Book
The purpose of this book is to problematize the nature of volunteering and how this organizational member type challenges many of our assumptions about existing organizational theory. Few of our current resources (books, texts, handbooks) address the micro-level, data-based analysis of volunteering and volunteer management. This book will combine literature review chapters authored by the book's editors with data-based contributed chapters that provide in-depth analysis of a particular issue, topic, type of
volunteer. Each chapter will be followed by a field report by a practitioner who has experience with the volunteer type or situation explored in the chapter.
Editors
Michael Kramer, University Oklahoma, Department of Communication
Loril Gossett, UNC Charlotte, Department of Communication Studies
Laurie Lewis, Rutgers University, Department of Communication
Publisher
This book proposal has been accepted by Peter Lang Publisher. For additional information about the publisher please visit
Please Submit
This edited book will present contributed chapters focusing on one or more types of volunteering. We seek contributed chapters that are data-based, and focused on the management and experience of volunteering. All
methodologies are welcome including quantitative, qualitative, or textual/rhetorical analysis. We invite interdisciplinary work that seeks to combine communication perspectives with other disciplinary knowledge.
To submit, authors should forward a 1-2 page abstract of the chapter including a description of the study conducted and a summary of results (if available) by August 25, 2011.
Submissions will be peer reviewed and decisions about inclusion in the book will be made by September 30, 2011. Selected authors will be expected to produce the full draft of their chapters by January 1, 2011. These will be reviewed by the book editors and revised by June 1, 2012.
Inquiries may be addressed to any of the editors. Submissions should be forwarded electronically (word document) to:
Michael W. Kramer
Department of Communication
610 Elm Avenue, Room 101
University of Oklahoma
Norman, OK 73019
405-325-9503
