Occupation-Related Volunteering: A Qualitative Systematic Literature Review, Conceptualization, and Directions for Future Research

This review investigates the volunteering-work nexus, where an individual's paid occupational work in the business, government, or voluntary sector is akin to their volunteer work: tasks and responsibilities are similar, but the structure, conditions, and relationships differ. Performing work spans their business and volunteer worlds and brings dynamic interactions between work and volunteering. Pro bono, skills-based, or corporate volunteering are terms in use; however, these conceptualizations of the underlying and interconnecting practices of work and volunteering are too limited. This transdisciplinary, qualitative systematic literature review of 62 scientific articles studies individuals using conceptualizations of work, volunteering, and occupations over their working life, from service-learning to retirement. With ambiguous boundaries and terminology in the literature, we introduce a new term-occupation-related volunteering-defined as an individual acting to benefit others without payment or coercion, developing, using, or maintaining their occupational knowledge, skills, and abilities, and drawing upon their economic, social, and cultural capital. The definition anticipates that an individual's occupational resources change over their working life and vary depending on whether the volunteer is acting independently or with the support of their workplace. Occupation-related volunteering extends paid-unpaid and formal-informal boundaries to include volunteering in "paid" work time and in informal, community-based organizations and less public roles, such as mentoring. Finally, we encourage future research using the bibliometric data, suggestions in the reviewed articles, and our synthesis of the individual's perspective of performing their occupational work as a volunteer. Occupation-related volunteering: a term and definition for performing one's work as a volunteerOur research is about the term for and definition of a person doing their usual work as a volunteer. They may work in business, government or a non-profit and volunteer in, for example, a private school, government hospital, or local sporting club. However, unlike other volunteering, the person does what is, will be, or was their occupation as an unpaid volunteer. The current terms, including service-learning, pro bono, corporate or skills-based volunteering, are too limited. We systematically reviewed the literature on what we call the 'volunteering-work nexus' from the volunteer's perspective. We identified 62 scientific articles and, as a result, introduced the term occupation-related volunteering. Most articles took the definition of a volunteer, then added 'what it takes' to do occupational work: knowledge, skills and abilities, financial resources and work-related contacts, networks and personal inclinations. The definition recognizes that the willingness and ability to be an occupation-related volunteer changes over work-life stages, from student to employee to retiree, and whether the workplace is involved or not. By listing the required attributes and recognizing the importance of context, the definition is a foundation for future research. Our term occupation-related volunteering can reduce the siloing of knowledge and bridge disciplines, including education, human resources, and non-profit management, across occupations (e.g., legal, administration). It also allows a better understanding of the boundaries and crossovers between work, learning and volunteering. Limitations include that reviewed articles only studied professions in mainly Global North countries; addressing these are among several directions we suggest as future research.