ABSTRACT
The purpose of this article is grasping the symbolic relationships that involve motivation in volunteer work. The locus of the empirical portion of this article is the Associação Voluntária da Apae (Avapae) in Venda Nova do Imigrante, Brazil. The article legitimizes the relevance of studying organizations through approaches focused on organizational symbolism (Morgan, Frost & Pondy, 1983Morgan, G., Frost, P., & Pondy, L. (1983). Organizational symbolism. In T. C. Dandridge, P. J. Frost, G. Morgan & L. Pondy. Organizational symbolism (pp. 3-35). Connecticut: Jay Press; London: Jain Press.; Gioia, 1986Gioia, D. A. (1986). Symbols, scripts, and sensemaking: creating meaning in the organizational experience. In H. P. Sims & D. A. Gioia (Eds.). The thinking organization (pp. 49-74). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.; Carrieri & Saraiva, 2007Carrieri, A. de P., & Saraiva, L. A. S. (2007). Introdução. In A. de P. Carrieri & L. A. S. Saraiva (Orgs.). Simbolismo organizacional (pp. 1-12). São Paulo: Atlas.). This is done herein by recognizing the relationships between the social construction of volunteers’ reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1985Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1985). A construção social da realidade. Petrópolis: Vozes.) and their representations of motivation based on a subjectivity (Rey, 2005Rey, F. G. (2005). Pesquisa qualitativa e subjetividade: os processos de construção da informação. São Paulo: Thomson.) connected to the particularities of volunteer work. Empirical data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews with 14 Avapae volunteers, a 3-month non-participant observation period at the volunteers’ workplace, and documentary analysis. Data were processed by using the content analysis technique. According to volunteers, work is related to the capacity of, through an embroidery, for instance, producing meanings, such as helping others, having fun, and changing the routine, among others. Motivation, observed through the meanings attached to volunteer work, is based on the feeling of being part of something or changing a way, in the sense of playing a significant role in relation to that social task (Palassi & Vervloet, 2011Palassi, M. P., & Vervloet, A. M. P. (2011). Eleições, mesários e subjetividade: reflexões sobre a produção de sentidos subjetivos a partir da participação voluntária no processo de votação. Psicologia e Sociedade, 23(2), 312-324.). The investigation showed the context of Avapae as complex, permeated by symbolism and multiple subjectivities, especially concerning the social constructions of people living in Venda Nova do Imigrante, in addition to the limits of the organization studied. ‘Venda-novenses’ emerged as a product and producer of the symbolism surrounding the motivation for volunteering. As a final contribution of this study, we argue that the ways to address volunteers’ motivation must consider the actions of these social agents and their insertion contexts in terms of the symbolic exchanges experienced within the organization and society as a whole, as it has been observed within the ‘venda-novense’ community.
KEYWORDS
Organizational symbolism; Motivation; Work; Volunteer; Subjectivity