Psychosocial features of management volunteer team

The relevance of problem. Interest in volunteering is gaining more popularity in the conditions of modern society. Everybody can be a volunteer: students, parents and all people who are interested in helping those who need help, all people who want to bring contribution to development of the society. According to the European monitoring more than a half of adult capable for working population of Europe is involved in volunteer activities [14]. For today, the volunteer activity is a particularly relevant within the context of events occurring in our country. Providing assistance to militaries and their families, internally displaced persons is one of the most active areas of volunteerism.

But the conceptions “volunteer” and “volunteering” are treated in different ways nowadays. The transformation of these concepts is carried out, not to mention about the difference in approaches understanding of volunteering in Europe and the countries of post - Soviet space. As known, volunteering is an activity carried out by activists without material rewards.

In Ukraine volunteers can be involved in the work of state social centers, nongovernmental organizations, to carry out works in accordance with their qualification for free, and others types of activities, to work both independently and as a team. With the changing political, economic and socio - cultural conditions in our country, for today an amount of those people who want just to work on a voluntary basis is growing. In addition, those people who create volunteer teams and develop their own projects for changing the social situation in the country and the situation of certain categories of the population also increase in number.

Analysis of recent research and publications shows that volunteering is one of the most widespread forms of realization not only personal and professional potential of the individual, but also organizational skills, communication and other abilities. [8] But despite this, the nature of the implementation of volunteering has some difficulties: unstable motivation of volunteers, emotional burnout, rapid fluidity of volunteer team members and more.

Current tendencies of volunteer groups organization and socio- psychological features of volunteer activity are being studied by T Lyakh, A. Kapska, I. Zvereva, A. Lozovytskyy, A. Bezpalko, T. Golovanova, H. Vaynilovych and others. Such scientists as A. Azarov and M Janicki have contributed to the studies development of determinants of volunteering; M. Mongo, A. Ewing, B. Hole, I. Claire have studied motivation of voluntary activity.

The studies of the nature of the volunteer team management, their social and psychological features are still actual. Because, as known, volunteering is unpaid activity, pre-selection of team members aren't made, that's why the nature of management these teams has own features and their nature differs from teams aimed at profitable activity.

Members of volunteer teams are the most uncontrolled part of human resources. In addition, they are people with different psychological characteristics and style of interpersonal interactions, which in turn, requires different management style, organizational tasks and encouragements. The team's leaders spend many resources in the process of team cohesion and providing of solidarity of all members for effective realization of volunteer activity.

Involving, organization and maintenance of volunteers requires effective management of this process. Therefore, knowledge of volunteer teams management, understanding of their psychological features is important for managers, taking into account spreading of this activity in the modern world. Research of internal group processes of volunteer teams, character of members valued orientations; the level of motivation is also actual.

The aim of this work is the disclosure of psychological features of the formation of volunteer teams and their management.

The marked aim envisages the following tasks: 1) to reveal the essence of the concept of “volunteer team”; 2) to define the socio-psychological features of volunteer teams 3) to disclose the essence of the formation of volunteer teams and the factors that influence on this process; 4) to define the socio-psychological factors of management volunteer teams.

Statement of the base material. In order to discover the essence of the concept of “volunteer team” we should start with a review of the definitions of “group” and “team”. The concept of the group is one of the key issues in social psychology that was investigated by many well-known scientists, including G. Andreeva, A. Dontsov, A. Kovalenko, M. Kornev, R. Krichevsky, L. Orban-Lembrik, A. Petrovsky, T Shibutani, Shillz and other. On one hand, the study of individual and small group interaction connected with the study of group pressure; the totalities of phenomena caused by those influences that a small group has on course of mental processes, attitudes and behavior of individual. On the other hand - with the study of individual's influence on a group psychological phenomena and group behavior with the study of leadership [6].

T. Shibutani has defined a group as an association of people who carry out the successive coordinated activity that consciously or unconsciously obeys some common purpose, and in some point satisfies the needs of the participants. In turn, well-known Ukrainian researcher L. Orban-Lembrik has claimed that the group is united not only by common conditions of vital functions, but also with the mutual influence of individuals. Group is a relatively stable set of people linked by common values, goals, relationships system [7].

Interesting and controversial interpretation of the concept of “team” we can meet in social psychology sources. R. Krichevsky has written that often the concepts of team and group are used as a synonym, but in certain phrases, such as, for example, a sports team. However, the main difference of team from group is that team characterized by greater interconnectedness and interdependence of members [4]. Other researchers assert that a team is a little bit more than just a group of people. Known Swedish researcher B. Karlof considers that the team has common features with the group (group processes, norms, structure, etc.), but the team has more clear distribution of roles, formal goals [2]. Another one feature - membership of the team is more permanent and participants of this group are perceived as a team member.

Summing up the former material, we can say that the team is the higher level of interaction between members of small social groups, but has some differences from a group. Team is a group of people connected by one aim and principles of cooperation, having the ability to complement the skills of other participants, collected for specific tasks. There is a distribution of social roles, functions, and close cooperation between the members in a team. Team members distribute tasks among themselves to achieve a general aim, and each team member is responsible for the achievements. In addition to this, the team always created purposefully [5].

If we are talking about a team of volunteers, a small community of people working on a voluntary basis and united in order to achieve a general purpose. Volunteer team characterized by clear roles, close interaction of members. Moreover, it formed at state, public organizations, or acts as an informal initiative group.

It should be noted that the work of these teams and the interaction of their members have their own features, that are determined by the nature of their functioning, as such teams are created to achieve certain goals and have voluntary basis of activity.

Members of such teams work at no charge. So, often the volunteers are temporary, it means that, team members may be changed frequently, leave work at any time, and carry out their duties at will. Therefore, one of the main features of the volunteer teams is a high level of motivation of members to activity. That is why motivation is a driving factor for participation in volunteer activities. Motives that induce people to this type of activity may differ.

An important psychological feature of volunteer team is trust. Foreign researchers describe trust as the basis of the management team [13]. Trust in volunteer team appears in combination of views and attitudes of members that represent the expectations concerning other team members; appear in a willingness delegating implementation of functions and responsibilities, making decisions, and is proposed by one-team members to others. Thus, the trust in a team should regarded not only among the team members, but also in relation between team participants and their leader.

As we noted, for teams are inherent close interaction between the participants, in addition, communication between the volunteer team members are mainly informal. Such an informal character played an important sense in the roles distribution, functions, control and organization of teamwork. These teams are limited in time for realization of specific tasks, so the nature of informal relations contributes to the effective functioning of the team, promotes the level of group cohesion and psychological climate.

Group cohesion and psychological climate are some phenomena of group development that contribute to the joint team activities. Studying the concept of group cohesion, we viewed it as a psychological process of development and the formation of relationships in a group that provides transformation of a given structure in the psychological community of people [12]. Under the psychological climate of a team there are such aspects of interpersonal relationships, manifested taken together of psychological conditions that promote or hinder productive work teams, individual development of the person in the group.

Another important feature of the volunteer teams is ability to selforganization of work. The work of these teams is not usually controlled by other institutions, and primarily is based on personal motivation of members. Organizational planning, distribution of roles and responsibilities among members often has “chaotic” nature, because in contrast to professional teams, such teams do not have financial obligations and do not sign any agreements. Volunteers mainly staff their staff and selection in such teams is not carried out. Work organization of volunteer teams occurs within the team, managed by a team leader, who are elected by members, or a person who organizes activity of the group.

The next stage of our research is related to formation of volunteer teams. The main integrating factor of creating volunteer teams serves a certain strategic aim of team working. Volunteer teams are created for realization of the charitable project or shares. In the process of achieving the project goals, the team acquires their borders, using organizational capabilities and resources of the project participants. The team acts as a social organism, having beginning, performs process of vital functions and completes by existence dissolution or transformation to another team.

Process of creation a team takes a long time and resources, so relying on the main stages of team formation; it can be argued that the volunteer team passes through the same stages of formation. However, difficulty consists in that, as noted above, such volunteer teams do not have the permanent staffing, their members can go out on any stage of work, and similarly join new. That brakes team development. Therefore, in our case, it should be said about factors that influence formation and functioning of volunteer teams.

Novelty, uniqueness, inharmonic work are traits that are inherent in the new team, they also determine the difficulties in team formation. Team creation for a new project is complicated by the fact that these people have not worked together yet, they do not have common organizational values and norms, but they must work efficiently. In addition, all team members have their own personal characteristics, psychological features that influence formation of the team as a single system. volunteer team interpersonal psychological

The factors that have a decisive influence on the formation and activities of the volunteer teams include the specificity of the team activity that determines the formal structure of the team, the aims and objectives, role structure, the list of abilities and skills which team members should have [9]. The organizational and cultural environment is a following factor that includes two components: the external and internal environment. External environment is a factor that is independent on project team. It may be economic or political situation in the country, the competition from similar teams, material resources [1] . The internal environment is the organizational culture of the team; it includes methods of power distribution, ways of solving conflicts, and the interaction of team members. On the one hand, the team affects the creation of a specific organizational environment, shaping the values, principles and standards, and on the other - acts in it, submitting to a common goal and a management philosophy [11].

Relationship between the leader and team members is one of the factors of the team formation, which plays an important role during the mutual teamwork. These relationships are determined by leadership style and socio-psychological characteristics of each team member. [15] Cohesion and socio-psychological climate in the team and the occurrence of new leaders and outsiders depend on nature of these relations.

Summing up the theoretical analysis of the research problem, we have developed a conceptual model of volunteer team management.

Management system includes:

1) Organizational planning, characterized by development team structure, qualitative and quantitative composition, functional responsibilities, departments;

2) Project staffing includes the search and recruitment of volunteers to the team;

3) Team creation, characterized by the distribution of organizational roles, the formation of corporate ethics, team cohesion; 4) implementation of control and motivation functions of human resources teams for effective teamwork performance.

Theoretical studies give base for dividing activity of a volunteer team leader in a management system on two vectors:

1) Recruitment of volunteers into teams, assessment of the individual characteristics of each member of the team, planning their activities, assigning responsibilities in accordance with the objectives of the project;

2) Supporting the activities of the team and interaction between its members, facilitating team building, supporting the motivation of team members and so on.

Basing on the developed conceptual model of volunteer teams management an empirical study of social and psychological characteristics of the team carried out. We found out whet it is included identification of group process indicators and personal profile of the team members. Parameters of the group process include indicators of socio-psychological climate in a team, the level of group motivation and the level of team cohesion. Indicators of the trust level and a personal orientation of team members have attributed to parameters of personal team members' profile.

Seven volunteer team's projects are implemented in the field of social work for the study sample. The total number of respondents who participated in the study was up to 49 people. The composition of the teams differed in the number of participants: from 3 to 15 members in their composition. The main selection criteria were the volunteer nature of the activity, the implementation of charitable projects, the youth team composition, the presence of the leader.

In order to study parameters of team process characteristics and personal qualities of team members the method of testing is used. We offered the following diagnostic questionnaires: “Evaluation of the psychological atmosphere in a team (by A. Fidler)”, “Determination of the index of group cohesion by Seashore”, “Formation of positive motivation of the group” by A. Rozanova, method of diagnosing of personal orientation by B. Bass (questionnaire Smekal-Kucer) and test “Scale of trust” by Rosenberg. Using of these methods allowed us to investigate the indicators of group team cohesion, the level of socio-psychological climate, motivation to work and socio-psychological characteristics of the team members, in particular, the level of personal trust and value orientation.

We offered following questionnaire for volunteer teams' leaders: “Communication and organizational skills (COS),” the five-factor questionnaire “Big Five.” Using of these methods provided an opportunity to investigate the psychological characteristics of the team leaders, their communication and organizational skills. Also questionnaire for volunteer team leaders has been developed by us, which contained open questions aimed to study a team composition, the duration of team activity, the method and criteria for recruitment to the volunteer teams.

Conducted surveys of team leaders allowed finding out that only two of seven team leaders conducted the selection of participants in their teams and had certain criteria for it. These criteria were:

• Personal interest;

• Responsible and initiative;

• Communicative skills and creativity;

• The desire to work in a team; resoluteness;

* Restraint and endurance.

According to the using methods, we have got following results of team parameters (the results presented as a percentage of all investigational teams):

The absolute predominance of the average (49%) and low (47%) indicators of the socio-psychological climate;

Almost uniform distribution of group motivation indicators on three levels:

The group is insufficiently motivated (34.7%), sufficiently motivated (34.7), and positively motivated (37.2%);

The prevalence of high levels of team cohesion: the high level of cohesion (57.1%), above average (28.6%) and average level of cohesion (14.3%).

Indicators of personal component of team interaction characteristics were following: a low level of confidence observed in all teams, only one team had level indicator of confidence close to the average. Analysis of the research skills and personal features of leaders showed the following: 86% for managers had high levels of communicative and organizational skills, and 14% of respondents have an average level of communicative and organizational skills.

In a result of univariate analysis (method One-way ANOVA), we have found a statistically significant difference between the groups in indicators of motivation and group socio-psychological climate. Basing on the results of the team process characteristics and analyzing the results of the survey team leader, we can make several assumptions about the statistically significant differences in indicators of socio-psychological climate and group motivation of teams:

Personal features and skills of team leaders (at data analysis, we observed the same high levels of communicative and organizational skills, but the differences in personal features of team leaders);

The number of members (teams had a different number of members: from 3 to 15);

Volunteer's selection in the project teams (only two teams carried out a preliminary volunteers selection) the duration of teamwork (teams have different durations of joint activity: from 4 to 11 months).

At the end of this work with the help of the severity of investigated parameters, we can get a description of the factors that have influence on a team activity, and are important in volunteer teams management. In order to do this we applied factor analysis.

According to the results of factor analysis, we have allocated a group of components of the group process characteristics that affect the team functioning:

1. Interpersonal team relationships.

This factor describes the nature of the team member's interaction and the motivation of teamwork. It indicates that the tightness and stability of interpersonal relations, team interaction, common interests, values and attitudes in relation to the object and the subject of joint activities are important for functioning of volunteer teams. High factor load of interpersonal team relationships observed for following components: group motivation (0.849), team cohesion (0.829) and focus on interaction (0.623).

2. Self-actualization of team members.

This factor describes the opportunity of realization and development of personal skills and abilities of team members and creating an enabling environment for providing this process. Development of their creative and professional skills is one of the reasons for engaging in volunteer activity. Therefore, a decisive role in the functioning of volunteer teams is providing opportunities to satisfy their needs in the development, acquisition of knowledge and skills and other personal needs of team members.

High load of factor of self-actualization of a team members is observed to the following components: focus on themselves (0.869), focus on interaction (-0.759) and psychological climate (0.502). Therefore, even at a moderate level of psychological climate and lack of working orientation volunteers are ready to participate in a teamwork for self-actualization.

3. Achievement of team goals.

Another factor involves character of tasks implementation by a team members, focus on success in achieving team goals, satisfaction of the execution their responsibilities in the promoting team project. Acceptance of responsibility for the implementation of assigned tasks, and others actions plays an important role in teamwork. This adoption is based on an assessment of the others competences and their effectiveness. Therefore, establishing trust relationships of a team is defining indicator of teamwork. High load of a factor for team goals achievement is observed in the following components: focus on a task (0.922) and trust (0.726).

According to the results of factor analysis, we observe that the nature of interpersonal relations, common interests of team members, the opportunity to realize skills and potential are crucial at the organization of volunteer teamwork.