Reason to leave. A qualitative analysis of former staff members of non-governmental organizations in Poland

• In Event: Staffing challenges

Abstract

The existing research into civil society in Central and Eastern Europe, including Poland, mainly focused on analyzing the motives and modus operandi of the volunteers, workers and members of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). My research was born out of the need to fill the cognitive gap in the literature. The purpose of the research was to establish what causes the employees of NGOs to leave. The primary data source is 31 in-depth semi-structured interviews carried out from 2019 to 2022. I analyzed the obtained research material using the dichotomy of individual and supra-individual reasons that prompted the interviewees to leave NGOs as the interpretative framework. The paper studies the process of employees leaving well-funded organizations from big cities that were a place of work for relatively large teams, which organizations (and the leaders of NGOs in particular) were undergoing or facing the challenges of professionalization, commercialization, and governmentalization (Aberg 2013; Maier, Meyer and Steinbereithner 2016). Their leaving the organizations was most often a reaction to a conflict of values the interviewees perceived in the functioning of said organizations and a lack of coherence between the expectations the interviewees had as to the modus operandi and development of NGOs compared against the reality of working within these organizations (cf. Wearing, McGehee 2013). At the same time, working in non-governmental organizations was a personal formative experience for many interviewees. Despite perceiving the challenges and problems on the individual, organizational, and systemic levels, the interviewees also stressed the beneficial aspects of the non-governmental organizations' activities and their potential, both on the personal and broader societal levels. The paper's keynote is that the interviewees left the non-governmental organization due to individual reasons and organizational and systemic reasons coming together. Individual reasons for leaving NGOs included health problems, burnout, life changes in the careers of interviewees, conflicts and character differences, and feelings of underestimation and doubt. Of the organizational and systemic reasons, the central role was played by the leadership, management and decision-making methods, salary level and employment conditions, the culture of silence in the organization, and the tension between ethos expectations and the reality of work.

References

Åberg, P., (2013). Managing Expectations, Demands and Myths. Swedish Study Associations Caught Between Civil Society, the State and the Market. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations [online]. 24(3), 537–558. [Access: 14.10.2022]. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/42629826

Maier, F., Meyer, M. and Steinbereithner, M., (2016). Nonprofit organizations becoming business-like: A systematic review. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly [online]. 45(1), 64–86. [Access: 15.10.2022]. Available at: doi: 10.1177/0899764014561796

Wearing, S. and McGehee, N.G., (2013). Volunteer Tourism: A Review. Tourism Management, 38, 120-130. Available at: doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2013.03.002

Author

• Aleksandra Katarzyna Belina, University of Warsaw