Why volunteer? : a case study of volunteers in the FIS Nordic World Ski Championship 2011 Oslo, Holmenkollen

This thesis is a case study conducted on the volunteers in the FIS Nordic World Ski Championship 2011 in Oslo, Holmenkollen. The focus has been to study why the volunteers are motivated. I have investigated this through these following four research questions; (1) How does the volunteer’s degree of motivation develop during the WSC 2011?, (2) What motivates people to work as volunteers?, (3) How does volunteers feel about themselves? and (4) How will the volunteer’s expectations correlate with their actual experience? The literature review chapter presents leadership and motivational theory associated with voluntary work. The thesis method is a qualitative case study. The data collection are based participate-observer role, in depth interviews with five volunteers and data from parts of NIH’s survey after the WSC 2011 with the same volunteers responding. The results of this study are the following. In research question 1 the result are a variation in the respondents’ motivation intensity during the WSC 2011. Before the event the motivation degree for the volunteers was medium high, during the event the degree increased to high and after the event the motivation degree decreased a bit to high-medium. In research question 2 the result are mostly different social reasons. All of Mitroff’s four perspectives are represented in the volunteers’ arguments, but the social reasons are mentioned most frequently. In research question 3 the results are that the volunteers feel better about themselves and had an increase in their self-esteem. In research question 4 the results are that the volunteer’s expectations correlate well with their actual experience