Volunteer Involvement and Organizational Performance: The Use of Volunteer Officers in Public Safety

摘要

Scholars have discussed how volunteer involvement in public organizations may expand the capacity of existing personnel to improve service levels. However, few studies have explored the extent to which such benefits are realized across large, representative samples of public organizations. Using data from a national survey of law enforcement agencies within the United States, this article examines the relationship between volunteer officers and organizational performance. The notion of critical mass leads to the expectation that organizations must involve a large enough share of volunteers to generate a significant impact on performance. The findings reveal that an increase in volunteers is positively associated with clearing violent crimes, while the relationship turns negative beyond a threshold. For property crime clearance, the relationship is negatively associated with performance until the proportion of volunteers reaches a critical mass, in which the relationship turns positive. Overall, the results provide evidence for the role that critical mass plays in terms of explaining the contribution of volunteers to performance.