“Dark” student volunteers: commitment, motivation, and leadership

Jennifer Chelsea Veres · Nathan Eva · Andrew Cavanagh

32 citations0/0 files storedPersonnel Review

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior Nonprofit Sector and Volunteering Personality Traits and Psychology

Abstract

Purpose Drawing from the cognitive evaluation theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between student volunteers’ narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy, and commitment to university volunteer programmes through the mediating mechanisms of self-orientation and pro-social motivation. Further, it investigates the roll of servant leadership in mitigating these personality types and encouraging student volunteers to become more pro-socially motivated. Design/methodology/approach The study uses data collected via questionnaire from 156 student volunteers across Australia. Hypothesis testing was conducted using ordinary least squares regression with the path-analytic conditional process modelling (PROCESS) macro for SPSS. Findings The study’s analysis indicated that self-orientated motivation mediated the relationship between narcissism and normative commitment, and pro-social motivation mediated the relationship between both Machiavellianism and psychopathy, and affective commitment. Further, servant leadership was found to moderate the relationship between both Machiavellianism and psychopathy, and pro-social motivation, such that the negative relationship became weaker under a servant leader. These findings suggest that servant leaders play a significant role in encouraging “dark” personalities to see the light. Originality/value This research is the first to examine the use of the Dark Triad in a student volunteering context. It extends the cognitive evaluation theory by revealing that extrinsic (in contrast to intrinsic) motivations are “crowded out” as intrinsic (in contrast to extrinsic) motivations develop within individuals. The study also refines the social learning theory, by examining the influences of “positive” leadership attributes (servant leadership) on “darker” (Dark Triad) personalities.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 32 citations exist upstream.

References

2003Common method biases in behavioral research: A critical review of the literature and recommended remedies.1990The measurement and antecedents of affective, continuance and normative commitment to the organization 2002Affective, Continuance, and Normative Commitment to the Organization: A Meta-analysis of Antecedents, Correlates, and Consequences 2002The Dark Triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy 1986Organizational commitment and psychological attachment: The effects of compliance, identification, and internalization on prosocial behavior.1996Affective, Continuance, and Normative Commitment to the Organization: An Examination of Construct Validity 1998Understanding and assessing the motivations of volunteers: A functional approach.2010The dirty dozen: A concise measure of the dark triad.

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.