Navigating Age Diversity in Volunteer Teams: Barriers and Enablers of Teamwork
通过德国世界商店的案例，研究识别了年龄多样化志愿者团队合作的三大障碍（抗拒变革、沟通偏好、权力动态）和三大促进因素（实验空间、保护空间、相遇空间），为管理者提供指导。
Despite demographic change leading to increased age diversity among volunteers, extant research offers limited guidance on how organizations can manage age-diverse volunteer teams. In this study, we delve into the dynamics of age diversity in a volunteer context by analyzing the case of German World Shops. We collected extensive ethnographic and interview data from age-diverse volunteer teams over a period of 2.5 years. In our analysis, we identified three overarching barriers to age-diverse teamwork—resistance to change and innovation, communication preferences, and power dynamics—and three enablers—creating space to experiment, ensuring protected spaces, and fostering spaces of encounter. In doing so, we contribute to the existing literature on diversity in volunteering and offer guidance for volunteer coordinators to foster collaboration and the build-up of relational capital among volunteers to create successful age-diverse volunteer teams. Moreover, this research opens avenues for further exploration into this emerging and critical phenomenon.