In 2017, about 30% of all U.S. adults volunteered for a total of 6.9 billion hours. This raises the question, why do so many people volunteer? Extant research has produced highly variable estimates of the effect sizes of various motivating factors, and there has been little to no research on potential moderators (i.e., study-level covariates that might strengthen or weaken the main effect of volunteer motives). We meta-analyzed 61 studies ( N = 38,327) to estimate the effect sizes of six volunteer motivators (Volunteer Functions Inventory [VFI]; Clary et al., 1998) in predicting outcomes (satisfaction, commitment, intention to continue, and frequency). Results demonstrate that all six motivators significantly predicted the three outcome variables ([ ] ranging from .12 to .44). Values was the strongest predictor by far, based on the largest effect size and a post hoc relative importance analysis. Moderator analyses indicated some differences in effect sizes across gender and student status; there were few differences across geographic location, race-ethnicity, college degree attainment, and employment status. Implications for volunteer managers and organizations on how to best work with volunteers are described.

Much ink has been spilled on the scientist–practitioner gap, that is, the apparent divide between knowledge published in academic peer-reviewed journals and the actual business practices employed in modern organizations. Most prior papers have advanced meaningful theories on why the gap exists, ranging from poor communication skills on the part of academics to paywalls and other obstacles preventing the public from accessing research in industrial-organizational psychology (I-O). However, very few papers on the scientist–practitioner gap have taken an empirical approach to better understand why the gap exists and what can be done about it. In our focal article, we specifically discuss the gap as it pertains to small businesses and present empirical data on the topic. Drawing from our experiences working with and in small businesses before entering a PhD program, we suggest that a primary reason for the existence of this gap is the differences between large and small businesses, and we advance two theory-driven reasons for why this is the case. Next, we compiled abstracts and practical implications sections from articles published in top I-O journals in the past 5 years, then we collected ratings and open-ended text responses from subject matter experts (i.e., small business owners and managers) in reaction to reading these sections. We close by recommending several potential perspectives, both for and against our arguments, that peer commentators can take in their responses to our focal article.

Recently, positive psychology has focused on measuring and improving college student well-being as a means of combatting growing concerns over student well-being (e.g., rising mental health challenges). Moreover, student well-being should be considered holistically, incorporating a range of measures beyond subjective well-being (SWB) to include aspects of relationships, purpose, and grit. In the present study, we use a novel holistic measure of student well-being, applied to two large samples of students to test its psychometric properties and assess predictive validity of academic and behavioral outcomes (e.g., grades, attendance at courses, student organization involvement). Well-being modestly predicted grades, course attendance, time spent in academic buildings, and student organization involvement. Relative importance analysis found that the grit theme in the well-being measure was the most important, followed by positive and negative SWB.

In the past two decades, there has been growing interest in workplace spirituality, why it matters, and how it impacts organizational outcomes. We examined how workplace spirituality interacts with elements of workplace teams (i.e., leadership and the surrounding organizational context) to impact important individual- and team- level outcomes. Using a sample of 331 full-time employees plus an additional 293 team member peers, we used a newly developed workplace spirituality measure, The Integration Profile (Miller et al., 2019), to predict organizational commitment and collective efficacy, with ethical leadership and openness of faith environment as moderators. Findings demonstrated the importance of workplace spirituality for organizational commitment, along with significant moderators of ethical leadership and openness of faith environment. We also report exploratory analysis of the factor structure of the workplace spirituality measure, concluding that most of the construct is driven by a global factor as opposed to the theorized eight first-order dimensions.