Chapter 19. The Volunteer Paradigm

Drucker spent the last fifteen to twenty years of his life focused on nonprofit organizations, many of which had more volunteers than paid employees. From his experience with these organizations and their members, he formulated a concept that he articulated in Management Challenges for the Twenty-First Century, where he stated that full-time employees must be managed as if they were volunteers.

This may have been based on his observation of nonprofit organizations where paid workers and volunteers were treated identically. He reasoned that the workplace, even in non-volunteer-staffed corporations, had changed to such an extent that a complete makeover in how workers were treated and motivated was needed. He noted ...

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