%0 Journal Article
%T Fostering Cohesion in Volunteer Teams: Leadership Processes in Nonprofit Sport Organizations
%A Daniel Fischer
%A Laura Meier
%A Thomas Braun
%A Stefan Koch
%A Felix Roth
%J Annals of Organizational Culture, Leadership and External Engagement Journal
%@ 3108-4176
%D 2025
%V 6
%N 2
%R 10.51847/azJFLI9Vhz
%P 86-93
%X This study addresses a persistent difficulty faced by many organizational leaders: how to build and sustain workforce cohesion. By situating the investigation within sports club volunteering, it examines how leaders can strengthen cohesion among volunteer groups. The outcomes offer insights that extend beyond this context and can be applied in a variety of organizational environments. A multilevel research design was employed to examine how autonomy-supportive and structuring leadership practices influence social and task cohesion at the group level in volunteer teams. The sample consisted of 557 volunteers embedded within 52 nonprofit sports clubs in the Flemish region of Belgium, providing a solid empirical foundation for the analysis. The results show that regular volunteers function as “true groups”, characterized by notable differences between groups in social and task cohesion, alongside strong agreement within groups. In addition, autonomy-supportive leadership emerged as a key predictor of cohesion, positively associating with both social and task cohesion at the group level. The study highlights that volunteer teams, like paid teams in for-profit organizations, actively engage in interpersonal exchanges that foster a shared sense of unity and goal alignment. Such interactions can be strengthened when leaders cultivate an autonomy-supportive climate in which individuals feel confident to express opinions and contribute ideas. The findings further suggest that leadership effectiveness is contingent on both task demands and contextual conditions, with structuring behaviors also playing a meaningful role. These insights enable leaders across different organizational settings to support the development of cohesive groups more effectively.
%U https://apsshs.com/article/fostering-cohesion-in-volunteer-teams-leadership-processes-in-nonprofit-sport-organizations-i7ee9fc2xlt3knm