Beyond Choice: ‘Thick’ Volunteering and the Case of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution

By Michelle O'Toole (Robert Gordon University) & Christopher Grey

We usually think of voluntary work as simply a matter of choice. But this detailed study of volunteers at the RNLI shows how it can be embedded in a dense web of social obligations such as family, community and history, with generations of families in particular communities serving in lifeboats. For the crews it is also about the bonds formed by this often very dangerous work, which can be emotionally charged when those rescued are their friends and relations. The paper proposes the concept of ‘thick volunteering’ to explain how voluntary work of this sort may be highly meaningful, and not reducible to individual altruism.

O'Toole, M., & Grey, C. (2015). Beyond Choice: 'Thick' Volunteering and the case of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Human Relations. (Forthcoming: in-press at time of this post)


Links: Open access version

Bringing Secrecy into the Open

By Jana Costas (Europa-Universität Viadrina) and Christopher Grey 

Every day in organizations people keep secrets, ranging from product and strategy plans to data protection to confidential gossip in corridors. In fact, it’s difficult to imagine an organization which has no secrets at all. And keeping secrets can have many effects, for example creating in-groups and out-groups in the workplace. Yet few people have tried to research this fascinating phenomenon. In this paper, we explain why secrecy is important and offer a framework for how to study it, distinguishing between formal and informal secrecy and showing how these affect identity and power relationships in organizations.

Costas, J. and Grey, C. (2014). Bringing Secrecy into the Open: Towards a Theorization of the Social Processes of Organizational Secrecy. Organization Studies 35(10): 1423-1447.
Links: Open access version; published article.