Could International Volunteers Be Considered Ethical Consumers? A Cross-Discipline Approach to Understanding Motivations of Self-Initiated Expatriates

The dynamism inherent in a globalised world has changed the psychological contract between workers and employers (Smithson and Lewis, 2000). Under pressure to remain flexible, employers are less willing, and likely, to offer job security, vertical career advancement, or structured professional development for workers (e.g. Cappelli, 2006; Kalleberg, 2009). Individual workers, for their part, are being asked to take control of their own careers (DiRenzo and Greenhaus, 2011) and to underwrite their employability by developing their human, professional, and social capital (Smith, 2010). In the transnational labour market, these changes have led to a form of ‘career Darwinism’, where the commitment of globally mobile workers towards a particular organisation or community is tenuous, and international work assignments are instead viewed as the building blocks of self-directed and, one might argue, self-interested, global careers. Yet against this backdrop, and amidst a global financial downturn, growing numbers of workers from a multitude of professions and ages are choosing to undertake international volunteer placements, both within corporate volunteer programmes (e.g. Hills and Mahmud, 2007; Pless, Maak, and Stahl, 2011) and independently through international volunteer agencies (Randel, German, Cordiero, and Baker, 2004). On the surface, the decision to choose this unique form of self-initiated expatriate assignment seems counter-intuitive.