Conceptual frameworks in research and practice

¶ … collecting food packages for homeless centers. One of the volunteers explains that usually the government helps out, but they need additional resources. People are good, they want to help. He and his cohort of volunteers are relying on voluntary donations.

Another points to the need in the area for food, whilst another empathizes the wonderful work of the volunteers who are " actually assembling these after-school packs that get distributed to the school programs. And as soon as those packs get assembled today, they will be leaving out here next week. ."

Volunteers extol the wonderful feeling that the work give them. Organizers commend volunteers. Recipients of packages talk about the significance that the packages gave to their lives. They also praise other organizations / programs that help them and articulate their conception that giving out food extends to far more: it also involves giving out hope.

More than one framework seems to be used here, but predominantly I think this is the Human Resource framework where the leader is empowering his staff. The leader in the transcript thinks that feeding residents of a homeless shelter is great. It makes society a better place to live in:

I think being a human services professional is a really dynamic vocation, I think it ties you to all the parts that are good about the profit-making business world that we live in gives you a sense to dig a little deeper and take into account others and the importance of others and making society a better place for everybody to live.

The spokespeople emphasize the marvelous work of their volunteers, how they contributed to reducing the problem:

At that point, we ran a house of shelter for women and the language at that point was domestic, was not domestic violence but battered women, so we were one of the first kind of houses of hospitality to take in people that had suffered domestic violence. And one of the ways that we fed our -- fed our people, we had heard from other people that were running these kind of communities that there was a lot of waste at the local grocery store dumpsters. So, frankly, we had a rotation where we would check out the dumpsters. ..

Excerpts from the transcript may also be seen as representing the symbolic framework where leaders under this framework are inspirational and visionary. As for instance, when the man says:

I've always been interested in a vocation that is more than just a paycheck and has something after you're done with it that you feel like you've accomplished something -- made life easier or better for other people.

More so, we see this emphasized later with the paragraph:

I've to the notion of that human beings can often behave in really terrible ways and selfish ways. But I also have this notion that they also have a hungering and a longing to want to the opposite. They want to do good. I think that's why people come here and volunteer, I think that's why food companies give us product. I think that's why agencies want to get that food and give it to people -- people have a basic longing and hunger to want to care for others.

The idealism of the Symbolic frame is reinforced by the sentiment of the last sentence:

we're not just about the business of giving food to satisfy the people's physical needs. You know, it's a real clear sense of when we give out food, were giving out hope (Bolman & Deal (*) .

This is the participative / democratic leadership style where all are equally involved in effecting change and where the leader makes his team of volunteers feel that all are equally significant in leading the organization. All too, a re equally involved in the decision making process, as in all aspects of the organization, although the leader is the one who makes the final decision. (Leadership Styles; online ).