Employee perception of dialectical tensions in company supported employee volunteerism

Existing research seems to suggest that contradictions may exist when implementing company support for employee volunteerism (CSEV). However, a full understanding of potentially existing contradictions on the matter is yet to be achieved. Attempting to fill in this research gap, this study adopts a tensional perspective to explore dialectics in employees’ perception of CSEV. Drawing on a qualitatively-informed study conducted in a Hong Kong company that performed practices of employee engagement in volunteering, this work found that employees perceived engagement-disengagement and openness-closedness tensions. The perception of these tensions was affected by organizational (work arrangements and communication climate), individual (sense of belonging and understanding of visibility), and relational (manager and co-worker potential responses/expectations) factors. This study contributes to research of employee volunteering by providing a tensional perspective, highlights the importance of considering different levels of factors in investigating tensions’ perception, and has implications for dialectical tension research and practice.