Marlene Walk, PhD
About Me
I am a nonprofit management scholar focussing on human resource management and organizational change. I am a faculty member at the School of Economics and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Freiburg (Germany). Prior to that, I was an associate professor at the Paul H. O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, Indianapolis (USA).
I earned my PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. Before that, I completed a Master of Arts in Nonprofit Management (University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück, Germany) and a Diplom in Social Work (University of Applied Sciences Hildesheim, Germany).
Below are a few projects I am currently working on. A full CV can be found here.
[and yes, this is me with coffee, which I like very much]
COVID-19 and nonprofit workers
The workers' experience in the context of COVID-19 is another focus of this project. Supported by the RGK-ARNOVA 2020 Presitens' Award, we conducted a mixed methods study. What did we find? Nonprofit workers
framed the pandemic as a critical incident that resulted in sensemaking processes
reported their sector commitment was impacted by COVID-19-related organizational change
Nonprofit Sector Commitment
This project investigates nonprofit sector commitment, defined as the strength of an individual's identification with and involvement in the nonprofit sector.
So far, we know that sector commitment
may change over time
may be impacted by the financial burden that workers have from their graduate studies
may be impacted by extrinsic work expectations
Nonprofit Recruiters
We recently became interested in the role of nonprofit recruiters and just released a report focussing on who works in this space and the characteristics of recruitment firms.
Change among Community Foundations
This collaborative project studies change among community foundations. Specifically, we ask: how do community foundations move towards community leadership and justice philanthropy?
We are in the midst of data collection, but here is an early article that frames the justice philanthropy work as well as a qualitative mixed methods study that focuses on community leadership.
Interested in how community foundations helped during the pandemic? We have an early piece and a recently released study in this space.
Human Resource Management and Volunteering
This project investigates how volunteers perceive HR practices, which HR practices work to increase volunteer retention, and how volunteers react to organizational change (work in progress).
I am also interested in how volunteers perceive their volunteer work more broadly. For instance, I recently completed a study focusing on volunteer job crafting and how this relates to organizational identification and satisfaction. Related, I have been studying formal and informal volunteering behavior of immigrants, especially in the German context.
