A study of values and altruism amongst voluntary and paid workers of non government organizations

In present day work life saturated with individualistic values and cut throat competition, an investigation into the values of people indulging in some form of social service, voluntarily or as paid employees was deemed interesting. Hence, the major objective of the present study was to compare the voluntary and paid workers of various Non Government Organizations (NGOs) in terms of their values and altruism. 100 workers from various NGOs across Chandigarh, Panchkula and Jallandhar, willing to participate in the study were administered Value Survey (Rokeach, 1973) and Scale of Altruism (Kool & Sen, 1987). Results revealed significant differences in the value profiles of the two groups understudy. Though they agreed upon the end states of existence, but had differences in terms of their codes of conduct. Volunteers were found to be significantly more altruistic than their paid counterparts (t=2.77**). Significant correlations were also found between certain values and their altruistic tendencies. The study provides an insight into the underlying substrate of values and pro-social tendencies of people working in NGOs, actually meant to strive for social welfare.