Events such as pandemics, natural disasters, and other social issues reveal societies’ increasing reliance on voluntary unpaid workers. However, there is a decline in people’s willingness to volunteer with established organisations. While management research has shown that leadership plays a major role in motivating and retaining paid employees, further investigation is needed to understand how leadership motivates volunteers. This paper integrates leadership literature into a widely adopted volunteer motivation model through a narrative review, aiming to distil precise leader behaviours that could be used to fulfil or trigger people’s motivation to perform unpaid work. Our goal is to draw clear conceptual links between the different facets of leader behaviours and volunteer motivation and highlight the role of leadership in triggering and fulfilling volunteer motivation and therefore sustaining vital volunteer workforces. Limitations of our chosen approach, implications, and future research directions are discussed.

流行病、自然灾害和其他社会问题等事件揭示了社会对自愿无薪工人的日益依赖。然而，人们在现有组织中担任志愿者的意愿有所下降。虽然管理研究表明领导力在激励和留住带薪员工方面发挥着重要作用，但仍需要进一步调查以了解领导力如何激励志愿者。本文通过叙述性回顾将领导力文献整合到广泛采用的志愿者激励模型中，旨在提炼出精确的领导者行为，可用于实现或触发人们从事无偿工作的动机。我们的目标是在领导者行为和志愿者动机的不同方面之间建立清晰的概念联系，并强调领导力在触发和实现志愿者动机以及维持重要的志愿者队伍方面的作用。讨论了我们选择的方法的局限性、影响和未来的研究方向。