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Summary
An increasing number of scholars and practitioners have emphasized the importance of 'feelings of ownership' for the organization (even when employees are not legal owners). In this exploratory study, we examine the relationships of psychological ownership with work attitudes and work behaviors. We start by developing hypotheses based on the psychology of possession and psychological ownership literatures. We then test these hypotheses with data from three field samples, using responses from over 800 employees, as well as manager and peer observations of employee behavior. Results demonstrate positive links between psychological ownership for the organization and employee attitudes (organizational commitment, job satisfaction, organization-based self-esteem), and work behavior (performance and organizational citizenship). More important, psychological ownership increased explained variance in organization-based self-esteem and organizational citizenship behavior (both peer and supervisor observations of citizenship), over and above the effects of job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Contrary to prior theoretical work on psychological ownership, results, however, fail to show an incremental value of psychological ownership in predicting employee performance. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Introduction
The idea of psychological ownership for the organization (i.e., the possessive feeling that some object is 'MINE' or 'OURS') has received increasing attention from scholars and practitioners as a potentially important predictor of employee attitudes and behaviors (Brown, 1989; Dirks, Cummings, & Pierce, 1996; Peters, 1988; Pierce, Rubenfeld, & Morgan, 1991; Pierce, Kostova, & Dirks, 2001; VandeWalle, Van Dyne, & Kostova, 1995). Psychological ownership is the psychologically experienced phenomenon in which an employee develops possessive feelings for the target.
An extensive amount of research in a wide variety of fields (child development, geography, philosophy, gerontology, psychology, law, and consumer behavior) emphasizes the importance of possessions and ownership in influencing human attitudes, motivation, and behavior. For example, scholars have addressed legal and psychological perspectives on ownership (cf. Etzioni, 1991; James 1890/1950/1963) and links to self-identity, self-adjustment, and well-being (cf. Kasser & Ryan, 1993) as well as ownership of tangible (e.g., home, toys) and intangible (e.g., ideas) objects (Isaacs, 1933; Rochberg-Halton, 1980). In the management literature, scholars (cf. Rousseau & Shperling, 2003; Tannenbaum, 1983) have addressed the role of formal organizational ownership arrangements (e.g., cooperatives and employee stock ownership plans), as well as the role of psychological ownership (Dirks et al.,...