Psychological Ownership Analysis

In psychology, ownership is the feeling that something is yours. People can feel ownership about a variety of things, material and immaterial in nature. Is there a way organizations can benefit from higher employee engagement, increased financial performance and lower turnover, by increasing feelings of ownership? In mid 1970s, the USA carried out the Employee Stock Ownership Plans. The thought behind this project was that if employees held some shares of the company, it would enhance their sense of responsibility toward the enterprise and activate positive attitudes toward the work. Interestingly, researchers found that there were no significant differences in organizational performance between an enterprise which adopted these plans, and …show more content…
For example, in a scenario where sharing information may lead to change and improvement within a company, a manager prone to promotive psychological ownership with a successfully completed project may decide to share information "he owns" with a team in a different division of the company because he sees improvement in the company as personally fulfilling. In contrast, those with a more preventive focus may withhold information from others, as mentioned earlier, because they seek to avoid change. Although preventive psychological ownership leads to potentially negative outcomes, it is also possible that it may promote positive organizational outcomes. For example, it may lead to increased performance, if individuals truly believe they are doing the right thing. (Avey, Avolio, Crossley & Luthans …show more content…
I mentioned some positive consequences of this psychological state, such as job satisfaction, as well as some negative, such as knowledge hiding. I examined how academic literature explains the rise of this psychological state, such as the three interrelated routes: “exercised control over the object, coming to intimately know the object, and/or investment of the self into the object”. This essay has shown that there are shortcomings in research on how to promote psychological ownership, however I have looked at some possible ways Human Resource Management can promote ownership in the work setting. I argued that managers should stress overall shared ownership, rather than individual feelings of possession for certain targets. I suggest Human Resource Management promotes job enrichment, as I found that the more an individual personally invests or commits, and the higher levels of personal control, the stronger the feeling of psychological ownership. An organization should consider the style of leadership, as I argued that authentic leadership positively influenced promotive psychological ownership. This essay has also shown that the role of Human Resource Management in job designing is crucial. They need to pay attention to the core job characteristics such as task identity, task significance and autonomy. Through these they can create “routes” to psychological ownership, which