Psychological Ownership

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.

By: LINN VAN DYNE & JON L. PIERCE