Eliciting Psychological Ownership of Object by Marking Organizational Name: The Role of Belongingness.

Psychological ownership critically entails the need for home (a place in which to dwell or a place of belongingness). However, the question of how an individual's need for belongingness within an organization affects their psychological ownership of organization-linked objects remains unexplored. We first conducted a behavioral study to determine whether psychological ownership of object can be elicited by marking the object with the name of the subjects' organization. The participants in this behavioral study reported a higher level of psychological ownership when objects were marked with their own organization's name (i.e., in-organization objects) compared with objects marked with another organization's name (i.e., out-organization objects). Importantly, this effect was more pronounced among subjects who experienced a stronger sense of organizational belongingness. We subsequently conducted a second study to explore its underlying neural mechanism. Our findings indicated that participants with a higher level of perceived organizational belongingness exhibited a significantly larger amplitude of the P300 component of event-related potential in response to in-organization objects compared with their response to out-organization objects. However, no significant difference in the P300 component was found for participants who lacked a sense of organizational belongingness.

Development and validation of the Japanese version of organization-based self-esteem scale.

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to validate a Japanese version of the organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) scale, a positive self-concept that has been proven to play an important role in predicting employees' work attitudes and behaviors primarily in a Western organizational setting. METHODS: Two independent field studies, Study One and Study Two, involving 1,562 Japanese employees from a variety of organizations were conducted by employing a web-based questionnaire. RESULTS: In Study One, initial evidence for the factorial validity of an eight-item, single factor scale, with high internal consistency (0.93 and 0.88 for Sample 1 and Sample 2, respectively) and test-retest reliability (r=0.84) was provided. In Study Two, the eight-factor structure was replicated and multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) demonstrated measurement invariance across two samples. In addition, a series of CFA demonstrated that the Japanese OBSE is a distinct construct from global self-esteem, job complexity and work engagement. Furthermore, the nomological validity evidence was demonstrated through structural equation modeling. CONCLUSIONS: The Japanese OBSE scale is presented as a psychometrically sound measure that can contribute to furthering substantive OBSE research.

Work environment structure and psychological ownership: the mediating effects of control.

Current theorists on the psychology of possession highlight control as an important route in the development of feelings of ownership. In the present article, the authors hypothesized that the extent to which individuals experience control over their job and work environment is positively associated with feelings of ownership for their job and the organization. The authors used supervisory report data on work environment structure and self-reports on experienced control and psychological ownership to test for the mediating effects of experienced control in the relationship between the work environment structure and psychological ownership. The authors found that experienced control mediates the relationship between 3 sources of work environment structure--technology, autonomy, and participative decision making--and psychological ownership of the job and (to a lesser extent) the organization. The authors proposed implications of the findings and directions of further research.