An investigation into the correlates of collective psychological ownership in organizational context

Abstract

Collective psychological ownership (CPO) refers to a collective sense shared by co-workers that they jointly own the organization. It is an emerging research topic in team work experience. Existing literature on CPO is mostly at theoretical construction level. Empirical work to investigate correlates of CPO is lacking. The current study aimed at investigating the variables correlated with CPO in organizational contexts. T-test and ANOVA revealed that there was significant difference in CPO scores for the groups in the following variables: gender, education level, organizational size, job position, and monthly income. Pearson correlations revealed significant positive associations between CPO and the following variables: family economic status, job tenure, hours of work per week, job demands, job resources, membership identification, and work engagement. Multiple regression analyses revealed that family income was significant in all tested models, while job resources and membership identification were the two variables which contributed the most additional R square to the models to predict CPO. Findings of the current study provided insights on further studies on the antecedents and consequences of CPO in organizational contexts. Keywords: Collective psychological ownership; job demands-resources; membership identification; correlates; social service workers