Date of Award

2021-05-01

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Business Administration

Advisor(s)

Richard A. Posthuma

Abstract

Psychological ownership describes an individual’s state of mind which allows the individual to experience ownership feelings for a target regardless of legal ownership rights. This state of mind has been linked to various antecedents (e.g., participation, organizational justice perceptions) and consequences (e.g., job satisfaction, organizational citizenship behavior). Yet, after 30 years of research, psychological ownership theory in the organizational context is still in an emerging stage and lacks a structured approach. Therefore, I perform two structured reviews of psychological ownership theory presented in two essays. Essay 1 draws a bibliometric map of the literature on psychological ownership theory with an emphasis on co-authorship networks, citation networks, and keyword co-occurrence networks, and their respective development over the past 30 years. Essay 2 reviews the nomological network of psychological ownership theory, using various meta-analytic techniques. The meta-analyses explain how a climate for psychological ownership can be created in organizations, and whether the overall effect of employees’ psychological ownership is positive or negative for organizations. Additionally, the boundary conditions of psychological ownership theory are examined. Relevant boundary conditions include the conceptualization, target, and measurement of psychological ownership, as well as common method bias, sample characteristics, and publication features. Implications for theory and practice are derived from the findings of both essays. The essays facilitate and promote scholarship on psychological ownership theory and demonstrate the value of this theory to practitioners.

Language

en

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Size

139 p.

File Format

application/pdf

Rights Holder

Franziska M. Renz

Available for download on Saturday, May 31, 2025

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