Measurement and comparison of psychological ownership in public and private service organizations

Abstract

Increasing research has revealed that organizational members possessing feelings of psychological ownership over their organizations experience more positive work related attitudes and contribute more to their organizations. The aim of the present study is to investigate and compare psychological ownership between the employees of public and private service organizations. Specifically, we examined the five foundations of psychological ownership, i.e. territoriality, self-efficacy, accountability, sense of belongingness and self-identity. We proposed hypotheses about differences of psychological ownership in public and private organizations based on theories of organizational behavior and observations. And we employed a survey approach with the Psychological Ownership Questionnaire (POQ) to empirically evaluate these hypotheses in aerospace organizations of Pakistan. The differences have been assessed, private organization employees having a higher sense of psychological ownership. The reasons for this difference and the impact on performance is discussed at the end. Managers aspiring to bring out the best in their employees can infer interesting ideas from our research.