The Impact of Information Ownership and Psychological Context on Employee Information Sharing Motivation

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to define a model to examine information sharing behaviour from a psychological ownership perspective in an organisation. The importance of psychological ownership is emphasised in various researches as the cause of the attitude and behaviour of individuals within an organisation, and many researchers have developed and expanded the concept of psychological ownership. Despite its importance, research that examines information sharing behaviour from a psychological ownership perspective is lacking, and the results of each research show conflicting positive and negative results. In order to explain such results, this study examined the concept of psychological ownership by subdividing it into intuition-based information ownership (IBIO) and reasoning-based information ownership (RBIO) based on the prospect theory (PT). Also using the structural equation model, we examined and verified the types of information factors (cost, profits, expertise and hobbies) as leading factors. The main findings have confirmed that IBIO and RBIO have a significant related effect (i.e. the positive effect, however, RBIO has a negative effect on enjoying helping others) on information sharing motivations (reputation, controlling, enjoying helping others and reciprocity). This study supports and expands the theories of psychological ownership and information sharing to aid in the understanding of information sharing within an organisation, and provides practical insights into situations of conflicts of interest regarding information sharing.