Abstract
Orientation: Managing psychological ownership can have positive attitudinal and behavioural effects, promote organisational effectiveness and support talent retention.Research purpose: This paper seeks to explore and describe psychological ownership, distinguish it from other work-related attitudes and clarify the role that psychological ownership can play in retaining talent.Motivation for the study: Previous studies of human resource practices and organisational characteristics that affect organisational commitment and the retention of talent have reported that absent variables could be responsible for varied results. Psychological ownership could be one of them.Research design, approach and method: Based on a systematic review of the literature published over the last 20 years, the authors synthesised various research perspectives into a framework of psychological ownership and its links to retaining talent.Main findings: The authors found that psychological ownership was a comprehensive multidimensional construct. It is distinct from other work-related attitudes and seems capable of enabling organisations to retain the talents of skilled employees.Practical/managerial implications: Organisations can benefit from psychological ownership because it leads employees to feel responsible towards targets (like organisations) and to show stewardship. It can help organisations to retain talent and influence the intentions of skilled employees to remain with their organisations.Contribution/value-add: Psychological ownership, as an integrated multidimensional construct, has expanded the existing theory about the organisational commitment and work-related attitudes that organisations need to retain talent in the 21st century.
Highlights
Key focus of the studyPsychological ownership has recently received attention from many researchers
The present study aims, firstly, to explore the literature and describe psychological ownership and its defining elements, because the phenomenon has links with positive behavioural and social-psychological consequences
Long (1982) found a significant decrease in employee satisfaction following a conversion to employee ownership. These findings suggest that, if actual ownership remains unchanged between the two points of investigation, some mediating and/or extraneous variable other than ownership must be driving attitudinal change
Summary
Psychological ownership has recently received attention from many researchers They hypothesise that formal ownership can have positive attitudinal and behavioural effects through psychologically experienced ownership and that a psychological sense of ownership may form integral parts of employees’ relationships with their organisations. The present study aims, firstly, to explore the literature and describe psychological ownership and its defining elements, because the phenomenon has links with positive behavioural and social-psychological consequences. Human Capital at Deloitte conducted research amongst a wide range of companies across all industry sectors in South Africa and published it in The South African guide to executive remuneration and reward It showed that South African businesses lose up to 50% of their executives every four to five years (Rich stay comfortably rich, 2008). Increasing job mobility in the global knowledge economy, where employees average six employers in a career (O’Neal, 2005), exacerbate the retention challenge
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