Why Psychological Ownership is not a Feeling or an Emotion

Abstract

The experience of psychological ownership (PO) is a phenomenon whereby individuals construe their work projects or organizations as “MINE” and become personally invested in them. This concept has become increasingly recognized as important because of its association with a variety of desirable work outcomes. Most management scholars, however, continue to describe psychological ownership as a type of feeling that one experiences toward a target. This paper argues that the identification of PO as a feeling is conceptually flawed. Leveraging recent work from contemporary analytic philosophy, the paper argues that PO’s phenomenology is such that it does not fit the model of being a feeling or an emotion. Instead, the paper proposes that PO is best conceptualized as a human attachment. The paper discusses the research and managerial implications of reconceptualizing PO in this way, including some needed modifications to the most widely-used PO scale.