It's my business! The influence of psychological ownership on entrepreneurial intentions and work performance

Abstract

Extant scholarship on psychological ownership has primarily focused on the organizational benefits that come from fostering employees' feelings of ownership without having to relinquish ties to actual ownership. It is unclear, however, if feeling like an owner is sufficient to satisfy employees' aspirational ownership intentions. By applying self-verification theory to psychological ownership theory, we investigate how employees' psychological ownership influences their views about being a competent business owner, and the potential double-edged implications for organizations as a result of these self-views. Utilizing two separate studies, we find that psychological ownership is positively associated with entrepreneurial self-efficacy, which, in turn, is positively associated with both entrepreneurial intentions and work performance. Furthermore, results show that employees' past work performance strengthens the positive relationship between psychological ownership and entrepreneurial self-efficacy and the positive indirect relationship between psychological ownership and entrepreneurial intentions through entrepreneurial self-efficacy. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of fostering psychological ownership with current employees to glean the benefits and negate any potential drawbacks, such as high performers leaving the organization to start their own business.