Role of psychological ownership in job crafting, work engagement, and counterproductive behavior

This study advances the understanding of job crafting by examining its effect on different dimensions of employee outcome facets, such as work engagement and counterproductive work behavior. Drawing on the self-determination theory, we theorize and test how job crafting predicts different facets of employee outcomes through feelings of psychological ownership. Data were collected in several rounds over two time spans from 286 full-time employees in Taiwan. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. The results show that job crafting is positively related to psychological ownership. In addition, psychological ownership positively predicts work engagement and is negatively associated with counterproductive work behaviors.