关键词: 心理所有权, 内部人地位感知, 积极过往取向, 建言行为

Abstract: As a positive psychological resource, psychological ownership has long been emphasized in Chinese employees. Extant research has shed light on the effects of psychological ownership and receives adequate results. However, there is little research examining the factors inducing psychological ownership. Among the few researches addressing antecedents of psychological ownership, most scholars pay attention to a control-based view and contend that having control on the target contributes to the perception of psychological ownership. However, drawing on the roots of psychological ownership, having control on the target is not the exclusive route lead to psychological ownership. Instead, intimate knowing and investment to the target also serves to arouse the feeling of possession. Thus, the determinants of psychological ownership may far exceed the efficacious perceptions of controlling, to include also social exchange approach, which has been neglected in the previous literature. Social exchange theory asserts that providing a benefit to someone obligates the receiver to repay that benefit. Since the feeling of ownership is characterized as positive psychological resources, employees who perceive psychological ownership may treat it as an indicator of being organizational insiders. The enhanced perception of being insiders would thereby play the role of inducements and arouse employees’ obligation to reciprocate by investing efforts, which lead to the maintenance of psychological ownership. It is thus possible to contend that psychological ownership may conserve overtime, at least in part because the feeling of ownership elicits employees’ perceived insider status. In addition, driven by the sense of responsibility accompanying feelings of possesion, psychological ownership may induce employees to feel obligated and repay such a positive perception by offering discretionary and constructive behaviors intended to improve the situation. It is thus rational to suggest that when employees feel ownership towards their organization, they are highly possible to reciprocate by exhibiting voice behaviors. In addition to the mediating mechanism of psychological ownership, we also explore the boundary condition under which the mechanism occurs by investigating the moderating role of past-positive time orientation. As individuals with high past-positive time orientation tend to attribute their past experience as positive and glowing, they are more likely to attach importance to the benefits provided by organizations, and are thus more sensitive when perceiving positive perceptions. Therefore, the effect of psychological ownership on perceived insider status may be exaggerated among past-positive time orientated individuals. Using a sample including 467 employees and 103 supervisors, we adopted a 2-wave lagged design to examine the relationships among psychological ownership, perceived insider status, past-positive time orientation, and voice. Our findings indicated that psychological ownership is positively related to time 1-perceived insider status, perceived insider status is positively related to time 2-psychological ownership, and time 2-psychological ownership is positively related to voice. In addition, perceived insider status and time 2-psychological ownership sequentially mediate the relationship between time 1-psychological ownership and voice. Moreover, we also found a moderating effect of past-positive time orientation on the relationship between psychological ownership and perceived insider status. The theoretical and managerial implications of these results are discussed. We also discuss the strengths, limitations, and future directions for this study.

Key words: psychological ownership, perceived insider status, past-positive time orientation, voice