"Ours": Understanding Collective Psychological Ownership

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Organizational Behavior

Background:

• Limited theoretical development exists for collective psychological ownership ('ours') compared to personal ownership ('mine').
• Existing research lacks a cohesive framework to examine the multifaceted nature of collective ownership across diverse contexts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose the social identity perspective as a unifying theoretical framework for understanding collective psychological ownership.
• To highlight key implications of social identity theory for advancing collective ownership research.

Main Methods:

• This article presents a theoretical argument, drawing on social identity theory and self-categorization theory.
• It synthesizes existing literature to identify gaps and propose a new conceptual approach.

Main Results:

• The social identity perspective offers a coherent framework for examining collective psychological ownership.
• Key implications include the role of group self, ingroup consensus, sociotropic threat, group identification, and sociocultural context.

Conclusions:

• Social identity theory provides a robust foundation for theoretically integrating and empirically investigating collective psychological ownership.
• Future research should explore the proposed implications to deepen our understanding of 'ours' in various settings.