The indirect effect of autonomy on job satisfaction through collective psychological ownership: the case of social workers in China

Xuebing Su, Victor Wong, Kun Liang*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This study used a nationally representative random sample of social workers (N = 3896) collected from a cross-sectional study of the First Wave of the China Social Work Longitudinal Study in 2019. This study examined the indirect effect of autonomy on job satisfaction through the mechanism of collective psychological ownership (CPO) characterized by sharedness. The results showed that autonomy had a positive association with CPO, and that CPO had a positive association with job satisfaction. The results also revealed that autonomy influenced job satisfaction indirectly through the psychological mechanism of CPO. The discussion of findings provides insights into the research and practice of a less-territorial notion of collective psychological ownership theory. The findings will inspire organizational management in terms of enhancing the job satisfaction of social workers through strengthening their autonomy and CPO. The existing territorial notion of psychological ownership (PO) has shown its negative outcomes such as groupthink and resistance to sharing and changes in organizational contexts. Emphasizing the importance of sharedness, CPO embodying two specific factors, namely, shared decision-making and shared hardship endurance, is an emerging concept in organizational management. This is the first study examining the impact of a less-territorial notion of CPO in organizational contexts with a nationally representative sample.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)8805–8815
Number of pages11
JournalCurrent Psychology
Volume42
Issue number11
Early online date10 Aug 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2023

Scopus Subject Areas

  • Psychology(all)

User-Defined Keywords

  • Autonomy
  • Collective psychological ownership
  • Job satisfaction
  • Sharedness
  • Social worker

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