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Psychological Ownership

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Was Communism Doomed?

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Abstract

Working as if you owned the company might be difficult in a communist society where the state owns almost everything. But what does it mean to own something? Psychological research on psychological ownership, that is, the extent to which people have ownership feelings about objects or their work, indicates that these feelings probably are good to have in the workplace. This indication is backed up by finding that owner-operator farms are often more productive than collective or corporate farms, especially where the economies of scale have natural limits. In practice, a number of features of communist systems, such as their secrecy, probably reduced workers’ feelings of ownership and responsibility. Again, though, they could have done better.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Pierce and Jussila. Psychological ownership.

  2. 2.

    Parker et al. (1997).

  3. 3.

    Darley and Latane (1968).

  4. 4.

    Freeman et al. (1975); Miller and Rollnick, Motivational interviewing.

  5. 5.

    Bacon (1993), Clifford and Sherman (1975), Edling and Frelin (2013), Forsyth et al. (2002).

  6. 6.

    Baum (1991), Fuller et al. (2006), Thompson (2014).

  7. 7.

    Pierce and Jussila, Psychological ownership, p. 1.

  8. 8.

    Beaglehole, Property.

  9. 9.

    Pierce and Jussila, Psychological ownership, p. 19.

  10. 10.

    Brown et al. (2014), p. 332.

  11. 11.

    Belk (1988).

  12. 12.

    Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, pp. 343–361, 421–422.

  13. 13.

    Beaglehole, Property; Pierce and Jussila, Psychological ownership, pp. 38—49. It is no coincidence that these needs have a good deal of overlap with the different ways of extending the self suggested by Belk.

  14. 14.

    For example, Pierce and Jussila, Psychological ownership, pp. 53—54.

  15. 15.

    Hofstede et al., Cultures and organisations; Pierce and Jussila, Psychological ownership, Chap. 11.

  16. 16.

    Kahneman et al. (1990).

  17. 17.

    For example, Sayman and Öncüler (2005).

  18. 18.

    Pierce and Jussila, Psychological ownership, Chap. 5.

  19. 19.

    Brown et al. (2014), p. 332.

  20. 20.

    Brown et al. (2014).

  21. 21.

    Pierce and Jussila, Psychological ownership, pp. 133–137.

  22. 22.

    Brown et al. (2014).

  23. 23.

    Pierce and Jussila, Psychological ownership, pp. 137–152.

  24. 24.

    Dow, Governing the firm; Dow and Putterman (1999), Fitzroy and Kraft (2005); Hansmann, Ownership of enterprise, Smith (1991).

  25. 25.

    Dunford et al. (2009); Pierce and Jussila, Psychological ownership, pp. 172–175. Correlation coefficients are used to measure the strength of a relationship between two variables. There are different types of correlation coefficients, but the most common, and the only one used in this book, is the Pearson correlation coefficient, often written simply as r. Pearson correlations can range from −1 through 0 to +1. A positive r means that the two variables increase together, a negative r that as one variable increases the other decreases. A value of 0 means that the two variables are completely unrelated; values of −1 or +1 indicate perfect relationships. The bigger the number (+ or −), the stronger the relationship. In psychology and the social sciences correlations of 1 or −1 are very rare, as this would imply that the variables relate only to each other and not to any other variables. r = 0.10 indicates a weak relationship; r = .49 on the other hand indicates quite a strong relationship in social science.

  26. 26.

    Pierce and Jussila, Psychological ownership, pp. 175–182. Fraser and Kemp (2012).

  27. 27.

    Pierce and Jussila, Psychological ownership, Chap. 6, pp. 184–190.

  28. 28.

    Pierce and Jussila, Psychological ownership, Chaps. 6 and 9.

  29. 29.

    Ibid.

  30. 30.

    Staw (1976, 1981).

  31. 31.

    For example, Singer (1999).

  32. 32.

    Garland et al. (1990).

  33. 33.

    Pierce and Jussila, Psychological ownership, p. 187.

  34. 34.

    Of course, some individuals do own and fly their own jet aircraft, but they do not build or service them.

  35. 35.

    The Dairy NZ website (http://www.dairynz.co.nz/) houses much technical information. Useful publications include the New Zealand Dairy Statistics series published annually and available online, from the latest (2014–2015) of which the numbers in this paragraph are taken. See also Taylor et al. Smarter not harder.

  36. 36.

    Csaki and Tuck, Rural development strategy.

  37. 37.

    Hughes (2000); Lerman and Sutton, Productivity and efficiency of small and large farms in Moldova.

  38. 38.

    Gorton and Davidova, Farm productivity and efficiency in the CEE applicant countries.

  39. 39.

    Ünal, Small is beautiful; Grain, Hungry for land. But see also Fan and Chan-Kang (2005), who make the point that increased land yield does not necessarily imply commercial viability, particularly on very small farms.

  40. 40.

    Ahearn et al., The effect of contracting and consolidation on farm profitability.

  41. 41.

    New Zealand Dairy Statistics (2014–2015).

  42. 42.

    Taylor et al., Smarter not harder.

  43. 43.

    Ibid; New Zealand Dairy Statistics (2014–2015). A common variation is that a new sharemilker might own part but not all of the herd, and receive a lower proportion of the proceeds.

  44. 44.

    For example, Niemi and Weisberg, Controversies in voting behaviour.

  45. 45.

    Ho and Ali-Zade (2001), Rowland and Tlyukov (1991).

  46. 46.

    Eisenhardt (1989).

  47. 47.

    Sieger et al. (2013).

  48. 48.

    For example, Fundamentals, Chap. 22.

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  1. Dept of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Simon Kemp

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Kemp, S. (2016). Psychological Ownership. In: Was Communism Doomed?. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32780-8_8

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