Psychological ownership in family business in the light of social identity theory

Having a sense of connection to tangible and intangible possessions is an innate tendency for most of people. In this point, psychological ownership acts as a predictor of human behaviour in organziational settings and has received increasing popularity from organization scholars. Infact, feelings of psychological ownership over a target are mostly nourished from the concepts of belongingness, self-efficacy, and self-identity. And it is an innate tendency and ensure organizational members to see their organizations as a part of their extended self. Having a sense of psychological ownership makes people more attached the target of possession and contributes to positive organizational outputs. It promote feelings of responsibility towards possession and often results in being highly caring, protective, and nurturing regarding the targets of ownership. In this study we focused on family businesses and effects of psychological ownership on organizational outputs and role of social identity in these effects. Due to the fact that in this kind of companies sharing legal ownership and being a member of the founder family bind people together in a common goal to which the target of possession is connected, and this situation in turn contributes to strong commitment to the family business and considerable levels of psychological ownership, that can be considered as one of the most important advantage of family firms over