Research suggests nurse work environment is a critical component of good nursing care leading to better job satisfaction, lower burnout, less turnover, and improved patient morbidity and mortality (Kutney-Lee et al., 2015). Work structures and processes that increase control, empowerment, autonomy, decision making, good working relations, and supportive leadership are identified as crucial to these outcomes (Aiken et al., 2012). As pervasive as these concepts are in nursing research, recent systematic reviews find inconclusive effects of nurse work environment on both patient and nurse outcomes (Bae, 2011; Dariel, Petit, & Regnaux, 2015; Lu, Barriball, Zhang, & While, 2012). Critical analysis suggests that a bivariate approach to such a complex situation may be too simplistic, and causal mechanisms such as moderators that play a key role in the relationship should be considered (Bae, 2011; Norman, 2013).
Psychological Ownership is a concept that describes how work environment psychologically influences the worker, and may provide a mechanism for this connection. The Theory of Psychological Ownership identifies three routes to the development of feelings of psychological ownership: Control, Intimate Knowledge, and Investment of Self (Pierce & Jussila, 2011). Only one route is needed to develop feelings of ownership for a target. Organizations provide opportunities for job ownership through the way work is structured and the degree to which employees control their work. Psychological ownership links the employee to the organization or job, leading to a heightened sense of responsibility for work outputs. Positive effects of psychological ownership include increased commitment, job satisfaction, organization-based self-esteem, work engagement, lower burnout, and increased intent to stay (Dawkins, Tian, Newman, & Martin, 2015)
Although related concepts have been researched in the context of work environment such as organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and organizational identification, psychological ownership is the only construct focused on the sense of ownership (Pierce & Jussila, 2011). Ownership is a primitive concept that may influence behavior and reasoning in many domains (Friedman & Ross, 2011). Employees with heightened psychological ownership exhibit an enhanced sense of responsibility for the target of the ownership (Dawkins et al., 2015). Accordingly, facilitating nurse psychological ownership through work environment manipulation could translate into improved care delivery and a heightened sense of responsibility for patient outcomes, providing the missing link between improved nurse work environments and desired outcomes.
Since its inception in the 1990s, the Theory of Psychological Ownership has been employed to study many types of organizations and their employees. Critical constructs in good nursing work environments and those central to the concept of psychological ownership overlap, yet, only two published nursing studies have utilized a tool based on psychological ownership, (Kaur, Sambasivan, & Kumar, 2013; Yoo, Yoo, & Kim, 2012), and none have applied the Theory of Psychological Ownership. Several tools exist to measure psychological ownership, the most-used a 6-item tool that measures the degree of psychological ownership, but not the three routes (Pierce & Jussila, 2011). Recently, a tool was introduced which expanded the original 6-item tool, adding three subscales to include the routes to psychological ownership (Brown, Pierce, & Crossley, 2013). The purposes of this presentation are to 1) introduce The Theory of Psychological Ownership as a tool for nurse work environment research, and 2) describe the use of the expanded measure in a hospital nursing sample.
Methods:
A convenience sample of 542 Florida APRNs from 126 different hospital settings responded to an online survey. APRNs were recruited through a public Board of Nursing database, or through their Chief Nursing Officers. APRNs who self-identified as working in hospitals were eligible for participation. The expanded Psychological Ownership questionnaire was a measure included in the survey. This measure is composed of 21-items and 4 subscales of Control, Intimate Knowledge, Investment of Self, and Psychological Ownership. Items are scored on a 4-point Likert-type scale (strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree). Reliability and validity tests were performed, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was employed to ascertain the measures’ functionality in this sample.
Results:
Analyses reveal good measure and subscale reliability with subscale Cronbach αs ranging from .77-.91. CFA model results reveal good fit of the model to the data (Χ2 [393] = 403.185, p=.351, RMSEA = .007, and CFI=.998. Subscale factor loadings were significant and high, with standardized estimates ranging .65 to .94. Eighty-four percent of APRNs reported favorable responses (strongly agree or agree) the psychological ownership subscale indicating a strong sense of psychological ownership. Subscale analyses revealed the highest favorable scores on Intimate Knowledge (94%), and Investment of Self (93%), and the lowest favorable scores on Control (59%).
Conclusion:
The expanded psychological ownership measure performed well in an advanced practice nursing population indicating the subscales of the measure functioned as intended. This is not surprising given the overlapping fundamental constructs in psychological ownership and good nursing practice environments. Percentage of favorable responses in the control subscale were low in comparison with other subscales, suggesting that although overall perceptions of psychological ownership are high in this population, it primarily develops through intimate knowledge of and investment of self into one’s job, rather than through control. This is in contrast to findings in other professions studied (Pierce & Jussila, 2011). Hospitals are organizations known for bureaucratic, hierarchical power structures with less favorable practice environments for APRNs (Poghosyan et al., 2015). Control, empowerment, and decision making are interwoven organizational structures that impact the development of psychological ownership (Pierce & Jussila, 2011), therefore it is predictable that the route of control may be less consequential to hospital APRNs’ overall psychological ownership scores.
The Theory of Psychological Ownership is a contemporary idea with substantive applications for nursing work environment research. Experts recognize the importance of nurse work environment, but are calling for targeted research that can lead to interventions to improve patient and nurse outcomes. Evidence suggests fostering psychological ownership for one’s job improves employee/organizational performance and outcomes in other fields. Exploration of Psychological Ownership as a mechanism for improved outcomes, and organizational interventions to increase psychological ownership of nurses has great potential to meet the global goal of improved healthcare quality.