Turning Agents into Psychological Principals: Aligning Interests of Non-Owners Through Psychological Ownership

Principals who delegate tasks to agents face the perennial challenge of overcoming agency problems. We investigate whether feelings of ownership among senior managers in the absence of formal ownership can align agents' interests with those of principals, thus turning agents into psychological principals. Using a moderated mediation model, we find that psychological ownership is positively related to company performance through the mediating effect of individual-level entrepreneurial behaviour. We also find that the effect of psychological ownership on individual-level entrepreneurial behaviour and, ultimately, company performance is weaker for high levels of monitoring compared to low levels. These findings offer important contributions to agency, psychological ownership, and entrepreneurship literatures.

Affective Commitment and Job Satisfaction among Non-family Employees: Investigating the Roles of Justice Perceptions and Psychological Ownership

Due to numerous characteristics often attributed to family firms, they constitute a unique context for non-family employees’ justice perceptions. These are linked to non-family employees’ pro-organizational attitudes and behaviors, which are essential for family firms’ success. Even though scholarly interest in non-family employees’ justice perceptions has increased, more research is still needed, also because the mechanism connecting justice perceptions and favorable outcomes is not fully understood yet. We address this gap by explicitly investigating non-family employees’ justice perceptions and by introducing psychological ownership as a mediator in the relationships between justice perceptions (distributive and procedural) and common work attitudes (affective commitment and job satisfaction). Our analysis of a sample of 310 non-family employees from Germany and German-speaking Switzerland reveals that psychological ownership mediates the relationships between distributive justice and affective commitment as well as job satisfaction. This represents valuable contributions to family business research, organizational justice and psychological ownership literature, and to practice.

Psychological Ownership of Employees as a Mediator in the Justice - Affective Commitment Relationship

Numerous scholars have accumulated evidence on the positive effects that employees’ organizational justice perceptions exert on work-related outcomes such as affective commitment. However, research still lacks understanding of the underlying mechanisms connecting the two constructs. In this article we aim to narrow this gap by examining the concept of psychological ownership as a possible mediator between organizational justice perceptions and affective commitment. Investigating a sample of 619 employees, we find distributive justice to be positively related to psychological ownership, and observe psychological ownership as a full mediator of the distributive justice and affective commitment relationship. These insights offer a new explanation in understanding the justice-commitment connection, contributing to both organizational justice and psychological ownership literature and opening up ways for promising future research.

Family Influence and Psychological Ownership: The Mediating Effects of Control

The concept of psychological ownership (PO) has been increasingly researched in the last years. However, knowledge about the emergence of PO is still scarce. So far, no study has investigated the development of PO in the context of family firms. We aim to investigate the emergence of PO in that context by drawing on the family´s influence on the business as a decisive factor. We thereby elaborate on the effect of family influence on PO, mediated by non-family managers´ perceived control over the company.

Psychological Ownership of Employees as a Mediator in the Justice - Affective Commitment Relationship

Numerous scholars have accumulated evidence on the positive effects that employees' organizational justice perceptions exert on work-related outcomes such as affective commitment. However, research still lacks understanding of the underlying mechanisms connecting the two constructs. In this article we aim to narrow this gap by examining the concept of psychological ownership as a possible mediator between organizational justice perceptions and affective commitment. Investigating a sample of 619 employees, we find distributive justice to be positively related to psychological ownership, and observe psychological ownership as a full mediator of the distributive justice and affective commitment relationship. These insights offer a new explanation in understanding the justice-commitment connection, contributing to both organizational justice and psychological ownership literature and opening up ways for promising future research

The Committed and the Happy: Exploring the Effects of Justice and Ownership Perceptions among Non-family Employees

A main challenge that family businesses face is fostering non-family employees' val-ue-creating attitudes, such as affective commitment and job satisfaction. While justice perceptions have been identified as being critical in the creation of these outcomes, the process how they actually evolve is less clear, especially in family firms. We address this gap by introducing psychological ownership as a mediator in the relationships between justice perceptions (distributive and procedural) and common work attitudes (affective commitment and job satisfaction). Our analysis of a sample of 310 non-family employees from family firms in German-speaking Switzerland and Germany reveals that psychological ownership mediates the relationships between distributive justice and affective commitment as well as job satisfaction. This leads to valuable contributions to family business research, organizational justice and psychological ownership literatures, and to practice.

Long-term Success of Family Firms: Investigating Specific Aspects of Firm-level Entrepreneurship and Individual-level Antecedents

Long-term success of family firms is of utmost social and economic importance. Three of its determinants are in the center of this Dissertation: firmlevel entrepreneurial orientation (EO), managers' entrepreneurial behavior, and value-creating attitudes of non-family employees. Each determinant and respective research gaps are addressed by one paper of this cumulative dissertation. Referring to firm-level EO, scholars claim that EO is a main antecedent to firms' both short- and long-term success. However, family firms seem to be successful across generations despite rather low levels of EO. The first paper addresses this paradox by investigating EO patterns of long-lived family firms in three Swiss case studies. The main finding is that the key to success is not to be as entrepreneurially as possible all the time, but to continuously adapt the EO profile depending on internal and external factors. Moreover, the paper suggest new subcategories to different EO dimensions. With regard to entrepreneurial behavior of managers, there is a lack of knowledge how individual-level and organizational level factors affect its evolvement. The second paper addresses this gap by investigating a sample of 403 middle-level managers from both family and non-family firms. It introduces psychological ownership of managers as individual-level antecedent and investigates the interaction with organizational factors. As a central insight, management support is found to strengthen the psychological ownership-entrepreneurial behavior relationship. The third paper is based on the fact that employees' justice perceptions are established antecedents of value-creating employee attitudes such as affective commitment and job satisfaction. Even though family firms are susceptible to nonfamily employees´ perceptions of injustice, corresponding research is scarce. Moreover, the mechanism connecting justice perceptions and positive outcomes is still unclear. Addressing these gaps, the analysis of a sample of 310 non-family employees reveals that psychological ownership is a mediator in the relationships between distributive justice perceptions and both affective commitment and job satisfaction. Altogether, the three papers offer valuable contributions to family business literature with respect to EO, entrepreneurial behavior, and value-creating employee attitudes. Thus, they increase current understanding about important determinants of family firms' long-term success, while opening up numerous ways of future research.

Relationship between psychological distress and endogenous anticoagulants in patients with a previous venous thromboembolic event

Psychological distress, particularly anxiety and depression, has been associated with a prothrombotic state. However, the relationship between psychosocial factors and endogenous anticoagulants protein S (PS) and protein C (PC) has not previously been investigated. We explored the association between psychological distress, PS, and PC in patients with an objectively diagnosed venous thromboembolic event (VTE).

Psychological distress in adult survivors of childhood cancer: the Swiss Childhood Cancer Survivor study

Purpose To evaluate the degree of psychological distress in adult childhood cancer survivors in Switzerland and to characterize survivors with significant distress. Methods Childhood cancer survivors who were age younger than 16 years when diagnosed between 1976 and 2003, had survived more than 5 years, and were currently age 20 years or older received a postal questionnaire. Psychological distress was assessed using the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI). Raw scores were transformed into T scores according to the German norm sample, and the proportion of participants being at increased risk for psychological distress was calculated (case rule: T ≥ 63). t tests and univariable and multivariable logistic regressions were used for statistical analyses. Results One thousand seventy-six survivors (63.% of eligible survivors, 71.9% of contacted survivors) returned the questionnaire, 987 with complete data on BSI. Comparison with the norm populations showed lower T scores (T < 50) in the Global Severity Index (GSI; T = 46.2), somatization (T = 47.6), obsessive-compulsive tendencies (T = 46.9), and anxiety (T = 48.4). However, more childhood cancer survivors (especially women) had increased distress for GSI (14.4%), interpersonal sensitivity (16.5%), depression (13.4%), aggression (16.9%), and psychotic tendencies (15.6%) than the expected 10% from the norm population. Caseness was associated with female sex, being a single child, older age at study, and self-reported late effects, especially psychological problems. Conclusion Results show that childhood cancer survivors, on average, have less psychological distress than a norm population but that the proportion of survivors at risk for high psychological distress is disproportionally large. Monitoring psychological distress in childhood cancer survivors may be desirable during routine follow-up, and psychological support should be offered as needed.