Psychological Ownership: Incremental Validity in Predicting Academics’ Creativity-generating Teaching Styles beyond Organizational Commitment

Employees’ psychological ownership, like organizational commitment, is critical to both individual development and organizational effectiveness. This study pioneered the investigation of the distinctiveness of psychological ownership from organizational commitment by examining the predictive power of the former for the latter and by testing the incremental validity of academics’ psychological ownership for universities in predicting their teaching styles – beyond organizational commitment as well as demographics. Three hundred and thirty-two academics from nine research-oriented universities in Zhejiang province and Shanghai, mainland China, responded to the Psychological Ownership Questionnaire, the Organizational Commitment Inventory, and the Thinking Styles in Teaching Inventory. Apart from having validated the Chinese version of the Psychological Ownership Questionnaire used with academics, the study revealed that psychological ownership significantly overlapped with organizational commitment. Most importantly, it was found that psychological ownership made unique contributions to teaching styles, especially creativity-generating styles, beyond that explained by demographics and organizational commitment. The present findings possess scientific significance and have practical implications for both academics and university senior managers.