Proceedings of 4th Global Business and Finance Research Conference
25 - 27 May 2015, Marriott Hotel, Melbourne, Australia
ISBN: 978-1-922069-76-4
The Impact of Psychological Ownership on Defending
Organization: A Social Exchange View
Yijing Lyu*, Chun Hui**, BangCheng Liu*** and Cynthia Lee****
We examined the relationship between psychological ownership and employees’ defending
organization behavior. Employing social exchange theory, we explain the mediating role of
felt obligation in the relationship. We further examined the moderating role of past-positive
time orientation in the effects of psychological ownership on felt obligation. Using timelagged data from 12 branches of two hotels in China, we found that psychological
ownership positively affected employees’ defending organization behavior via felt obligation.
In addition, our findings indicated that past-positive time orientation moderated the positive
relationship between psychological ownership and felt obligation such that the positive
relationship was stronger when past-positive time orientation was low rather than high.
Moreover, past-positive time orientation moderated the indirect effect of psychological
ownership on defending organization’s performance via felt obligation such that the indirect
effect is stronger when past-positive time orientation is low rather than when it is high. The
theoretical and managerial implications of these results are discussed.
Field of Research: Management (JEL: M1)
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Ms Yijing Lyu, School of
Tel: (86) 1822-1868-198.
Management, Fudan University,
China,
Email : lyuyijing@163.com,
**Prof. Chun Hui, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong,
Email:chui@business.hku.hk. Tel: (852) 3917-5138
***Dr. Bangcheng Liu, School of International and Public Affairs, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China.
Email: liubangcheng@sjtu.edu.cn, Tel: (86) 21 6293 237.
****Prof. Cynthia Lee, College of Business Administration, Northeastern University, USA and Department of
Management & Marketing, Hong Kong Polytechnic Universit, Hong Kong, Email: msclee@polyu.edu.hk,
Tel: (1) 617-373 5146.
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Acknowledgement: The work described in this paper was supported by a grant from Hong Kong Research
Grants Council (HKU 791013) to Chun Hui and Cynthia Lee.