An Empirical Research on the Antecedents of Psychological Ownership: Wise Leadership and the Crab Syndrome

The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of wise leadership and the crab syndrome, which are new concepts in the literature, on psychological ownership within the scope of the conservation of resources theory. For this purpose, a quantitative method was followed in the study. The study is significant since it was conducted to reveal the antecedents of psychological ownership at the level of individuals and leaders. The sample of the research is the participants working in the banking sector. The questionnaire method was used as the data collection technique, and the items of the dependent variables took place before the independent variables in the questionnaire form to minimize the common method variance error. The analysis of the data was carried out in two stages such as preliminary data analysis and hypothesis testing. While descriptive statistics were included in the preliminary data analysis, research hypotheses were tested using the two-step process of the Structural Equation Model (SEM) in hypothesis testing. In the obtained findings, it was observed that wise leadership predicted psychological ownership positively, and crab syndrome negatively. Within the scope of the conservation of resources theory, the results were discussed, and the recommendations and limitations of the research were stated.