Psychological Ownership and Resistance to Change in Hybrid Work Environments: An Internalization-Based Explanation

Abstract

Hybrid work has changed the behavioural foundations of organizational change. Employees are no longer continuously embedded in a common physical workplace where informal communication, shared routines, visible leadership and spontaneous peer sensemaking help them interpret new priorities. This study investigates how psychological ownership is associated with resistance to change when work is organized through hybrid arrangements rather than continuous office presence. Drawing on psychological ownership theory, self-determination theory, organizational identification, employee engagement, remote work design and recent digital transformation research, the paper develops an internalization-based model in which leadership communication transparency and perceived autonomy are associated with psychological ownership, and psychological ownership is associated with lower resistance to change. Hybrid work intensity is conceptualized as a boundary condition that strengthens ownership formation because employees who more frequently work remotely rely less on physical embeddedness and more on internal psychological connection. The model is tested using cross-sectional survey data from 412 employees working in hybrid arrangements across the fields of information technology, consulting, energy, manufacturing, financial services and professional services. Data were screened using IBM SPSS Statistics 29, and the measurement and structural models were estimated using covariance-based structural equation modelling in IBM SPSS AMOS 29, with maximum likelihood estimation and 5000 bootstrap resamples for indirect and conditional indirect associations. The findings show that leadership communication transparency and perceived autonomy are positively associated with psychological ownership. Psychological ownership is negatively associated with resistance to change and mediates the associations of communication transparency and autonomy with resistance. Hybrid work intensity strengthens the association of communication transparency and autonomy with psychological ownership and also strengthens the indirect associations with resistance. The study positions psychological ownership as an internal substitute for weakened physical embeddedness in hybrid change contexts. It further clarifies that resistance in hybrid organizations is not only a problem of communication volume, employee engagement or formal identification; it is also a problem of whether or not employees come to experience change as personally meaningful, identity relevant and partly theirs.