Founder dynamic psychological ownership: Impacts on self and others at work

Abstract

As ventures grow, founders must decide between hanging on to control over venture decision-making or delegating authority to professional managers. This decision is challenging since founders are typically driven by strong feelings of ownership toward their ventures. Adopting a qualitative research design with a grounded theory approach, we investigate the psychological ownership impacts on self and others within the venture when founders delegate decision rights to professional managers. Our analysis draws on in-depth interviews with 30 founders and 14 professional managers hired by the founders. We develop the first process model of founders' dynamic venture-targeted psychological ownership and demonstrate how recalibrating psychological ownership is key to the successful delegation of authority to professional managers. Our conceptual model also outlines a novel relationship between recalibrated psychological ownership and founder identity work. We outline our theoretical contributions to psychological ownership and identity control theory and offer practical advice to founders and their professional managers to help with the successful recalibration of founders' venture-targeted psychological ownership in support of effective delegation and venture growth.