A multilevel investigation of the association between collective psychological ownership as psychosocial resources and social workers’ turnover intention

Abstract

Using a multilevel approach and a nationally representative sample of 5,478 social workers from 813 social service organisations in China, this study investigated the association between collective psychological ownership (CPO), an emerging construct of psychosocial resources characterised by sharedness, and social workers' turnover intention by controlling for psychological demands (i.e. emotional exhaustion and role ambiguity) and psychological resources (i.e. self-perceived autonomy, self-perceived and composite person-organisation value congruence, and self-perceived and composite social support). The results showed that CPO conceptualised as both individual- and organisational-level psychosocial resources were negatively associated with social workers' turnover intention. The findings of the study will draw implications for keeping social workers and other helping professionals in their organisations by practicing co-workers' shared agency and joint actions defined in terms of collective decision-making and hardship endurance.