Possessive expression at work: "Those machines are mine"
Item
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Title
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Possessive expression at work: "Those machines are mine"
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Identifier
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AAI3159226
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identifier
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3159226
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Creator
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Kindred, Jessica.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Joseph A. Glick
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Date
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2005
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Developmental | Psychology, Industrial | Education, Industrial
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Abstract
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Using the theoretical framework of Activity Theory, this research examined the context of work as a zone of activity with the potential for human development and for the formation of psychological ownership. Problematizing worker subjectivity in terms of alienation vs. cultivation, this study explores the notion of psychological ownership as an alternative to the alienation outcome and operationalizes this notion in terms of the Jamesian variable of possessive expression. I analyzed the verbal data of possessive expression in personal writing authored by managerial participants in a unique training workshop of Process Improvement in their gear manufacturing workplace. Possessive expression in workshop writing was analyzed both developmentally in terms of the changing of possessive pronouns across workshop activity sessions and ethnographically in terms of the sharedness and quality of the objects such pronouns were used to mark. Possessive pronouns my and our, as markers of identity and belonging, were measured in order to discover their development across the course of the multi-session workshop span, and job category and company tenure differences were considered ex post facto to explore their possible roles in the development of possessive expression. Objects of possessive expression were considered in terms of their level of description and their sharedness across writers as owned objects as well as for their ethnographic potential to depict the culture and activity of the workshop and potentially of the workplace.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
