“Where’s my desk?”: A longitudinal investigation on personalisation and psychological ownership at the workplace

Modern workplaces are undergoing a significant transformation characterized by an increase in shared spaces and a decrease in the workstations-to-employees ratio. This shift towards flexible office arrangements has determined some challenges for the employee traditional experience of the workplace, particularly concerning phenomena such as personalization (i.e., a form of territorial behavior) and psychological ownership at the workplace. This study aimed to examine the relationship of workplace personalization, psychological ownership, and two work-related outcomes, namely preferable number of office days and affective organizational commitment. Drawing upon theory of psychological ownership (i.e., the feeling of possessives toward an object) and prior literature on territorial behaviors, we hypothesized that self-oriented personalization leads to higher preferable number of office days and higher affective organizational commitment, via desk-related psychological ownership. The study was designed longitudinally and consisted of two waves with a time-span of five months in between. Data collection was carried out via online survey sent to the employees of a Belgian public agency. The final sample consisted of 301 employees and data were analyzed through structural equation modelling. We found evidence supporting the hypothesized relationship, yet with the reverse directionality. Specifically, preferable number of office days led to desk-related psychological ownership, which in turn led to self-oriented personalization. This study presented the first longitudinal test of the link between personalization (i.e., a type of territorial behavior) and psychological ownership at the workplace, and its findings contributed to shed light on the relationship between these two phenomena which are playing a relevant role in the modern debate on return-to-office and future office.