Belonging(s) at Work (Paperback)

This is a study of psychological ownership-how we own the property of others and extend our reach even where we are arguably most alienated-on the job. A range of evidence for psychological ownership is considered, from possessive expression to innovative practice, toward a historical ethnographic developmental cultural psychology of work activity. Drawing upon Vygotsky's cultural historical activity theory and William James' theory of the empirical self, this work describes psychological ownership at the end of the industrial age among managers at a century-old gear manufacturing company. Psychological ownership is investigated through a developmental study of possessive expression in managers' writing about an activity-based workshop process. Possessive expression was further examined for its content toward a phenomenological portrait of the manufacturing workplace in motion. Corporate elimination of the factory following the workshop process rendered this a portrait of what was lost, revealing the profound contradiction of psychological ownership in American industrial working life at the turn of the millennium.