ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the conceptual underpinnings of ownership and its connections to sustainability. It introduces sustainability ownership and explains how each step contributes to transforming a company’s different stakeholder groups from bystanders to owners, giving the business real competitive advantage. Organizational psychologists have identified several pathways to ownership. One begins with having control over the target of ownership, another with developing deep knowledge about it, and a third with investing time, effort, attention, and creative energy in it. Ownership typically implies that the target is of interest to the individual. Every forward-thinking company should be striving to create the conditions that engender ownership in the workplace. Individuals develop feelings of ownership toward objects and ideas through close association with them. As we invest our time, effort, and energy into creating or shaping objects, we come to see them as extensions of ourselves – economists and philosophers have long posited that.
