A recent article discussed the phenomena of “psychological ownership” of digital contents. The context of this was about how individual work is marked in a collaborative work environment. The authors discuss various motives for ownership—perceptual (social-cognitive) or part of the human need to categorize the world, instrumental (efficacy and in control) to satisfy (workplace or personal) needs, and symbolic (self-identity) in terms of how people perceive themselves (Wang, Battocchi, Graziola, Pianesi, Tomasini, Zancanaro, & Nass, 2006, p. 226). The researchers identified psychological ownership as an important one in terms of how people interact with each other. That all aligns with our intuitive sense of how things work.

This issue is critical when the spirit of Web 2.0 is rife, and people are all about sharing a lot of digital objects (photos, audio, video, and other forms of multimedia) and information on the Web through various content sharing sites. There are many consuming and a few producing in terms of actual numbers, even in those sites.

Who’s First?

The issue of psychological ownership and how an idea is marked as one person’s or another’s is important in an online classroom. Students will email instructors off-list to let them know when a peer has swiped his or her ideas in a discussion board posting, or worse, in a formal paper. A savvy instructor will have noticed already…but the email does show that students can be proactive about identifying an idea as their own and protecting that.

Implications on Co-Creation

In a professional setting, where original ideas have heft and reputation value (and sometimes monetary value), identifying ownership of a work is critical. This is even more important in cases of virtual teaming where dispersed teams of people will collaborate and where there is not yet strong trust (even if there is initial “swift trust”).

Legal Implications

There are legal implications, too, based on the provability of who came up with an original idea first. But if collaborators on a project are approaching a work very defensively and protectively of their own ideas, that will not necessarily support open creativity. Of course, most projects start with a contract or memorandum of agreement or binding grant understandings—about the ownership of the work, the payments, the roles, and the ground rules of sharing. There are understood ethics of keeping work private and protected and not infringing on others’ rights.

In some fields where discoveries may have huge monetary and reputation implications, this issue of who originated an idea or came up with something first is even more critical.

Ownership Markers in Collaborative Work Spaces

The concept of “markers” or indicators to show ownership of contents is the linking of a team member with his or her contributions. The organization and the larger legal system then deals with issues of actual ownership and benefits from original work, within the particular work contexts. Still, the socio-technical system has to be rigorous enough for forensics to establish provenance…but the truth is that ideas are messy, and establishing the timeline of when an idea originated or a discovery was made—in shared work—may be very difficult. In such cases, the research team—spearheaded by a lead researcher or PI—will gain the glory. Most findings and innovations are not done in isolation but are achieved collaboratively, in a context of trust, competition, intellect, and resourcing.

Yours to Keep

One intriguing angle I’ve found is that I’ve run across people who think that their ideas are wholly original when they’re borrowing broadly from others. They think that if they think an idea (even if they weren’t the first to think it) that it’s the same as actualizing it. In other words, people often seem to consider psychological ownership even when there are no factual grounds for that.

Many amateurs also assume huge commercial value to their ideas which are untested and pretty much works that have not been tested in the world. They psychologically monetize their works, without any factual basis to do so. In other words, this psychological ownership can be taken to an extreme and to the detriment of the holder of those ideas. Many ideas never make it into the light of day and are never a benefit to anyone else but are just in the minds of the thinkers.

Embargoing Original Works

The issue of protecting work is a real one. There have been a half-dozen times where I’ve declined to send on an accepted chapter draft or article to a colleague pre-publication simply because the ownership of the contents has already been signed over to a publisher, and leaking any piece of the as-yet-unpublished work would be problematic with the publisher. Unintended leaks and other mishandling of information has happened enough in my observations of the world for me to err on the side of caution.

There’s enough of a sense of caution in the workplace that most people know not to share information unnecessarily. And many even hold work back from presentations and publications because there may be ways to enhance the value of the work through patenting…or other processes…for competitive advantage.

References

Wang, Q-Y., Battocchi, A., Graziola, I., Pianesi, F., Tomasini, D., Zancanaro, M., & Nass, C. (2006). The role of psychological ownership and ownership markers in collaborative working environment. ICMI ’06: Banff, Alberta, Canada. ACM. 225 – 232.