Exploring the Grit-Performance and Grit-Career Success Relationship: The Role of Psychological Ownership

Recently, particular attention is being given to grit (as a personality trait) and its associated individual and organisational outcomes. Gritty individuals are more likely to remain interested in achieving their goals over an extended period, despite failure, adversity and setbacks. As a result, literature suggest relationships between grit and outcomes such as career success and performance. However, empirical studies investigating these direct relationships are inconclusive, since findings indicate these relationships as weak to moderate. Although gritty employees might perform better or experience career success, what remains unclear are understanding the theoretical and psychological mechanisms (possible influencing variables) through which grit may lead to performance or career success. Using the distal-proximal framework, the argument are being made that grit as a distal personality trait is unlikely to have a direct effect on work behaviour, but rather indirectly through proximal motivational variables. Thus, for the transformation of distal attributes (e.g. grit) to increase performance, the proximal mechanisms (possible influencing variables) becomes significant. Once such possible proximal- mechanism (influencing variable) that have already been linked with employees’ performance and attachment to their careers, is psychological ownership. Psychological ownership is defined as a cognitive-affective state in which an individual feels a sense of ownership for a target that could be tangible or intangible in nature. Through a review of existing literature, we explore the possible associations or the influencing role that psychological ownership may play in the relationship between grit and employees’ task performance and perceived subjective career success. Based on the distal-proximal perspective we propose that psychological ownership as a proximate, domain-specific flexible psychological construct which may influence both the grit-performance as well as grit-subjective career success relationship. To date, no research has explored these relationships theoretically based on extant literature. Thus, this chapter aims to contribute to the field of career development and talent management by exploring whether grit, as a trait, could play a role in enhancing employees’ task performance and perceptions of career through psychological ownership within an organisational context providing a possible basis for future empirical studies.