Promoting Ethical Behaviours in Nigerian Public Universities: The Effect of Psychological Ownership

Due to an outrageous involvement in unethical behavior in industrial organizations, many organizations have started to realize that management must work to fulfil their moral obligations to society in which they operate. The study examines the influence of psychological ownership on the ethical behavior of academic staff in public universities. Extant literature was reviewed from the current development of the construct variables. The survey research method was employed; the population consists of all academic staff working in selected federal universities in Nigeria. Both primary and secondary data were employed. Upon completion of data collection, a combination of both descriptive and inferential statistics was employed as methods of data analysis, the model of this study was tested using the hierarchical regression and correlation analysis. The study found that the correlation coefficients of all dimensions of psychological ownership such as employee’ self-efficacy (R2=0.668) and employee’s sense of belonging (-0.821) were weak-positive related to individual and benevolent ethical behavior. This implies all dimensions have inverse relationship with individual and benevolent ethical behavior and that the increase in each of the dimension of psychological ownership (such as employee’s self-efficacy, employee sense of belonging) which decrease the individual and benevolent ethical behavior while the decrease in psychological ownership dimensions will increase individual and benevolent ethical behavior at 5% level of significant. The study concludes that employees having a sense of ownership with the organization are less likely to deviate from work norms and values. The study, therefore, recommends that in order to minimize unethical behavior within the workplace, the university system must adapt to a specific ethical standard that is centered on extremely important ethical core values in order to resolve the problems associated with negative workplace unethical behaviors.