‘It's Ours’: Understanding the aspects of ownership in financial cooperatives

Abstract This paper conceptualizes the ownership construct in financial cooperatives by exploring its main dimensions and analysing aspects related to each dimension. Based on a qualitative approach using the grounded theory and conducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), our findings reveal that ownership is a multidimensional concept comprising three interconnected dimensions: formal, psychological and active ownership. Formal ownership pertains to ownership by legal rights, psychological ownership involves ownership by feelings and active ownership encompasses ownership through actions and behaviour. The study proposes relationships among these ownership features, highlighting that the respect for members’ formal ownership rights can lead to stronger ownership feelings, and these feelings may, in turn, induce active ownership. Cooperative ownership can thus be analysed as ‘a process’, which might unfold from formal to psychological and active ownership. Formal ownership is linked to active ownership through the mediating variable of psychological ownership.