Abstract
According to the theory of psychological ownership, the feeling of ownership does not necessitate legal ownership, and may emerge when a person gets to know the target intimately, controls it and invests in it. We focus in this study on owner-managers of small enterprises, and build on the fundamental assumption that psychological ownership and legal business ownership are not mutually exclusive. Our data from 150 Finnish SMEs supports the assumption that these owner-managers may have strong feelings of psychological ownership that influence their ability to manage the firm purely as an economic instrument. © 2010, Copyright CCSBE/CCPME.