Abstract Mutuals can be seen as expressing the utmost in customer orientation, by merging the roles of customer and owner. Nonetheless, the literature indicates that emphasis on these two roles is not evident among mutual companies in practice. Accordingly, there is a gap in knowledge pertaining to how the idea of customer ownership is understood and present in mutuals. To increase understanding of this gap, a study explored the mental models of customer ownership held by executive-board-level managers. This entailed collecting and analysing empirical interview data from executive-board-level managers of a large Finnish mutual pension insurance company. These mental models are distinguished along two dimensions: the role of a customer–owner, which may be passive or active, and managerial scope, which can be operative or strategic. A matrix constructed from these dimensions shows how customer ownership can have a limited, applied, strategic, or extensive function in the mental models of the executives. The findings should aid managers in evaluating their views of customer ownership, thereby facilitating diagnosis of the approach being applied. Furthermore, they may assist legislators, public authorities, and reporters in understanding the nature of a customer-owned insurance company and how the associated ideas may have been implemented in practice.

中文翻译：

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执行委员会中客户所有权的心理模型：以养老保险业为例

摘要通过将客户和所有者的角色融合在一起，可以将共同体视为对客户的最大表达。然而，文献表明，在实践中，共同公司之间对这两个角色的强调并不明显。因此，在关于如何理解和呈现客户所有权概念的知识上存在空白。为了增进对这一差距的理解，一项研究探索了执行董事会级经理所拥有的客户所有权的心理模型。这需要从一家大型芬兰共同养老保险公司的执行董事会级别的经理那里收集和分析经验访谈数据。这些思维模型从两个方面进行区分：客户所有者的角色（可以是被动的或主动的）和管理范围的（可以是操作的或战略的）。从这些维度构建的矩阵显示了客户所有权如何在高管的心智模型中发挥有限的，应用的，战略的或广泛的功能。调查结果应有助于经理评估他们对客户所有权的看法，从而有助于对所采用方法的诊断。此外，它们可以帮助立法者，公共当局和记者了解客户拥有的保险公司的性质以及相关想法在实践中如何得以实施。