Territoriality in organizations : theory and measurement

Territorial feelings and behaviors are important, pervasive, and yet largely overlooked aspects of organizational life. Organizational members can and do become territorial over physical spaces, ideas, roles, relationships and a myriad of other potential possessions in organizations. To this point, however, virtually no research has examined territoriality in organizations. In three different papers, I address the issue of territoriality in organizations. In the first paper, I theoretically examine the concept of territoriality as it applies to organizations and discuss some potential antecedents and consequences of territoriality. In the second paper, I develop a survey measure of territoriality that can be used to empirically study territoriality in organizations. In the final paper, I conduct an empirical study to examine the consequences of territoriality in organizations. This project begins an important direction in studying and better understanding human behavior in organizations.Business, Sauder School ofGraduat