|
Asst Prof Graham Brown from the Lee Kong Chian School of Business believes that territoriality is an important but overlooked aspect of work in organizations. In a recent theoretical paper written with Thomas Lawrence (Simon Fraser University) and Sandra Robinson (University of British Columbia), “Territoriality in Organizations” (published in the Academy of Management Review, 2005, 30 (3)), Prof Graham argues that territoriality is prevalent in all organizations and that a failure to acknowledge this could adversely affect an organization with severe social and individual consequences. Threats to the employees’ psychological and physical safety and high turnover, lack of work commitment are
but some of the possible consequences.
According to Prof Graham, at the core of territoriality are feelings of ownership. People claim objects that they feel are theirs and then communicate these claims to others. People can express ownership over a wide range of objects including social and physical objects such as ideas, roles, projects, workspaces, computers, and even seemingly trivial items like pens or staplers. Prof Graham said,
The paper shows that territoriality could impact the individual and the social environment in a variety of ways.
On the positive side, having territories within the organization satisfies the need to belong and provides an important connection between the individual and the organization. To the extent that an employee has a territory in the organization, he or she tends to be more committed to the organization, more satisfied with their job, and have less intention to leave the company.
One such example is the unwillingness of employees to share information with others in the same organization. In a paper presented at the Society for Industrial Organizational Psychology Conference at Dallas earlier this year, Prof Graham (with co-author Sandra Robinson of the University of British Columbia) tried to account for such unwillingness to share knowledge. While past studies have looked at the issue from the political or revenge perspective, Prof Graham suggests that “territoriality” could be an important reason too, i.e.,
Prof Graham said,
Ironically, the employees may be willing to share the knowledge with people outside the organization (even if this is unknown to the company they work for) because they feel it is theirs to share when and with whom they want.
In another paper that he is currently writing (a chapter in the book “Research Companion to the Dysfunctional Workplace: Management Challenges and Symptoms”), Prof Graham discusses other areas where territoriality may have negative consequences for the individual and the organization. He cited resistance to company mergers or organizational restructuring as one such example. That is employees resist these changes because they are unsure of how their territories may be affected as a result.
To deal with the negative consequences of territoriality, Prof Graham believes that organizations must first recognize that the territoriality issue exists.
Prof Graham argues that organizations must actively promote territoriality, especially over objects that are not critical, shared resources. Creating a sense of ownership over potential territories at work can be facilitated by having office decoration competitions or allowing people to take control of certain projects. According to Prof Graham, organizations that do this gain a real competitive advantage as their employees are more committed and willing to work harder for the organization.
|
