Seminar (Dept. of Organization and Human Resources)

Theme：Behaving Territorially, Performing Poorly? An Actor-Focused Model of Employee Territoriality, Self-Concept, and Job Performance

Speaker：Xingwen Chen (School of Management，Fudan University)

Time：2022-09-21 10:00

Address：Online Meeting，Room 706, Mingde Business Building

Language：Chinese/English

ABSTRACT:

The construct of territoriality reflects an individual’s behavioral expression of his or her feelings of ownership toward a physical or social object. Existing research shows that others view territorial individuals as unapproachable, uncooperative, asocial, self-serving, and poor team players. However, less is known about how territorial employees view and evaluate themselves. We employed a mixed-method design beginning with interviews of 32 participants, which revealed that participants weigh benefits of personal control against drawbacks of interpersonal ostracism from engaging in territorial behavior. Drawing on cognitive appraisal and self-concept theories, we developed a model exploring employees’ accounts of how they felt, thought, and acted after exhibiting territorial behaviors and how employee self-construals affect the appraisal processes. A quantitative study with multisource and time-lagged data was used to empirically test the hypothesized model. The results demonstrated that employee territoriality had positive impacts on personal control and interpersonal ostracism; personal control was negatively related to state anxiety whereas interpersonal ostracism was positively correlated with state anxiety; state anxiety, in turn, exerted negative influences on job performance. The positive impact of employee territoriality on personal control was stronger when an employee had a high rather than low level of independent self-construal. The positive influence of employee territoriality on interpersonal ostracism was stronger when an employee had a high rather than low level of interdependent self-construal. These research findings have significant implications for both theory and practice.