Events

Prof. Cynthia Lee
Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Management and Organizational Development
Northeastern University

While workplace territoriality research has received considerable scholarly attention and bloomed over the past decade, critical gaps remain in three areas: the conceptualization of territorial behaviors (with extant work focusing on territorial marking and defending, overlooking territorial expansion), the drivers of those behaviors, and how AI reshapes workplace boundary dynamics. This talk presents three research papers that address these omissions and advance territoriality theory. The first paper, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, extends the territoriality construct by introducing a territoriality expanding dimension. Drawing on conservation of resources and regulatory focus theory, it adopts a resource-based perspective to propose a double-edged effect on job performance, mediated by all three forms of territoriality and information exchange, and moderated by individual regulatory focus. The second, an ongoing study, examines the intersection of job insecurity and territoriality, exploring how boundaryless career orientation and territorial behavior together shape job search activity. The third paper examines these dynamics through the lens of AI adoption, investigating whether AI presents a threat that triggers territorial defense or an opportunity that drives territorial expansion, and how each outcome influences workplace loneliness at varying degrees of psychological safety.

Together, these papers invite future work to move beyond its current theorizing of territoriality as a static, defensive behavior and reconceptualize it as a dynamic and proactive strategy individuals adopt in response to prevailing organizational challenges such as mass layoffs, AI disruption, and beyond.