
Background and Hypotheses Development
Territoriality
Territoriality is defined as an individual's behavioral expression of his or her feelings of ownership toward a physical or social object within an organization. Life in organizations is fundamentally territorial and the territorial feelings of employees are innate and universal. Extant research has largely shown that territoriality has a significant influence on organizations. These include positive outcomes, such as stimulating the sense of belonging to it and simplifying social interactions. They also include negative outcomes, such as increasing distraction and conflict that would negatively affect employees' work performance in open office settings. Such crucial and different impacts have compelled managers and scholars to consider what triggers employees' territoriality and how to intervene in it.
The previous literature has overwhelmingly highlighted the outcomes induced by territoriality within organizations. However, far less is known about the source of territoriality. Indeed, only a few published studies have investigated the antecedents of territoriality. For example, Brown et al. reported that psychological ownership is positively related to territoriality. Subsequent scholars have confirmed that territorial infringement induces reactionary defenses, and the anticipation of employee defections trigger anticipatory defenses, which both refer to one specific type of territorial behavior. Although the existing work has provided some worthy insights into the particular mechanisms underlying territoriality, there are several important issues to address.
High Performance Expectations and Stress
Supervisors have been one of the most considerable factors that have affected employees' attitudes and behaviors. The influence of supervisors and leadership styles on an employee's stress have been validated, and we know that performance has always been the core of the supervisors' and employees' attention. Consequently, it is reasonable to speculate that performance expectations put forward by supervisors plays an important part in influencing employees' perceived stress.
Based on COR theory, we contend that employees must invest the resources they already have to acquire more resources when they are facing sustained high performance expectations. High performance expectations represent the quality and excellence of the employees' performance, which require additional resources to achieve, exceeding the resources the employees currently have. The second principle of COR theory posits that people must invest resources to protect against resource loss, recover from loss, and gain resources. COR theory also posits that when stress occurs, central or key resources are threatened with loss, according to the primacy of resource loss and the slowness of resource gain. Accordingly, employees who have high performance expectations placed on them will experience stress. We, therefore, hypothesize as follows:
Hypothesis 1. High performance expectations are positively related to stress.
Stress and Territoriality
COR theory has been instrumental for advancing the explanation of stress in organizations to some extent, that is, resource loss has largely been applied to understand stress. In this study, stress is defined as an individual's psychological response to a situation in which there is something at stake for him or her and where the situation taxes or exceeds the individual's capacity or resources. In view of COR theory, stress occurs when key or central resources are under threat of loss. Meanwhile, COR theory starts with the tenet that individuals are motivated to acquire new resources and retain, foster, and protect current resources.
As a "prevention-focused" form of ownership, territoriality means preventing the usurpation of one's own territory. Employees who perceive stress from work will suffer from a serious threat of resource loss, resulting in a greater tendency to protect their resources (i.e., territoriality). Loss is primary in human systems because people are the product of evolution, and in evolutionary terms, even small losses have often been significantly tied to the failure to survive. Inversely, in view of COR theory, employees with lower levels of perceived stress will experience less threat of resource loss and a corresponding decline in the desire to conserve resources, naturally showing less territoriality.
Hence, based on COR, we postulate that the stress related to resource loss will positively affect territoriality. Stated formally, we pose hypothesis as follows:
Hypothesis 2. Stress is positively related to territoriality.
The Moderating Effect of Task Autonomy
Task autonomy is defined as the extent to which an individual has control over how to carry out a task. Based on COR, controlling the means to accomplish a task can be understood as employees having the decision-making power over the use of resources required by the task. In other words, individuals in a condition of high task autonomy have the freedom to select the way in which the work will be done. However, when individuals are in a low task autonomy condition, they have little control over how to accomplish the task. Given that task autonomy as a job characteristic is generally expected to be related to higher satisfaction, performance, and interpersonal facilitation, it is worth considering how the special characteristics of jobs affect employees' psychological state and behaviors (i.e., territoriality).
According to the COR theory, high task autonomy means that employees have greater control over the resources involved in the task. With a high level of task autonomy, employees under stress will enhance their control over working resources to cope with resource loss caused by stress, further promoting their territoriality. In comparison, employees who perceive stress and are low in task autonomy are probably inclined to express less territoriality because they lack control over resources. Accordingly, we contend that task autonomy will moderate the negative effect of stress and territoriality. Based on the above, we pose the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 3. Task autonomy moderates the positive effect of stress on territoriality, such that this relationship is stronger when task autonomy is higher.
To verify this mechanism as a whole, we use a second-stage moderated mediation model, which proposes that task autonomy will moderate the mediation effect of stress on the relationship between high performance expectations and territoriality. The overarching framework described above integrates multiple variables and well represents our suggested relational viewpoint of territoriality. Accordingly, taken together, we develop the full hypothesis based on the above hypotheses:
Hypothesis 4. Task autonomy moderates the indirect and positive effect of high performance expectations on employees' territoriality through stress. Specifically, stress will mediate these relationships under the condition of task autonomy such that this indirect effect is stronger when employees perceive a higher level of task autonomy.
Based on COR theory, we provide a graphical depiction of the proposed models in Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Study model.