Knowledge that Transforms

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 other potential possessions in organizations. We examine how territorial behaviors are used to construct, communicate, maintain, and restore territories in organizations. We then go on to discuss the organizational consequences of these behaviors, including their effects on organizational commitment, conflict, preoccupation, and individual isolation.

We explore the relationship between discourse and interorganizational collaboration, arguing that interorganizational collaboration can be understood as the product of sets of conversations that draw on existing discourses. Specifically, we argue that effective collaboration, which we define as cooperative, interorganizational action that produces innovative, synergistic solutions and balances divergent stakeholder concerns, emerges out of a two-stage process. In this process conversations produce discursive resources that create a collective identity and translate it into effective collaboration.

We present a theoretical model that attempts to generalize the conditions for alliance formation. This model is based on internal and external conditions of alliance formation: resource heterogeneity and competitive dynamics. We also introduce a game-theoretic model of alliance formation according to the net gains from an alliance and the prevention of losses that could occur from competitors' alliance activities. The model provides a theoretical insight on a paradoxical setting that some firms join an alliance despite little gains while others avoid or delay it despite potentially strong gains from the alliance.