Thoughts on To Share Or Not To Share Information

For a long time, it is believed that it is good to share as much information as possible in many aspects. However, various discussions regarding whether information should be freely shared as some people reckon that some information will become vital in striding forward into our future.

Most information should be freely shared in the academic world. The first reason is that there are many people wanting to acquire knowledge. If knowledge such as results of scientific experiments and research had been kept secretly instead of sharing freely or being published, it would be a significant disadvantage for those who want to learn something and this might hinder the further thoughts as they lost the chance of elicitation. Also, some scientists are involved in large events with regards to some potential breakthroughs in many fields and the world needs high level of collaboration. In this case, information should be freely shared as individual ability is tiny and sharing results will boost the working efficiency.

However, in many cases, messages cannot be shared as much as possible. This especially happens to businesses. For example, some large firms operating in the market structure of oligopoly in which the firms are interdependent and make most decisions on the basis of guessing their rivals’ behaviour. If one firm chose to share information, it would lose much market share as their rivals could get the accurate information of the firm, leaving itself vulnerable. For example, if one firm’s pricing strategy, which should be a kind of internal information, was divulged, the other firms will react quickly either to prevent their loss of market share or to gain the firm’s market share, neither of which is favourable for the firm. Also, in some industries which rely on high level of technology, information about the products cannot be easily leaked to their rivals, or their ideas might be stolen. For instance, a smartphone producer is less likely to let their rivals know about what technology is used or other detailed information about the new generation phone before it is shown publicly.

Overall, it is difficult to achieve a level of completely asymmetric information all the time. In respect to academic research, it is good to share most information, while there are limitations in many aspects as well.

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