Information-Sharing in Academia and the Industry: A Comparative Study

Carolin Haeussler
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Carolin Häussler

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper investigates how scientists decide whether to share information with their colleagues or not. Detailed data on the decisions of 1,694 bio-scientists allow to detect similarities and differences between academia-based and industry-based scientists. Arguments from social capital theory are applied to explain why individuals share information even at (temporary) personal cost. In both realms, the results suggest that the likelihood of sharing decreases with the competitive value of the requested information. Factors related to social capital, i.e., expected reciprocity and the extent to which a scientist’s community conforms to the norm of open science, either directly affect information-sharing or moderate competitive interest considerations on information-sharing. The effect depends on the system to which a scientist belongs.

Keywords: information-sharing; social capital; reciprocity; open science; bio-sciences; IP protection mechanisms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 D03 D21 D8 L2 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-07-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ipr, nep-pr~, nep-soc and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/24415/1/MPRA_paper_24415.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Information-sharing in academia and the industry: A comparative study (2011)
Working Paper: Information-Sharing in Academia and the Industry: A Comparative Study (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:24415

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().