The tension between scientific openness versus secrecy has existed for centuries (Hull 1985). However, both academics and practitioners have recently argued that openness by private firms has many positive attributes. The purpose of this research effort is to review the extant literature on openness and to develop hypotheses regarding its impact on organizational outcomes. We then use a unique database to test the idea with 87 companies. Our findings are that openness is beneficial to the firm from a science, technological, (...) and financial perspective and, perhaps, to the employees from an ethical viewpoint. The managerial and societal implications are also discussed. (shrink)

This introductory article provides an overview of the historiography of scientific secrecy from J.D. Bernal and Robert Merton to this day. It reviews how historians and sociologists of science have explored the role of secrets in commercial and government-sponsored scientific research through the ages. Whether focusing on the medieval, early modern or modern periods, much of this historiography has conceptualized scientific secrets as valuable intellectual property that helps entrepreneurs and autocratic governments gain economic or military advantage over competitors. Following Georg (...) Simmel and Max Weber, this article offers an alternative interpretation of secrecy as a tool to organize and to hierarchically order society. In this view, the knowledge content of secrecy is less important than its social-psychological effects. The authors argue that, in many instances, entrepreneurial researchers and governments use scientific secrets as an effective tool to manipulate the beliefs of their competitors and the larger public, and not necessarily to protect the knowledge that they hold. (shrink)

In the early and mid-twentieth century, scientific conferences were a popular tool to establish communication between scientists. Organisational efforts, research and funds were spent defining what makes a productive and successful scientific gathering. A unique example of this was the monitoring and evaluation system of the Gordon Research Conferences (GRCs), which conceptualized informal communication in small, specialized meetings as the best method of advancing cutting-edge research. Studying the detailed monitoring reports of the sessions and the evaluation forms filled by the (...) participants, this paper explores how a concrete format of scientific knowledge production and identity formation was created and reproduced. The normative assessment of the participants’ interactions is examined in the contexts of (a) their professional affiliations, (b) the conference presentations and discussions and (c) activities related to play. The study of the GRCs exemplifies how scientists actively conceptualised characteristics like academic affiliation, manners, leisure practices and social categories such as gender as ways to understand, describe and measure how knowledge is best produced and transmitted, turning the conferences into a fertile ground for meta-scientific reflections. (shrink)