WHATS MINE IS OURS, OR IS IT - A STUDY OF ATTITUDES ABOUT INFORMATIONSHARING

As technology for information access improves, people have more opport unities to share information. A theory of information sharing is advan ced and we report the results of three experiments on attitudes about sharing technical work and expertise in organizations. Based on resear ch on sensitive topics difficult to study in the field, we derived vig nette-based measures of attitudes. Subjects read a description of an e mployee's encounter with a previously unhelpful coworker who subsequen tly requested help-in the form of a computer program or computer advic e. The influence of prosocial attitudes and organizational norms is in ferred from subjects' support of sharing despite the previous unhelpfu l behavior of the coworker. Experiments 1 and 3 demonstrated that grea ter self interest reduces support of sharing, but that a belief in org anizational ownership of work encourages and mediates attitudes favori ng sharing. Work experience and business schooling contribute to these attitudes. The theory asserts that information as expertise belongs t o a special category of information that is part of people's identity and is self-expressive. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that subjects felt computer expertise belonged more to its possessor than the compu ter program did but would share it more than the program. Hence, attit udes about information sharing depend on the form of the information. Sharing tangible information work may depend on prosocial attitudes an d norms of organizational ownership; sharing expertise may depend on p eople's own self-expressive needs.