Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: Trade secrets are often championed as a low-cost way of protecting valuable technology. Compare a trade secret with a patent: no applications, no prosecution and no renewals. If the trade secret is difficult or impractical to reverse engineer, and the proprietor of the trade secret enjoys a first mover advantage, the only real challenge is technological obsolescence. Of course, maintaining secrecy may well require putting into place means to prevent disclosure or misappropriation of the secret. Think about the seed company that maintains its valuable hybrid seeds in a facility that is accessible only to a small group of permitted employees, and where matters such as the room temperature and lighting must be carefully monitored. All of this costs money. While it is tempting to say that few have been dissuaded from relying on a trade secret because of the costs involved, it is misleading to treat such costs as necessarily trivial. Not only that, but maintaining secrecy may include less than obvious costs. Notable among them is the psychological toll that a secret may take on the parties involved. In a recent article by Slepian, M.L., Chun, J.S., & Mason, M.F. (in press). The experience of secrecy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2017), the authors seek to understand the dynamics of secrecy by offering a broader notion of what is involved. The traditional view of secrecy is a situation where A and B are engaged in an interaction. A actively hides information from B (or the reverse), either by withholding information or acting in a deceptive manner. The emphasis is on the circumstances of the interaction itself. The authors argue, however, that such a view is too circumscribed. In its stead, they propose that secrecy should be viewed from the vantage of an intention to keep information secret, even when the object of the disclosure is not present. What is key is the extent to which the person with the secret engages in idle thought about the secret, even when there is no immediate threat of disclosure, or a need for concealment. In the words of the authors— “[i]f one studies secrecy from the broader perspective of what it is like to have a secret, rather than narrowly focus on what it is like to keep a secret [recall that this occurs only in the physical proximity of another person—NJW], then it follows that there may be avenues other than active concealment through which secrecy harms well-being (p. 3)”. Stated otherwise, secrecy is inextricably linked to mind-wandering. Research has highlighted the potential harm that mind-wandering might present for carrying out on-going tasks and on psychological well-being more generally. What sort of harms are we talking about? First, there is the impairment to psychological well-being that comes being occupied (pre-occupied) with the secret. Simply put, one is liable to feel less good. Second, there is harm to one’s view of self, described as harm to one’s sense of personal meaning, a failure to live up to one’s personal values and a feeling that one is being inauthentic, all leading to lower satisfaction with self and life more generally Admittedly, the focus of this research is on an individual who, for whatever reason, has chosen to conceal information from another. Such act of secrecy is a voluntary act. To the contrary, the obligation to maintain a secret in a commercial or employment setting usually originates from a third party, such as one’s employer or business partner. Presumably, concealing a personal secret might be expected to exact greater psychological cost than maintaining a trade secret about the company’s chemical formula - perhaps, but not a certainty. A secret is a secret is a secret. As such, the research suggests that there may also be a psychological price to be paid by each person obligated to maintain a trade secret, which should be taken into account when assessing the true overall cost of maintaining a commercial trade secret. Once this is recognized, it raises the question whether companies are paying sufficient attention to the least psychologically harmful ways to ensure that employees are maintaining trade secrets. Simply saying, “it is a contractual obligation”, and leaving the matter there, might ultimately cost both the employee and the company.
DOI: 10.1093/jiplp/jpx137
Author: Neil Wilkof
Language: English
Subfield: Management of Technology and Innovation
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2737726491