This research explored people’s willingness to share ambiguous and nonambiguous information in collaborative and competitive organizational settings. Using a resource-based perspective, we hypothesized (a) people will be more likely to share ambiguous information with their collaborators and nonambiguous information with their competitors and (b) their willingness to share ambiguous information with their collaborators will be moderated by task familiarity so that they will share more ambiguous information as their familiarity with the task increases. The results of five experiments supported these hypotheses. Paradoxically, participants tended to judge ambiguous information as less important than nonambiguous information despite preferring to share ambiguous information with their collaborators. Finally, a correspondence emerged between the task context and participants’ preference for sharing information: For concrete tasks, participants preferred to share nonambiguous information with their collaborators but for ambiguous tasks, participants preferred to share ambiguous information with their collaborators. Theoretical and practical organizational implications are discussed.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Aldag, R. J.
, & Stearns, T. M. (1988). Issues in research methodology. Journal of Management, 14, 253-276.
2.
Alicke, M.
, Klotz, M., Breitenbrecher, D., Yurak, T., & Vredenburg, D. (1995). Personal contact, individuation, and the better-than-average effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 804-825.
3.
Allison, S. T.
, McQueen, L. R., & Schaerfl, L. M. (1992). Social decision making processes and the equal partitionment of shared resources. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 28, 23-42.
4.
Allison, S. T.
, Messick, D. M., & Goethals, G. R. (1989). On being better but not smarter than others: The Muhammad Ali effect. Social Cognition, 7, 275-296.
5.
Amit, R.
, & Schoemaker, P. J. H. (1993). Strategic assets and organizational rent. Strategic Management Journal, 14, 33-36.
6.
Ansari, M. A.
, & Kapoor, A. (1987). Organizational context and upward influence tactics. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 40, 39-49.
7.
Arad, S.
, & Carnevale, P. J. (1994). Partisanship effects in judgments of fairness and trust in third parties in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 38, 423-451.
8.
Axelrod, R.
(1984). The evolution of cooperation. New York: Basic Books.
9.
Barney, J. B.
(1986). Organizational culture: Can it be a source of sustained competitive advantage?Academy of Management Review, 11, 656-665.
10.
Barney, J. B.
(1991). Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of Management, 17, 90-120.
11.
Barney, J. B.
(1999). How a firm’s capabilities affect boundary decisions. Sloan Management Review, 2, 137-145.
12.
Bowen, J.
, & Qiu, Z. (1992). Satisficing when buying information. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 51, 471-481.
13.
Brown, J. D.
(1986). Evaluations of self and others: Self-enhancement biases in social judgments. Social Cognition, 4, 353-376.
14.
Budner, S.
(1962). Intolerance of ambiguity as a personality variable. Journal of Personality, 30, 29-50.
15.
Cartwright, D.
, & Zander, A. (1968). Groupdynamics: Research and theory. New York: Harper & Row.
16.
Chen, M. J.
(1996). Competitor analysis and inter-firm rivalry: Toward a theoretical integration. Academy of Management Review, 21, 100-134.
17.
Clark, K. E.
, & Clark, M. B. (Eds.). (1990). Measures of leadership. West Orange, NJ: Library of America.
18.
Conner, K. R.
, & Prahalad, C. K. (1996). A resource-based theory of the firm: Knowledge versus opportunism. Organization Science, 7, 477-501.
19.
Contractor, N. S.
, & Ehrlich, M. C. (1993). Strategic ambiguity in the birth of a loosely coupled organization. Management Communication Quarterly, 6(3), 251-281.
20.
Daft, R. L.
, & Lengel, R. H. (1986). Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural design. Management Science, 32(5), 554-571.
21.
Daft, R. L.
, & Macintosh, N. B. (1981). A tentative exploration into the amount and equivocality of information processing in organizational work units. Administrative Science Quarterly, 26, 207-224.
22.
Deutsch, M.
(1953). The effects of cooperation and competition on group process. In D. Cartwright & A. Zander (Eds.), Groupdynamics. New York: Harper & Row.
23.
Deutsch, M.
(1962). Cooperation and trust: Some theoretical notes. In M. R. Jones (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation (pp. 275-319). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
24.
Donnellon, A.
, Gray, B., & Bougon, M. G. (1986). Communication, meaning, and organized action. Administrative Science Quarterly, 31, 43-55.
25.
Driskill, L. P.
, & Goldstein, J. R. (1986). Uncertainty: Theory and practice in organizational communication. Journal of Business Communication, 23(3), 41-56.
26.
Dyer, J. H.
, & Singh, H. (1998). The relational view: Cooperative strategy and sources of interorganizational competitive advantage. Academy of Management Review, 23(4), 660-679.
27.
Einhorn, H. J.
, & Hogarth, R. M. (1986). Decision making under ambiguity. Journal of Business, 59(4), 225-250.
28.
Eisenberg, E. M.
(1984). Ambiguity as strategy in organizational communication. Communication Monographs, 51, 227-242.
29.
Felson, R. B.
(1985). Ambiguity and bias in the self-concept. Social Psychology Quarterly, 44, 64-69.
30.
Festinger, L.
(1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
31.
Fishbein, M.
, & Ajzen, I. (1975). Belief, attitude, intention and behavior: An introduction to theory and research. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
32.
Galbraith, J. R.
(1977). Organizational design. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
33.
Gherardi, S.
(1995). When will he say: “Today the plates are soft”? The management of ambiguity and situated decision-making. Studies in Cultures, Organizations, and Societies, 1, 9-27.
34.
Ghosh, D.
, & Ray, M. R. (1992). Risk attitude, ambiguity intolerance and decision making: An exploratory investigation. Decision Sciences, 23, 431-444.
35.
Greenberg, J.
, & Eskew, D. (1990, August). The role of role playing in organizational research. Paper presented at the meeting of the Research Methods Division of the Academy of Management, San Francisco, CA.
36.
Gruenfeld, D. H.
, Mannix, E. A., Williams, K. Y., & Neale, M. A. (1996). Group composition and decision making: How member familiarity and information distribution affect process and performance. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 67, 1-15.
37.
Gulati, R.
(1995). Does familiarity breed trust? The implications of repeated ties for contractual choice in alliances. Academy of Management Journal, 38, 85-112.
38.
Handy, C.
(1990). The age of unreason. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
39.
Hatch, M. J.
, & Erlich, S. B. (1993). Spontaneous humor as an indicator of paradox and ambiguity in organizations. Organization Studies, 14(4), 505-526.
40.
Heider, F.
(1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: John Wiley.
41.
Henry, R. A.
(1995). Improving group judgment accuracy: Information sharing and determining the best member. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 62(2), 190-197.
42.
Hitt, M. A.
, Ireland, R. D., & Hoskisson, R. E. (2001). Strategic management: Competitiveness and globalization (4th ed.). Cincinnati, OH: South-Western College Publishing.
43.
Isen, A. M.
, & Patrick, R. (1983). The effects of positive feelings on risk taking: When the chips are down. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 31, 194-202.
44.
Itami, H.
(1987). Mobilizing invisible assets. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
45.
Kale, P.
, Singh, H., & Perlmutter, H. (2000). Learning and protection of proprietary assets in strategic alliances: Building relational capital. Strategic Management Journal, 21, 217-237.
46.
Kelley, H. H.
(1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Levine (Ed.), Symposium on motivation (Vol. 15, pp. 192-240). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
47.
Lado, A. A.
, Boyd, N. G., & Hanlon, S. C. (1997). Competition, cooperation, and the search for economic rents: A syncretic model. Academy of Management Review, 22(1), 110-141.
48.
Lerner, M. J.
(1970). The desire for justice and reactions to victims. In J. Macaulay & L. Berkowitz (Eds.), Altruism and helping behavior (pp. 205-229). New York: Academic Press.
49.
Lipshitz, R.
, & Strauss, O. (1997). Coping with uncertainty: A naturalistic decision-making analysis. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 69(2), 149-163.
50.
Martin, J.
, & Meyerson, D. (1988). Organizational cultures and the denial, channeling and acknowledgment of ambiguity. In L. R. Pondy, R. J. Boland, & H. Thomas (Eds.), Managing ambiguity and change (pp. 93-126). New York: John Wiley.
Messick, D.
, Bloom, S., Boldizar, J., & Samuelson, C. (1985). Why we are fairer than others. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 21, 480-500.
53.
Mintzberg, H.
(1972). The nature of managerial work. New York: Harper & Row.
54.
Mosakowski, E.
(1998). Managerial prescriptions under the resource-based view of strategy: The example of motivational techniques. Strategic Management Journal, 19, 1169-1182.
55.
Murnighan, J. K.
, & Roth, A. E. (1983). Expecting continued play in prisoner’s dilemma game: A test of several models. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 27, 279-300.
56.
Naisbitt, J.
(1982). Megatrends: Ten new directions transforming our lives. New York: Warner.
57.
Nisbett, R. E.
, & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84, 231-259.
58.
Norton, R. W.
(1975). Measurement of ambiguity tolerance. Journal of Personality Assessment, 39(6), 607-619.
59.
Osborne, D. J.
(1987). Egronomics as work. New York: John Wiley.
60.
Parks, C. D.
, Henager, R. F., & Scamahorn, S. D. (1996). Trust and reactions to messages of intent in social dilemmas. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 40, 134-151.
61.
Parks, J. M.
, & Conlon, E. J. (1990). Justification and the processing of information. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 20(9), 703-723.
62.
Perrow, C.
(1970). Organizational analysis: A sociological view. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
63.
Pfeffer, J.
(1982). Organizations and organization theory. Boston, MA: Pitman.
64.
Putnam, L. L.
, & Sorenson, R. L. (1982). Equivocal messages in organizations. Human Communication Research, 8, 114-132.
65.
Rumelt, R. P.
(1984). Towards a strategic theory of the firm. In R. B. Lamb (Ed.), Competitive strategic management (pp. 556-570). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
66.
Rumelt, R. P.
, Schendel, D. E., & Teece, D. J. (1994). Fundamental issues in strategy. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
67.
Schrader, S.
, Riggs, W. M., & Smith, R. P. (1993). Choice over uncertainty and ambiguity in technical problem solving. Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, 10, 73-99.
68.
Shaver, K. G.
(1970). Defensive attribution: Effects of severity and relevance on the responsibility assigned for an accident. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 14, 101-113.
69.
Tajfel, H.
, Flament, C., Billig, M. G., & Bundy, R. F. (1971). Social categorization and intergroup behavior. European Journal of Social Psychology, 1, 149-177.
70.
Taylor, K. A.
(1995). Testing credit and blame attributions as explanations for choices under ambiguity. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 64(2), 128-137.
71.
Teece, D. J.
, Pisano, G., & Shuen, A. (1990). Firm capabilities, resources and the concept of strategy [Mimeograph]. Berkeley: University of California at Berkeley, Haas School of Business.
72.
Thompson, J. D.
(1967). Organizations in action. New York: McGraw-Hill.
73.
Trevino, L. K.
, & Youngblood, S. A. (1990). Bad apples in bad barrels: A causal analysis of ethical decision making behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75, 378-385.
74.
Van Lange, P. A. M.
(1991). Being better but not smarter than others: The Muhammad Ali effect at work in the interpersonal situations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17, 689-693.
75.
Viscusi, W. K.
, Magat, W. A., & Huber, J. (1991). Communication of ambiguous risk information. Theory and Decision, 31, 159-173.
76.
Wamsley, G. L.
, & Zald, M. N. (1973). The political economy of public organizations. Lexington, MA: Heath.
77.
Weick, K. E.
(1969). The social psychology of organizing. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
78.
Weick, K. E.
(1979). The social psychology of organizing (2nd ed.). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
79.
Zald, M. N.
(1970). Political economy: A framework for comparative analysis. In M. Zald (Ed.), Power in organizations. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
80.
Zimbardo, P. G.
, & Leippe, M. R. (1991). The psychology of attitude change and social influence. New York: McGraw-Hill.
