Roxanne S. Abbas wrote:
> Several days ago Richard Berger, in response to my statement:
>
> >> Although I can understand their rationale, this
> >> practice of restricting the flow of learning violates my value system and
> >> I am no longer willing to work under this constraint.
>
> responded with:
>
> >With all due respect, your value system may need further examination.
> >Being a LO should not mean that the LO must share its trade secrets on
> >an unrestricted basis to its consultants or the outside world.
>
> Since reading Richard's message, I have been trying to think of a real
> life situation where I would support restricting learning. I have thought
> of two.
>
> 1) I have known a few people who I believe to be corupt; who knowingly
> and intentionally engage in practices that hurt people or seriously damage
> our world. I would not help them to expand and succeed in these
> practices.
>
> 2) If I were struggling to feed myself and my family, I would probably be
> much more concerned about my trade secrets.
Roxanne:
What if your release of a company's trade secrets would have a likely
affect of destroying a small company that you had been consulting with?
Would you guard the secret and along with it the company and the
livelihoods of its employees? Or, would you on principle release the
secret in order to "support learning" to the company's competitors?
In reading and responding, please understand these direct questions are
meant only to learn and not to offend (the direct nature of my prior post
was misunderstood by one reader).
-- rkb
[Host's Note: Thanks, everyone, for the contributions on this thread.
Somewhere in the middle there is a gray area in which the pros and cons
are not so clear for sharing vs. keeping secret. What principles or
criteria should guide us in this area? In my experience, and I'll add a
message or two shortly, there is a *great* deal more sharing with
"competitors" going on now that in past decades. ...Rick]
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ BERGER LAW OFFICE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tel. (508) 478-9647 _/|\_ FAX: (508) 478-9648 rkberger@rkb.com __|__ http://www.rkb.com ~~~~ "Aggressively Protecting Business & Employee Rights" ~~~~~~~~~~~~Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>