Conducting Literature Review on the topic “Strategic use of private information”

How to Conduct Literature Search & Review on the topic “Strategic use of private information”

The strategic use of private information is to gain a competitive advantage by leveraging private, confidential or non-public information.  Individuals and organizations can employ various strategies and tactics in diverse fields, such as business, finance, politics, and personal interactions. 

To effectively conduct literature search and review on this broad topic, it's crucial to define a specific scope and identify relevant keywords. Here's a step-by-step approach to a focused research.

1. Define a manageable scope for your topic research by determining its breadth and depth. Start by asking broad questions, then break down your main question into smaller, more focused sub-questions, such as:

• What tactics, actions, and techniques implemented in the strategic use of private information?
• Effects of strategic use of private information?
• What specific aspects of strategic use of private information are you interested in?
• What is your focus in terms of types of information, trade secrets, consumer data, inside data?
• How does information asymmetry affect strategic decision-making?
• Focusing on economics transactions, business negotiations, risk management, or marketing perspectives?
• What are the ethical and legal implications of using private information strategically?

2. Once you decide on the focus and scope of research, try to be more specific by deconstructing the entire topic into discrete, constituent component – keywords or concepts – as below:

• Private OR confidential OR non-public OR nonpublic OR undisclosed OR exclusive OR proprietary
• “information asymmetry” or “asymmetric information”
•  “information advantage” and “information disclosure”
• “negotiation tactics” and “information asymmetry” 
• “Bargaining Power” and “information asymmetry” 
•  “selective disclosure” or “Timing of Disclosure”
• Creating Uncertainty
• data privacy and ethical implications
• Market Transactions
• Business intelligence or Competitive intelligence and Competitive advantage
• adverse selection
• Signaling Games
• Consumer trust and Personal data profiling
•  Banks or lenders or auditors or insiders or executive or CEO or CFO
• private information in competitive markets
• asymmetric information in economic transactions
• private information in decision-making processes

Note: When combining 2-3 different keywords/concepts together in searching the databases (listed in Step 3), chances are it will be easy to obtain targeted specific results.  What concepts to combine together and how to combine and modify? That will mainly depend upon the number of results you initially retrieved, plus the nature and complexity of your research needs.

3. Use UTSA subscription Databases (most general or Business or Economics related databases) to search the above keywords/concepts:

• EBSCOhost – most comprehensive subject broad databases at our library
• Business Source Complete:
• ProQuest
• JSTOR
• Emerald Insights
• Springer Nature Link
• Google Scholar
• All these databases are listed on this page - https://libguides.utsa.edu/az.php

4. Exploit Search Techniques to Their Full Potential:  In using the above structured library subscription databases (except for Google Scholar), always try to take advantage of Boolean operators (AND, OR) and question mark (“ ”), and asterisk (*).  In addition, try limiting your keywords/concepts to three content-related fields -- subject, title, and abstract fields. All of these can help you get the best possible results from databases.

• OR = Broaden results
  1.  CEO OR CFO – databases will generate any results as long as there is a word “CEO” even without CFO, vice versa.
  2. Private OR confidential OR non-public OR nonpublic OR undisclosed OR exclusive OR proprietary  - as long as there is one of these words, you can get results.
• AND = Narrow results
  1. CEO AND Banker  - databases will only generate those results that have both CEO AND Banker appearing in the records.
• The asterisk (*) = truncation or wildcard.
  1. Audit* – databases will generate any results containing:  auditor, auditors, auditing, audited, audits, Auditability …

• Use of question mark (“X Y Z”):  forces a phrase search meaning words 'X', 'Y', and 'Z' must be in that exact order.  E.g.:
  1. “Information asymmetry” - the word information MUST appear before asymmetry
• Use of content-related fields like: subject, title, and abstract.
  • Keyword = Database will search anywhere within.
  • Su = Only search subject field, not anywhere, full text, abstract… 
  • Ti = Only search title field
  • Ab = Only search abstract

5. Refine your Search: after getting some initial search results, try to use different keywords/concepts in different combination and limited certain different fields of your desire, so to get optimal results:

• Concept 1: “information asymmetry” OR “asymmetric information”
• Concept 2: Private OR confidential OR non-public OR nonpublic OR undisclosed OR exclusive OR proprietary
• Concept 3: Bargaining or negotiate* or contract* or transaction or transfer* or monopol* or business
• Concept 4: audit*

• Here are some examples of search results by combining different concepts and limited to some specific fields from USA subscription databases - EBSCOhost:
  1. Link to 87 Results  - TI ( “information asymmetry” or “asymmetric information” ) AND TI ( Private OR confidential OR non-public OR nonpublic OR undisclosed OR exclusive OR proprietary )
  2. Link to 311 Results - SU ( “information asymmetry” or “asymmetric information” ) AND TI ( Private OR confidential OR non-public OR nonpublic OR undisclosed OR exclusive OR proprietary )
  3. Link to 42 Results -- SU ( “information asymmetry” or “asymmetric information” ) AND SU ( Bargaining or negotiate* or contract* or transaction or transfer* or monopol* or business ) AND SU audit*
  4. Link to 24 Results --
     1. SU ( “information asymmetry” or “asymmetric information” ) AND AB ( Bargaining or negotiate* or contract* or transaction or transfer* or monopol* ) AND SU ( company or business or organization or corporation or accounting or finance ) AND TI ( Private OR confidential OR non-public OR nonpublic OR undisclosed OR exclusive OR proprietary )

6. Analyze and organize the retrieved literature according to your category, such as various theories, models, themes, perspectives, or arguments. For example:

• game theory,
• information asymmetry,
• signaling theory,
• interdisciplinary approaches: from fields like psychology, sociology, economics and political science,
• Risk Assessment: Evaluating the strategic use of private information in real-world contexts of information asymmetry, including potential reputation damage, breach of trust, and other risks
• Ethical concerns and legal implications information asymmetry.

7. Synthesize, Critique, and Write the Literature Review

• Identify Gaps and Opportunities: Conduct a thorough review of existing literature to pinpoint areas with limited research. This may include underexplored contexts, emerging use of information by Generative artificial intelligence (AI).
• Critique Methodologies: Assess the research methodologies employed in previous studies. Evaluate the strengths and limitations, and discuss potential biases that may have influenced the findings of these studies.