The Institutionalization Process Of China’s New Energy Vehicle Industry

The Chinese New Energy Vehicle Industry is a strategic emerging industry supported by the Chinese government. Under the numerous innovation policy, the industry has been progressively promoted by the central government, local governments and enterprises in the past20years. This paper investigated the institutionalization process of the industry, and examines the distributed agency of various embedded in the industry. Some important conclusions are reached.Firstly, government policy is an important driving force to promote emerging industry. From two dimensions—policy instrument and innovation value chain, content analysis is conducted in the paper on37items of central policy text related to China’s new energy vehicle industry. It shows that (1) the environmental-side policy instruments are used most frequently;(2) the policy instruments present gradual improvement from supply side to environmental side and then the demand side;(3) the central policies focus on the R&D and market promotion of the emerging industry;(4) government use different types of policy instruments to promote different links of innovation chain so as to promote the emerging industry.Secondly, this paper concludes the general rules of the institutionalization process of an emerging industry in the background of transition economy, and it discusses the collective institutional entrepreneurship and distributed agency of three different types of actors.(1) The development of an emerging industry has two respects, the progress of technological R&D, and the population of new products;(2) the building order of the three institutional pillars is that regulative one first, and then the normative one and the cognitive one forms last;(3) the central government, local governments and enterprises have successively led the R&D, industrialization, and commercialization periods of the industry;(4) this initiating and supporting relationship is originated from the distributed agency among different types of actors, which is attributed to their motive discrepancy.Thirdly, we pay attention to the collective institutional entrepreneurship and distributed agency among the same types of actors. We find that:(1) there are alliances according to different regions, different technical routes and different business models, with actors cooperating within the same alliance and competing between different alliances;(2) the distributed agency within the same type of actors is attributed to their capability discrepancy, which brings the coexistence of multiple development routes;(3) the capability of the local government reflects in three aspects: local industrial foundation, local economic strength and institution innovation capability;(4) the capability of enterprise reflects in three aspects:technology, capital and market.Fourth, viewing the business model innovation of new energy vehicle as institutional entrepreneurship, this study compares the institutional entrepreneurship in different types of organizational fields. We find that:(1) in less institutionalized unified fields, the main strategy is to connect with the source of legitimacy, government;(2) in less institutionalized fragmented fields, the main strategy is to quickly form alliances and diffuse the new institution, so as to seize the market;(3) in highly institutionalized unified fields, the main strategy is to find seek common areas with the current dominant actor, so as to reduce the resistance;(4) in highly institutionalized fragmented fields, the main strategy is to propose a new idea, including mining new market segments or seek the middle ground among current modes.By investigating the innovation policy and institutional entrepreneurship in the development of emerging industry, this paper contributes to the research of institutional entrepreneurship and suggest practical implications for the development of emerging industry.(1) The paper explores the relationship between policy tools and innovation value chain, thus describing the mechanism of how innovation policy promotes emerging industry.(2) This paper expands the scope of agency, explains the sources of actors’ agency, and describes the relationship between distributed agency and collective institutional entrepreneurship. Recent work on institutional entrepreneurship interprets a narrow scope of actors’institutional agency, and in this paper, we explores how the distributed agency of various actors enables and influences the collective institutional entrepreneurship of the development process of China’s NEV industry.(3) This paper analyzes the social status of institutional entrepreneur, the greatest difficulties and main strategies of the institutional entrepreneurship in each type of organizational field, which contributes to the research of institutional entrepreneurship.(4) This paper provide good suggestions for how to make innovation policy, how to manage actors’ distributed agency, and what strategies to choose under different organizational fields.