The Motivation And Performance Of Firms In Industry-University-Research Institute Alliances: A Research Based On The Ecological Niche Theory

Technology innovation is born with integration and risk. Firms, universities and research institutes play different roles in technology innovation chains, so they need to cooperate to realize technology innovation. From the experience of many countries, we know that industry-university-research institute alliances have played an important role in enhancing the national innovation capacity. China has devoted to facilitating industry-university-research institute alliances for many years, and gained great achievements. However, there are also some problems such as insufficient collaboration dynamics and low performance. Many researchers explained the impacting factors of industry-university-research institute alliances performance from the view of cooperation governance, inter-organizational study and resource acquisition. But the extant researches still lack systematic deep analysis to explain the internal mechanics of different performance.Based on the ecological niche theory, the motivation of firms in industry-university-research institute alliances is analyzed in this article. The behavior characteristics of alliance partners are studied by evolutionary game theory. In addition, the relationship between the motivation of firms in industry-university-research institute alliances and performance is examined to explain how motivation influences alliance performance, and the theoretical framework of motivation-behavior-performance is tested by empirical analysis.With plenty of literature reviews, a combination of research methods such as theoretical analysis, concept interpretation, game theory, questionnaire and statistical analysis are used. As a result, some policy suggestions are provided for practice guidance. The conclusions include:(1)Based on the ecological niche theory, firms'ecological niche includes state and trend. State is the result of developing, learning and interacting with environment. And trend is the capability of integrating and utilizing resources. According to the different state and trend, the motivation why firms form alliances with universities and research institutes can be divided into four types, that is resource orientation, learning orientation, cost orientation and policy orientation.(2)Based on evolutionary game theory, the behavior characteristics of alliance partners are analyzed. The results show that, if firms, universities and research institutes gain more excess revenue when they take mutualism behavior than opportunism behavior, the partners can take mutualism behavior or opportunism behavior, which depends on the probability of partners'choice. With the enhancement of niche state and trend, the dynamics to gain excess revenue from industry-university alliance decreased, while the probability to take opportunism behavior increases. There exists an optimal proportion of excess revenue allocation that maximizes the probability of mutualism behavior. The greater of niche state and trend, the more excess revenue should be gained, which can enhance partners to take mutualism behavior in alliances.(3)The motivation why firms form alliances with universities and research institutes has positive impact on alliance performance. With analysis of 136 samples, the results show that resource orientation motivation, learning orientation and cost orientation can enhance alliance performance.(4)The motivation why firms form alliances with universities and research institutes have positive impact on firms'behavior. Resource orientation, learning orientation and cost orientation motivation can promote firms to take active cooperative behavior in alliances.(5)The cooperative behavior of firms has significant mediating effect on the relationship between motivation and performance. The cooperative behavior of firms plays a whole mediating role between resource orientation, cost orientation, policy orientation motivation and alliance performance, and a partial mediating role between learning orientation and alliance performance.The above research results help to understand deeply about the relationship of motivation of firms in industry-university-research institute alliance, cooperative behavior and alliance performance. Compared with other researches, this article has major theoretical innovation as follows:(1)Based on ecological niche theory, analyzing the motivation why firms form alliance with universities and research institutes. Extant researches mainly study the motivation of firms in industry-university-research institute alliances from one perspective, lacking attention to the multidimension and complexity of motivation. This article introduces ecological niche theory to research into the difference of motivation based on different niche state and trend, which break through the research paradigm of single view.(2)Based on extant researches of inter-organizational cooperative behavior, dividing the behavior of alliance partner into mutualism behavior and opportunism behavior, studying the behavior characteristics of alliance partners by evolutionary game theory,. This article makes up the theoretical research of inter-organizational cooperative behavior, and provides reference for firms to meet the expectation and take precaution to against opportunism behavior.( 3 ) From the process of industry-university-research institute alliance formation, providing a theoretical model based on motivation-behavior-performance perspective, and testing the theory with empirical analysis, which extend the research on the impacting factors of industry-university-research institute alliance performance, enrich the research in this filed, and provide valuable guidance for industry-university-research institute alliance practice in China.Some limits of this article are discussed and the issues that need to be studied in the future are presented finally.