Intercollegiate Resource Sharing In University Towns:Problems And Countermeasures

In China, university towns are supposed to be operated on the principle that colleges need to be open and share their resources with each other completely.However, there is still a huge gap between the anticipated goal and what has been achieved in resource sharing even though much effort has already been made by the university towns. In terms of theoretical research, some previous studies using case study method mainly focus on investigating the issues of individual university town,and no literature sheds light on proposing a general solution to improve the openness and resource sharing within the colleges in university towns.This thesis aims to study the problems and countermeasures of Chinese collegiate resource-sharing in accordance with the thought of "revealing, analyzing and solving problems". First, by defining and clarifying the connotation and denotation of relevant concepts, a survey relating to the intercollegiate resource sharing is conducted to reveal the existing problems. Second, the main causes of the problems will be analyzed from two perspectives of institutional arrangement and organizational structure. Finally, some countermeasures will be proposed based on the above analyses.Institutional innovation is beneficial for Chinese university towns to improve the intercollegiate resource sharing. So far, in regard to the openness and resource sharing between colleges in university towns, there are still some existing problems caused by the current institutional arrangements, such as the issue of rational 'economic man',transaction fee, principal agent system, resource allocation system, evaluation system,and the coordination and management system. In order to promote the intercollegiate resource sharing in Chinese university towns, institutional innovation should be encouraged by improving the mechanism of interest guarantee, optimizing resource allocation, strengthening legal policy, and constructing network management platforms.Organizational structure optimization could also be helpful to promote intercollegiate resource sharing. Presently, there are some defects of organizational structure in resource sharing in Chinese university towns. The internal and external structures of universities and the structure of university towns are in a linear pattern,which makes it difficult to coordinate horizontally the relationship between independent organizations, and it is also hard to integrate various resources and support intercollegiate resource sharing. Besides, the two organizations of the local government and the management committee of university town always fail to take their own responsibility due to the unclear liabilities and insufficient support. In order to resolve this problem, the university towns should apply intercollegiate matrix organization and network-based organizational structure, and the government should focus on coordinating, guiding and managing public affairs while the legitimately verified university town committee plays its role in coordination and providing services other than getting involved in the general administrative and social affairs.Furthermore, the university town committee should also apply the matrix organizational structure, which is comprehensive in roles, efficient, effective and flexible in structure by receiving entrustment and authorization from governments at various hierarchies and horizontally cooperating with stake holders of the university towns.This study contributes to the literature in three ways. First, this study attempts to explore the issues on intercollegiate resource sharing in university towns from the perspective of institutional arrangement and organization structure. Second, it also contributes to the literature by analyzing the roles, rights and liabilities of local governments and management committees in the intercollegiate resource sharing in university towns. Furthermore, by comparison with the previous studies focusing on individual university town, more comprehensive analysis is first conducted to offer general countermeasures to improve the intercollegiate resource sharing between the colleges in Chinese university towns.