The Impact Of Industry–university–research Institute Collaboration Network On The Academic Performance Of Academic Teams

The academic institutions shoulder four main missions in the national innovation systems,namely,talent cultivation,scientific research,social service and cultural heritage.Actually,the academic teams,as the important members in the academic institutions,are the actual executors of four main missions discussed above,and they particularly play a crtical role in scientific research and social service,including the research collaborations with enterprises.So,the Industry–University–Research Institute(IUR)collaboration is a process during which the academic teams form the cooperative relationships with industries to transfer the knowledge across oroganizational boundaries.In today’s knowledge-driven economy era when the open innovation has become the main paradigm,the collaborations between the academic teams and the enterprises have been transformed from the point-to-point model to the network one,the IUR collaboration network has become the most important external environment for academic teams.However,few studies have devoted attentions on what influence mechanisms and pathways that IUR collaboration network exerts on the academic performance of academic teams.Moreover,when the academic teams,as an important organization creating knowledge in the national innovation systems,jump into IUR collaborations to improve the innovation performance of enterprises and promote economic development,what impact do IUR collaborations have on the academic performance of academic teams? This issue is still subject to considerable controversy in academia.So,this paper explores the influence mechanism and path that the IUR collaborations exert on the academic performance of academic teams from the social collaborative network perspective,which has some significance in theory and practice for IUR collaborations.In this study,the issue,namely,whether the IUR collaboration network affects the academic performance of academic teams via organization learning,is investigated by combining theoretical research and empirical analysis,literature review and empirical investigation,as well as qualitative research and quantitative analysis.Firstly,this study makes a review of the related studies on IUR collaboration(network),organization learning and academic performance.This not only enables us to grasp the current studies and the potential research gaps in those research fields,but also establishes a theoretical basis for the later empirical research.Secondly,based on related theories such as IUR collaboration theory,social collaboration network theory and resource-based view theory,as well as the related IUR collaboration studies both at home and abroad,this study sorts out the logical relationship among the IUR collaboration network,organization learning and academic performance of academic teams,and subsequently constructs the research model among which the IUR collaboration network is the independent variables,organization learning is intermediary variable and academic performance is dependent variable from the perspective of academic teams,and then relevant research hypotheses are developed.Thirdly,the questionnaire scale is developed to capture the data of IUR collaboration network,organization learning and academic performance of academic teams.In the questionnaire scale,the IUR collaboration network is characterized from two dimensions,namely,visible dimension and invisible one,among which the visible dimension includes the centrality degree of academic teams,the strength of ties between academic teams and industries,and network scale,and invisible dimension is indexed by the knowledge distance between academic teams and industries.Moreover,the organization learning includes two dimensions,namely,exploratory learning and exploitative learning.In addition,the academic performance is defined as the research achievements that academic teams make by organization learning when they are involved in IUR collaboration network.Fourthly,the small sample test is introduced to remove the inappropriate items of questionnaire scale,and then the data acquisition is implemented by empirical investigation on the academic teams in China.After that,the multiple hierarchical regression analysis is used to verify hypotheses and theoretical model.By this way,the influence mechanism and the path that IUR collaboration network exerts on the academic performance of academic teams are revealed and this paper finds that there are two influence paths between the IUR collaboration network and academic performance of academic teams.More specifically,the one path:the IUR collaboration network has an inverted U-shaped effect on the exploratory learning,and then the exploratory learning further has a linear effect on the academic performance of academic teams,therefore resulting in an inverted U-shaped relationship between the IUR collaboration network and the academic performance of academic teams;the other path: the IUR collaboration network has a linear effect on the exploitative learning,and then the exploitative learning an inverted U-shaped effect on the academic performance of academic teams,therefore leading to an inverted U-shaped relationship between the IUR collaboration network and the academic performance of academic teams.Moreover,this study also has some meaningful guidelines in theory and practice,which are presented as follow:(1)This study attempts to open the "black box" on the influence path between the IUR collaboration network and the academic performance of academic teams by revealing how the IUR collaboration network exerts effect on the academic performance of academic teams,which fills research gap in existing literature that rarely focuses on this research topic so far.Meanwhile,our research findings present some inspiration on how to effectively manage the relationships between academic teams and industries for achieving the best for the academic performance.(2)This study explores how the strength of ties and the knowledge distance between academic teams and industries influence the academic performance of academic teams,which may give an enlightenment for the controversy about what impact that the IUR collaborations exert on the academic performance of academic organizations.Furthermore,this study gives some practice guidance for academic teams to maintain appropriate strength of ties and knowledge distance between them and industries for achieving the best for the academic performance.(3)This study investigates the impact of the organization learning on the organizational performance from the perspective of academic teams,which fills the research gap in existing literature that largely explores this topic from the perspective of industries.Moreover,this study has some guiding significance for academic teams to effectively promote organizational learning practices when they jump into IUR collaborations.