Research On Institutional Diffusion Mechanism In China's Development Zones

The establishment and diffusion of China's development zones have accompanied the historical process of the country's development in the last 40 years.It can be said that the development zone is a bright pearl in the 40-year history of China's reform and opening up.It is also an important witness of the history of reform and opening up.Since its initial establishment,the development zone has spread from coastal cities to inland cities,from point to surface,and gradually spread to the whole country.In the process of the diffusion of development zones,they have made great economic achievements,and have become the main carrier of local government's economic development,which also makes local governments generally regard development zones as the main power source to drive economic development.As is known to all,the modern nation-state implements the government power system based on administrative regions,and constructs the national governance space on this basis.Therefore,modern countries should take administrative system as the foundation,form administrative system,and promote regional economic development.China's local government system is a system of people's congresses as stipulated in the Constitution.However,to our surprise,the local government has generally adopted a development zone system outside the government system,as the mainstream form of system to drive economic development.To a large extent,this paper is based on this basis.In order to explain this contradictory phenomenon,this paper takes the diffusion mechanism of the development zone system in China as the research object,and mainly starts with the problem consciousness of how the development zone system spreads throughout the country.The internal correlation between the organization of development zone and the institutional environment is the logical premise of this paper.This paper uses the analytical tool from the perspective of organizational system theory to form an analytical framework to explain the institutional construction and diffusion mechanism of China's development zone.Based on this logical framework,the research of the main part of this paper explores the diffusion mechanism of development zone system from the institutional construction,organizational-level and organizational field-level.Institutional construction is the basis and premise of institutional diffusion.The development zones in our country are directly promoted by the central government.The development zone is a new organizational form constructed by the central government,which is the founder of the system,outside the traditional power system.Under the pressure of the traditional planned economy system environment,in order to seek the breakthrough of the system constraint,we need to construct a new organizational form outside the system system,in order to achieve the reform of the original system system,and then promote the purpose of national economic development.Under the institutional background of our country,only the central government has sufficient resources and mobilization ability to complete the task of constructing a new organizational form.The central government,as the institutional builder,has completed the institutional construction of the development zone and promoted its further institutionalization through the supply of effective institutional resources and a variety of strategies.It forms the organization field which is the basis of the existence and operation of the system.The central government made use of its resources and mobilization ability to promote the formation of the organizational field of development zones,including local governments at all levels,administrative committees of development zones and enterprises entering the zones.Within the organizational field of the development zone,the central government is always the key actor in the dominant position.The leading position of the central government is also the premise for it to become the institutional builder in the field of organization.The organization field also provides the basic institutional space for the construction and diffusion of the development zone system.At the organizational-level,along with the construction of organizations and the formation of organizational fields,in the interaction between organization field and institutional environment,the development zone has to submit to the pressure of institutional environment in order to obtain the resources needed for the survival of institutions,so as to meet the requirements of the legitimacy of institutional environment.The legitimacy mechanism of the institutional environment requires the organization to keep the consistency with the institutional environment,which makes the organization tend to be similar,and also makes the structure and behavior of all the development zone organizations show isomorphism.This isomorphism mainly exists at the organizational level,that is,organizational isomorphism.At the organizational field-level,With the organization isomorphism of the development zone,the organizational form of the development zone begins to spread gradually.In the process of organizational diffusion of development zones,institutional environment forms institutional isomorphism of development zones at the institutional level through such diffusion mechanisms as coercive isomorphism,imitative isomorphism and normative isomorphism.The institutional isomorphism of development zones promotes the organizational form of development zones to spread from coastal cities to the whole country.Through the analysis of institutional construction,organizational-level and organizational field-level,this paper holds that the construction and diffusion of organizational form in the development zone are the result of the interaction between organization and institutional environment.Development zone organization is faced with not only the pressure of technical environment,but also the pressure of system environment.The interaction between the organization and the institutional environment of the development zone is the key to determine the organizational form of the development zone,as well as the system construction and the diffusion logic.As a result,the interaction between the organization and the institutional environment is the main driving force for the establishment and diffusion of the system in the development zone.The reason why local governments at all levels generally adopt the development zone system to develop local economy is not only because the development zone system can effectively drive the development of local economy,but also because the system form of development zone meets the requirements of the legitimacy of the entire institutional environment.