Organizational Perspective of New R&D Institutions:An SCGP Theoretical Framework
It has been over 20 years since the establishment of the first new R&D institution.The emergence of new R&D institutions is precisely in the context of deep integration of government,industry,and academia,which is of great significance for solving the problem of"bottleneck"in key core technologies,promoting achievement transformation,promoting the construction of regional innovation systems,and promoting high-quality economic development.The existing literature has explored the new R&D institutions from the perspectives of formation methods,resource investment,governance mechanisms,performance evaluation.However,there are few literatures on research on new research and develop-ment institutions from an organizational perspective,and there is a lack of an overall analytical framework.From an organi-zational perspective,the study proposes that new a R&D institution is an industrial R&D organization formed through cross-border integration and resource integration.Drawing on the"Structure-Conduct-Performance"(SCP)framework of industrial organization theory,this study constructs a"Structure-Conduct-Mechanism-Performance"(SCGP)analysis frame-work by considering the need for new R&D institutions to ensure organizational operation through formal governance mechanisms.From organizational structure perspective,new R&D institutions have three organizational attributes:first,platform organization.New R&D institutions play a bridge intermediary role,creating value together with other organiza-tions in the entire innovation ecosystem.Second,hybrid organization.New R&D institutions are composite carrier innova-tion organizations with multiple organizational goals,functions,and identities.Third,intermediary organization.New R&D institutions cross the boundaries among government,industry and university,and require formal governance mechanisms to coordinate and carry out deep cooperation.From organizational conduct perspective,new R&D institutions engage in various R&D innovation activities such as scientific research,technological development,pilot and scale up,product development,and enterprise incubation,achieving value through integrated R&D.From governance perspective,new R&D institutions operate under the joint action of internal governance mechanisms such as decision-making mechanism,talent system,incentive mechanism,and risk sharing mechanism,as well as external government support mechanism.From orga-nizational performance perspective,new R&D institutions can be measured from technical performance,R&D service per-formance,and economic performance.Among them,technical performance is the foundation of R&D service performance,R&D service performance is the intermediate value of providing R&D services to small and medium-sized enterprises,and economic performance is the purpose of implementing new R&D institutions to serve the social economy.According to the SCGP framework,a case study was conducted on Jiangsu Industrial Technology Research Institute(JITRI).It was found that the JITRI had a three-level organizational structure of"council+headquarters of the institute+research institute";carried out integrated innovation through contract research,innovation consortiums,the establishment of venture capital funds,and joint training of graduate students with universities;explored governance mechanisms such as"one institute with two sys-tems",and"combination of allocation and investment",which has achieved high organizational performance operations.The SCGP framework has broad application space in case studies and empirical studies.For example,from organizational struc-ture perspective,the number,type,and resource allocation of hosting units will be an influencing factor on the organizational performance of new R&D institutions.The main contributions of the research are:firstly,the construction of the"SCGP"analysis framework enriches the connotation and extension of industrial organization theory.Secondly,from an organiza-tional perspective,it deeply reveals the factors that affect the performance of new R&D institutions,expanding the existing research paradigm.Thirdly,the study deepens the application of the SCGP analysis framework through a single case study conducted by JITRI.
New R&D institutionsplatform organizationintermediary organizationhybrid organizationSCGP framework