Do research institutes benefit from their network positions in research collaboration networks with industries or/and universities?

Kaihua Chen, Yi Zhang, Guilong Zhu and Rongping Mu

Technovation, 2020, vol. 94-95

Abstract: There is scarce empirical evidence on the impact of inter-organizational collaboration across research institutes, industries or/and universities on the scientific performance of research institutes. This paper fills this gap by examining how the research institutes’ bilateral/trilateral collaborations with industries or/and universities influence their research outputs from a network perspective. We construct a unique dataset based on the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ inter-organizational research collaboration networks with industries or/and universities, which enables us to build three homogeneous, heterogeneous and hybrid inter-organizational research networks as our multi-scenario sample. Our study confirms that the scientific performance of research institutes is significantly affected by their network positions in the research collaboration networks with industries or/and universities. Specifically, in the homogeneous “University-Research Institute” (UR) collaboration network, the degree centrality and the structural holes of the research institutes affect their scientific performance respectively in an inverted U-shaped manner and a positive linear one. By contrast, in both the heterogeneous “Industry-Research Institute” (IR) and the hybrid “Industry-University-Research Institute” (IUR) collaboration networks, the degree centrality and the structural holes of research institutes affect their scientific performance respectively in a positive linear manner and an inverted U-shaped one. Our findings indicate that the impact pattern of the network positions of innovative organizations on their performance likely varies with the network structure and composition in different inter-organizational contexts.

Keywords: Bilateral/trilateral collaboration networks; Research institutes; Network position; Scientific performance; Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:techno:v:94-95:y:2020:i::s0166497217307836

DOI: 10.1016/j.technovation.2017.10.005

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