Direct and incentive planning within a university

This paper explores appropriate roles of “direct” and “incentive” academic planning in helping universities relate advantageously to the aspect of their environments represented by the instructional and research demands of their constituencies. Adopting these roles requires a university to have flexible, uncommitted resources which are difficult to obtain from program reductions because of the impossibility of administratively valuing a university's programs. The paper presents evidence that at one university these funds can be derived alternatively from improved tuition policy and legislative funding relationships.     

Performance-based resource allocation for higher education institutions in China

How to allocate limited resource to higher education institutions has always been a critical problem with significant social and economic relevance. Researchers and educational administrators have long proposed that resource allocation should be linked to performance. In this paper, we develop a performance-based method for a central planner to allocate research funding to different universities to better stimulate the research output. The method builds on existing works on resource allocation via efficiency analysis. The method takes multiple dimensions of research performance into account, including number of publications, number of patents, and revenue from knowledge transfer. We apply the method to a set of 64 major universities in China based on performance in 2014–2016. The application is particularly pertinent at the moment, since the Chinese government is developing a new funding program called the “double first-class” plan, which features performance-based funding as a central pillar of government funding.     

高校科技经费投入趋势预测与比较研究

随着国家科技创新体系的不断完善,高校在科技创新工作中发挥重要作用。因此,加强高校科技管理,提高经费使用效益,就显得尤为重要。以十一五期间江苏高校科技经费投入为基础数据,采用灰色预测建模法构建了高校科技经费投入GM(1,1)模型,对十二五期间江苏高校科技经费投入演化趋势进行预测分析。研究结果表明,企业委托经费与政府下拨经费持高速增长趋势,其他收入转入科技经费增长较为平稳。因此,对于江苏高校而言,应积极争取政府财政科技经费和企业委托经费,进而增强自身科技发展水平和竞争力。     

政府补贴越多越有助于提升众创空间绩效吗——1902家国家备案众创空间的证据

基于已纳入国家级科技企业孵化器管理服务体系的1902家众创空间(以下简称“国家备案众创空间”)数据,运用信号理论,探讨政府补贴对众创空间绩效的影响,并考察吸收能力与国家高新区在此关系中的调节作用。研究结果表明:政府补贴与众创空间资金绩效存在“倒U”形关系,即适度的政府补贴对众创空间资金绩效的影响效果最佳;政府补贴正向促进众创空间人才绩效和创新绩效;吸收能力正向调节政府补贴与资金绩效、人才绩效和创新绩效之间的关系;国家高新区正向调节政府补贴与资金绩效、创新绩效之间的关系。     

Motivation for alumni donations: a social identity perspective on the role of branding in higher education

• As a result of decreasing government funds and increasing competition, institutions of higher education have propelled themselves into business practices such as branding. Despite the growing literature on branding in higher education, there is little research on the relationship between alumni donor motivations and the university brand. This study explores donor motivations from social identity and self‐congruity theoretical perspectives. The authors used zero‐inflated negative binomial regression to assess the relationship between identification and count of donations. The results showed that if the level of identification with the university increased, the expected number of donations would also increase. The study further assessing the “zeros” (non‐donors), the results suggested that if an alumnus were to identify with the university, he would be 43% less likely to be “certain zero” (definitive non‐donor) and would find a way to give money. Additionally, the authors analyzed responses about why alumni donate and why they choose not to donate. The authors offered observations on the basis of respondent commentary and also raised the question of what happens when university branding efforts conflict with the perceptions of a large stakeholder group such as alumni.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How to optimize the allocation of research resources? An empirical study based on output and substitution elasticities of universities in Chinese provincial level

Although significant progress has been made in China's basic research in recent years, there remains a wide gap between research in China and that from developed countries. How to optimize the allocative efficiency of research resources is of great importance for increasing research output. In this paper, using the fixed effect stochastic frontier model based on the translog production function, we estimate output and substitution elasticities of research and development (R&D) inputs at universities in China's provincial level during 2009–2016. We find that the R&D technical efficiency of China's universities, after a rapid growth, has tended to become relatively stable. Improvements of internationalization degree and exogenous R&D capabilities are conducive to promoting R&D technical efficiency, whereas expenditures from government grants inhibit the promotion of R&D technical efficiency; the effects of R&D capital deepening and internet penetration are not evident. The output elasticity of R&D capital is much higher than that of R&D personnel, suggesting that R&D capital is the main driving force of research output. The substitution elasticity between R&D capital and personnel has experienced a change from substitution to complementary since 2014. To realize sustained growth of research output, we should increase R&D input with positive output elasticity or reduce R&D input with negative output elasticity, making the necessary trade-offs according to the substitution relationship between the two R&D inputs.     

Innovation by design: SPARK and the Overcoming of Stanford University's Translational “Valley of Death” in Bio-Medicine

Stanford University's world leadership as an entrepreneurial university induced a “paradox of success,” inhibiting further development of its organizational infrastructure for entrepreneurship support. Nevertheless, some prospective academic entrepreneurs realized that there were invisible persisting gaps in the university's innovation system. We discuss the role of the entrepreneurial university and provide a case study of SPARK, an organizational innovation, created to address Stanford's translational research gap, that was then spread to other universities. The creation of a support structure to encourage students and faculty to define entrepreneurial projects as part of their education and research revealed a novel organizational change dynamic.     

From kites to computers: Pennsylvania's Ben Franklin partnership

The traditional strength of the Pennsylvania economy has been steelmaking and other heavy manufacturing activities. During the past decade Pennsylvania has felt the impact of mature markets for steel and other capital goods, international competition and new technologies, as unemployment in the state has consistently exceeded the national average. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, state policymakers were faced with the problems of how to ease the state's reliance upon these declining industrial sectors, help existing industries within the state to modernize, and stimulate the formation of new growth industries.Recognizing Pennsylvania's history of technological innovation and its strong resource base in corporate and university research and development, state policymakers set out to create flexible public/private partnerships to encourage greater university/industry cooperation, and to focus regional economic development efforts toward innovation and modernization. In 1982, the Pennsylvania General Assembly created the Ben Franklin Partnership program, which established four regional advanced technology centers at major research universities in the state. These advanced technology centers are consortiums of universities, businesses, economic development organizations, financial institutions, and others committed to the goal of job creation through industrial modernization and technological innovation.To date, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has provided $29 million to the advanced technology centers for joint industry/university research and development projects, entrepreneurial development and education and training. This state funding was matched by $90 million from businesses, foundations, and other sources. Because of the long-term nature of such a program, the early results of the Ben Franklin Partnership are modest; however, the program has been successful in establishing relationships among universities, businesses and economic development organizations which will serve as the basis for long term growth.     

Green innovation and SO2 emissions: Dynamic threshold effect of human capital

Green innovation is an effective path to decrease environmental pollutions. It is of immense interest to evaluate the roles of green innovation on SO₂ emissions reduction. We also investigate the static and dynamic threshold effect of human capital in the impacting paths of different innovations on SO₂ emissions. The empirical results show that the design patent increases SO₂ emissions while the development of utility patent can decrease SO₂ emissions based on the static analysis and dynamic analysis. Both the “pollution halo” and the “pollution heaven” hypotheses of foreign direct investment (FDI) are validated in China. Moreover, green innovation positively affects SO₂ emission reduction based on the System Generalized Method of Moment (SYS-GMM) estimation. Both static and dynamic panel threshold regression results reveal that the positive effects of different innovations will become larger when human capital exceeds the corresponding threshold values. Hence, it is important to enhance green human capital.     

How and when matter: Exploring the interaction effects of high‐performance work systems,employee participation,and human capital on organizational innovation

Existing research on the relationship between high‐performance work systems (HPWS) and organizational innovation has paid insufficient attention to the boundary effects of employee participation and human capital. Bridging the human resource management (HRM) and employment relations literature, this study contributes to the contingency view of HRM and China‐specific research by investigating how human capital and employee participation, direct voice mechanism, and corporate governance participation jointly moderate the relationship between HPWS and organizational innovation. We test our three‐way interaction model using a sample of 108 firms and 1,250 employees in China. The results suggest that HPWS are positively associated with organizational innovation when employees with relatively less human capital are coupled with more direct voice mechanism or less corporate governance participation. In contrast, HPWS are negatively related to organizational innovation when employees possessing greater human capital are coupled with more direct voice mechanism. The theoretical and managerial implications and future research directions are discussed.     

人力资本的价值分配与企业创新

本文以2009~2017年沪深A股上市公司为样本,研究了企业价值分配结构中员工的分享比例对企业创新产出的影响。研究发现:价值分配结构中员工分享的比例(包括全部员工分享比例和剔除高管后的普通员工分享比例)越高,越有助于企业的创新产出,对发明专利、实用新型专利和外观设计专利均有促进作用。相对于国有企业,人力资本价值分配比例对企业创新产出的促进作用在非国有企业中更加显著。相对于低内控质量的企业,人力资本价值分配比例对企业创新产出的促进作用在高内部控制质量的企业中更加显著。进一步研究发现,人力资本价值分配比例的提高不仅对企业创新产出有促进作用,而且对企业创新效率也有促进作用。本文揭示了价值分配过程中对于员工的薪酬激励如何影响企业创新,为上市公司要素分配体系的设计提供了参考。     

The impact of the economic crisis on the (in)efficiency of public Higher Education institutions in Southern Europe: The case of Spanish universities

The evaluation of university efficiency in Europe began timidly when the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) was created. However, this issue is currently becoming increasingly important in Southern European countries, where the limitation of public funding following the economic crisis in 2008 has put greater pressure on their public universities to achieve excellence and improve competitiveness. In this context, the goals of this paper are: first, to measure the relative technical (in)efficiency of Spanish public Higher Education Institutions in the period 2002–03 to 2012–13, comparing the situation before and during the last economic crisis; and, second, to analyze the determinants of university (in)efficiency and, especially, the direct impact of the crisis. After applying the two-stage double bootstrap DEA methodology, the results show that Spanish public universities have become more efficient during the crisis than before it. In fact, the regression analysis confirms that the “crisis” variable has had a statistically significant positive impact on university efficiency. We also find that age has favorably influenced how these institutions utilize their resources to produce teaching and research outputs, but technical specialization has had a negative effect. Moreover, the regional location of public universities has been also a crucial determinant of their efficiency level. Our findings are therefore relevant for political and academic decision-makers in order to know if public universities have been adequately managed in the crisis period and to identify factors that could improve their efficiency, and hence to help them to enhance their international competitiveness in the future.     

高校政府采购内部控制若干问题与对策研究

高校政府采购关系到本单位教育教学、科学研究、学科建设等各项工作的运行,是高校发展与创新的前提保证。论文通过分析高校政府采购工作中存在的若干问题,深度剖析其内部活动现状,提出有利于高校政府采购工作内部控制的有效对策,为其他各项工作的顺利开展奠定基础。     

RISE OF THE FIDUCIARY STATE: A SURVEY OF SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUND RESEARCH

We survey the literature documenting the rise of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), which, with assets under management of over $5.4 trillion at year‐end 2014, are a major force in global finance. Research papers have analyzed the evolution of SWFs from stabilization funds to stand‐alone wealth management funds; we both survey this research and show that more than 25 countries have launched or proposed new SWFs since January 2008. The most salient and controversial feature of SWFs is that they are state‐owned; we survey the existing literature on state ownership and discuss what this predicts about the efficiency and beneficence of government control of SWF assets. We discuss the documented importance of SWF funding sources (oil sales revenues versus excess reserves from export earnings) and survey the normative literature describing how SWFs should allocate funds. We then summarize the empirical literature studying how SWFs actually do allocate funds—across asset classes, geographically, and across industries. We document that most SWF equity investments in publicly traded firms involve cross‐border purchases of sizeable minority stakes (median around 20%) in target firms, with a strong preference for investments in the financial sector. Next, we assess empirical studies examining the impact of SWF stock investments on target firm financial and operating performance, and find universal support for a positive announcement period stock price increase of 1–3%. This, however, is significantly lower than the 5% abnormal return documented for stock purchases by comparable privately owned financial investors in recent studies, indicating a “sovereign wealth fund discount.” We conclude by summarizing the lessons of SWF research and pointing out unresolved issues.     

Organization of innovation and capital markets

This paper develops a theory of the firm scope where not only research but also ordinary production employees can generate inventions. Separating research from production (“specialization”) solves the two-tier agency problem of inducing simultaneously research effort and managerial truthful-reporting but is costly when capital markets are imperfect. Improvements in capital markets, therefore, promote specialization, allowing a greater number of specialized firms to be established and also enabling them to undertake innovative projects with larger potential outcomes. Moreover, this capital market improvement effect is stronger for innovative activities that are less capital-intensive and that have weaker synergies with existing production activities. The model can help us understand the explosion of small company innovation in the U.S. since late 1970s and the contribution of venture capital to this change.     

Project management improvement efforts—creating project management value by uniqueness or mainstream thinking?

This paper presents a research study that is part of the large international Project Management Institute (PMI)–sponsored research project the “Value of Project Management.” Three case studies have been conducted on Norwegian enterprises. This article focuses on how enterprises improve project management and presents the improvement efforts and the stated reasons behind them. There are striking similarities as to the prioritized ways the enterprises have chosen to make improvements: use of a rather standardized model for project work and internal schooling activities. The enterprises all explain their efforts as internally driven, even if some consultancy assistance was used. This article discusses three drivers behind the improvement efforts: an economic perspective, a new institutionalism perspective, and an innovation perspective. This article identifies indicators pointing to all drivers and helps us understand why and how enterprises are improving project management. The importance of research on the practice of the most capable enterprises within the project management field is acknowledged.     

The future for universities: a public–private partnership?

Higher education funding arrangements remain unsatisfactory. Central government's price controls over the services which universities offer threate both autonomy and quality. The best UK research universities can no longer compete with their counterparts in the United States and elsewhere. This article proposes a return to private status for universities, allowing them to form a contractual relationship with government for teaching and research, with freedom to charge an additional market price for their services to privately funded and overseas students.     

The strange case of the Matthew effect and beauty contests: Research evaluation and specialisation in Italian universities

The paper aims to determine whether the distribution of funds that prizes the best-performing institutions relatively more has the effect of replicating the Matthew effect within them in terms of personnel policies and allocating proportionally more resources to the best departments to strengthen their output considering the prospect of future assessments. Data from the Italian public university system between 2011 and 2016 as well as the outcomes of the national evaluation of research produced between 2004 and 2010 and between 2011 and 2014 in 14 disciplinary research areas are used. The empirical evidence shows that Italian universities have tended to increase their specialisation in the research areas in which they ranked below or slightly above the national mean, revealing that they chose to try to strengthen the weak sectors through both promotions and new recruitments. The results suggest the existence of a dual policy. When the Ministry of Education, University and Research tries to foster a Matthew effect mechanism, allocating more resources to the best-performing universities, the latter seem to opt to implement a beauty contest strategy to make their weak areas converge towards the national mean. When considering the effects of the recruiting strategies following the national evaluation of research, the results indicate the existence of some Matthew effects, showing that increasing specialisation is more fruitful for the best than for the worst universities.     

科研院所科研成果应用与转化现状

科研成果的应用转化关系着国家经济发展提高。科研院所因政策缺乏、资金短缺、场地限制,使研制的项目常常胎死腹中或束之高阁,严重影响着新项目、新技术、新产品的科研成果的应用转化。改变科研成果应用转化的现状,需要政府引导,政策支持,调整资源结构、拓宽资金来源,整合创新,疏通渠道,拓展平台。     

Is evil rewarded with evil? The market penalty effect of corporate environmentally irresponsible events

The negative response of the capital market to environmentally irresponsible events is an important governance mechanism that motivates enterprises to assume environmental responsibility. Based on the theory of effective markets and organizational legitimacy, this paper takes corporate environmentally irresponsible events in Chinese environmentally sensitive industries during the period of 2014–2018 as a research sample, and our work uses the event study methodology to explore the penalty effect of the capital market from a mathematical empirical and case empirical dimension. Furthermore, this research discusses the spillover effect of corporate environmentally irresponsible events in the capital markets. The empirical results show that once an irresponsible event is exposed, it causes a significant negative cumulative abnormal return (CAR) in the short term, and the difference between the industry and the ownership type leads to a significant difference in the duration and impact of the penalty effect. More interestingly, the capital market's penalty for corporate environmentally irresponsible events may have a notable industry spillover effect, but there are differences between the penalty effect and the spillover effect in different markets. This paper confirms that the penalty mechanism of the capital market related to an environmentally irresponsible event can effectively restrain the behaviour of the company involved and the industry to which it belongs, and it may also provide a new way for the government to build an eco‐environmental protection system of multisubject “co‐governance” and bring the punitive “forced” mechanism of the capital market to bear on corporate environmentally responsible behaviour.