Science Research Management ›› 2019, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (3): 41-50.
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Zhu Guilong, Wang Xiaoxiao, Yang Xiaowan
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Abstract: At present, traditional universities are turning into entrepreneurial universities. Colleges and universities have dual characteristics in aspect of knowledge creation and knowledge application. They also have the conditions and abilities to control innovation, and meanwhile, the commercialization of their scientific and technological achievements has a direct contribution to the economic growth. However, colleges and universities are faced with many difficulties in selection of the type of research and development activities. On the one hand, scientific researchers pursue dual objectives in the R&D activities, namely, academic value and commercial value. On the other hand, it is difficult for scientific researchers and teams to coordinate the tension between research and commercialization activities, while it is feasible for universities (the organizational level) to coordinate the tension between research and commercialization activities. Due to the dual role of academic value and commercial value in academic research objectives, colleges and universities are still in the dilemma how to balance the internal management of research and development activities. Theoretically, existing literature are lack of further analysis on decision-making allocation for scientific researchers at the early stage of commercialization development under the academic incentive mechanism and it is worth discussing the promotion of commercial incentive action to basic research.Actually, it is necessary to consider the researchers' behaviors under different internal preferences as far as R&D incentive system is concerned because this incentive system can coordinate the research and development time allocation and selection of research and development project for the scientific researchers. Based on the above, through literature review, this paper summarizes the coordination and cooperation of researchers' behaviors under different internal preferences, and puts forward the research and development quadrant model of academic-commercial dual value. This research and development quadrant model is the basic starting point of incentive contractual relationship between scientific researchers and universities, and this new incentive contractual relationship is required to consider the judgment for academic value and commercial value of scientific researchers. Moreover, think about the coordination of research and development activities on the organizational level, and put forward the organization’s optimal incentive scheme, which needs to achieve the optimal allocation of time to motivate researchers in research and development activities and balance the allocation of resources for basic research and application research projects. On this basis, by building a dynamic moral hazard model in continuous time, this paper explains the mechanism that academic incentive and commercial incentive affect the selection of the R&D activities of researchers and the relationship between the two types of incentive at the organizational level.Through the model analysis, we can conclude that there are many factors to influence the effect of R&D incentive system and the optimal contract design of the organizational level: First, in terms of the optimal time allocation decision in research and development activities of researchers, when the academic value of research activities in monetary form is higher than the commercial value of development, scientific researchers will not choose the development activities. When they obtain a research result with commercial value, the scientific researchers will choose development activities to achieve commercial value. In addition, high marginal commercial value, low development cost, low time discount factor, low marginal benefit of publication quality and high allocation of benefit will encourage scientific researchers to engage in commercial development activities.Second, in view of the distinction between basic research and application research, because basic research has high uncertainty and the research result is hard to be commercialized, but it has high academic value and the academic and commercial incentive strategy influence project decisions for basic research and application research, commercial incentives will prompt scientific researchers to choose the basic research projects with high risks in the projects with low costs, in another word, the researchers prefer basic research contributing to radical innovations. Actually, when they choose the basic research project with high risks and give up commercializing their current research idea, the scientific researchers can obtain better research idea in further innovation research. However, when the basic research projects have high risks, high costs and high academic value, the incentive effect of commercial incentives is not obvious. When the development cost of application research projects is lower and this application research project has lower risk, and the commercial incentive allocation increases, it stands to reason that the scientific researchers will choose application research projects. It can be seen that the commercial incentive has a different influence on the selection of the R&D activities types.In conclusion, it is not necessary for the commercial incentive to occupy the basic research input cost and the “Offset” in scientific research will not occur. For the design of the optimal contract of the organization under the dual effects of academic and commercial incentives, the key is building the incentive system between the organization and individuals. The optimal incentive contract design means that the organization provides different contracts for different individuals. The R&D influences the dual expectations to the research results of the individuals, and the premise of balancing the two activities is to find the "value fulcrum", that is, combining the contract of academic value and commercial value, and realize the optimal benefit of the organization under the constraints of maximizing the interests of scientific researchers. Therefore, colleges and universities should increase business incentives to encourage scientific researchers who prefer research activities and encourage them to carry out development activities. For those who do not prefer research activities, encourage them to increase their efforts. From a comprehensive perspective, academic incentive is characterized with low cost and lasting effect and commercial incentive is the important supplement to academic incentive. It is helpful to correctly judge the effect and effectiveness of the existing science and technology system on the R&D activities of colleges and universities through the discussion of the influence of the incentive policies on the efforts of researchers. More important, it helps to clarify the policy direction of scientific research incentive system innovation. In conclusion, this paper provides a meaningful policy adjustment and reform basis for further implementing the innovation-driven development strategy.
Key words: academic incentives, commercial incentives, R&D activities, incentive scheme
Zhu Guilong, Wang Xiaoxiao, Yang Xiaowan. A research on the effect of the academic and commercial incentives in R&D activities[J]. Science Research Management, 2019, 40(3): 41-50.
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