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An empirical study of the design-driven innovation micro-mechanism and the customer perception emotional value Lai Hongbo 2019, 40(3): 1-9.  Abstract ( 377 )    With the entry of present era of highly competition and homogeneity, product-based differences are becoming smaller and smaller, and traditional communication with consumers is faced with new challenges. For this reason, more and more leading global innovation enterprises are paying more and more attention to design-based innovation as their main competitive strategy, and design-driven innovation as the third innovation mode besides traditional technology promotion and market pull has attracted more and more attention. At the same time, this study further points out that product semantic design is the essence of design-driven innovation, that is, design achieves innovation through product semantic creation such as symbolic, emotional and formal beauty, including color, shape, material, mechanism, and based on the internal relationship between "form" and "meaning", which can make the design credible and have a clear basis and source.At the same time, this paper makes an in-depth analysis of the micro-perspective of design-driven innovation, and puts forward a full conceptual model of design-driven innovation (aesthetics, style and user insight) for perceiving emotions and purchasing intentions, and word-of-mouth communication. On this basis, the research framework of design-driven innovation is constructed. Based on 191 questionnaires, the internal mechanism and action path of design-driven three dimensions (aesthetics, style and user insight) on perceived emotional value, purchase intention and word-of-mouth communication are analyzed. This study finds that design is of great significance for manufacturing enterprises to improve their ability of independent innovation, product and brand added value and transformation and upgrading. The main conclusions and enlightenments include:First, the aesthetic dimension of design and perceived emotional value have no direct impact, while the style dimension of design has the most direct impact on perceived emotional value, followed by the user insight dimension of design. It can be seen that design or design semantics are no longer simple appearance beautification, but go beyond the usual understanding of design meaning, and further evolve to style construction and user insight. That is to say, as the post-90s and post-00s consumer groups become more and more mature, they have their own special understanding of the brand, and tend to pay attention to their own style, tonality, lifestyle, and even value orientation. To this end, we must achieve and transfer through design, and visualization, complete the product "utensils" level and life, through design to achieve dialogue with consumers. Only in this way can we really grasp the hearts of consumers.Second, user insight has a direct effect on word-of-mouth communication, followed by style dimension and aesthetic dimension. User insight, what matters is the details that really touch consumers' emotions. If consumers are impressed, they will subconsciously accept product or brand information, and actively participate in interaction and experience, including social media forwarding and word-of-mouth communication, so as to work with brands to achieve common value.Third, relative style and insight dimension, aesthetics has a greater direct impact on consumers' purchase intention. Of course, the biggest impact on purchase intention is perceived emotional value. It can be seen that, on the one hand, aesthetics or "face value" can still motivate and stimulate consumers' desire to buy; on the other hand, consumers purchase products, expecting more emotional pleasure from product consumption, which is why users choose the deep-seated psychological and cultural demands of the product, consumers need to change from satisfaction with the product to spiritual satisfaction. Related Articles | Metrics

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Effects of ambidextrous combinations of exploration and exploitation within and across technology and market domains on disruptive innovations of technological micro- and small-sized enterprises Xue Jie 2019, 40(3): 10-20.  Abstract ( 282 )   Utilizing and balancing exploration and exploitation are critical challenges that are particularly difficult for smaller, nascent enterprises which lack the resources, capabilities, and experience necessary to successfully implement ambidexterity. This article distinguishes between exploration and exploitation in technology and market domains. As the two most basic business functions, technology development and marketing represent distinct dimensions for exploration and exploitation. This perspective builds on research demonstrating the independence of product- and market-oriented learning. Enterprises can achieve strategic ambidexterity by combining exploration and exploitation across or within functional domains. Within the technology domain, technology exploration emphasizes developing new technologies, skills, and product capabilities, and technology exploitation emphasizes increasing returns from existing technology capabilities. Within the market domain, market exploration emphasizes marketing programs that attract new customers, and market exploitation emphasizes marketing programs designed to retain and increase purchases from current customers. The cross-functional combinations exhibit ambidexterity across product and market domains to exploit current technology capabilities with the goal of attracting new customer markets, which corresponds to a market development growth strategy, or to explore new technology capabilities that target current customers, corresponding to a technology development growth strategy. Within functional domains, technology ambidexterity simultaneously explores new technology capabilities and exploits current technology capabilities, whereas market ambidexterity simultaneously explores new customer markets and exploits current customers.On the other hand, disruptive innovation has been confirmed to be an effective strategy for new entrants and startups to compete with incumbents or larger competitors. The diversities in the incentives, knowledge and capabilities of small and large firms lead to heterogeneities in enterprise innovation activities, and innovation activities in micro- and small-sized enterprises have different characteristics than in larger enterprises has been confirmed in prior literature. Additionally, the complexities of an ambidextrous strategy are particularly problematic for smaller business, prompting calls for additional research linking ambidexterity - especially in small enterprises - to innovation activities. However, to our knowledge, how different strategic ambidextrous combinations affect low-end disruptions and new-market disruptions respectively are still poorly understood in the context of technological micro- and small-sized enterprises. To better understand how technology and market influence the disruptive innovation of technological micro- and small-sized enterprises, this paper classifies six strategic ambidextrous combinations of exploration and exploitation in both technology and market domains and develops theoretical arguments that link low-end disruptive innovation and new-market disruptive innovation to these strategic combinations separately. We conceptualize and measure exploration and exploitation at the functional level, and propose that the implementation of both low-end and new-market disruptive innovation depends on whether strategic emphases complement one another, producing a positive interaction, or conflict with one another, creating tensions and trade-offs.In recent years, micro- and small-sized enterprises have developed rapidly in China since the central government puts emphasis on “mass entrepreneurship and innovation”, which makes China reach highest entrepreneurship rates in the world. Using a sample of 364 technological micro- and small-sized enterprises from Foshan City at Guangdong Province, China, this paper tests the hypotheses and the empirical results show that both the combination of technology exploration and market exploitation, and the combination of technology exploitation and market exploitation have positive effects on low-end disruptive innovation of technological micro- and small-sized enterprises. In addition, both the combination of technology exploration and market exploration, and the combination of technology exploitation and market exploration have positive influences on new-market disruptive innovation.Much of the literature to date has focused on how firms can overcome challenges and barriers to implement organizational ambidexterity and simultaneously pursue exploration and exploitation. The so-called “ambidexterity premise” assumes that organizational ambidexterity is necessary for long-term performance and that all firms should endeavor to achieve ambidexterity. Relatively little research has explicitly examined if and when organizational ambidexterity impacts firm innovation, and empirical research linking ambidexterity to disruptive innovation of technological micro- and small-sized enterprises is especially scarce. This article contributes to the research gap by examining how the combinations of exploration and exploitation across or within technology and market domains influence technological micro- and small-sized enterprises’ disruptive innovations. Linking exploitation and exploration in both technology and market domains to enterprises innovation activities represents new levels of analysis for ambidexterity, especially in the context of technological micro- and small-sized enterprises. More importantly, the results offer new insights with respect to the application of strategic ambidextrous combinations of exploration and exploitation within or across technology and market domains in disruptive innovation activities: (1) both the ambidextrous combinations of market exploitation with technology exploration, and market exploitation with technology exploitation have positive effects on low-end disruptive innovation of technological micro- and small-sized enterprises; (2) both the combinations of market exploration with technology exploration, and market exploration with technology exploitation have positive influences on new-market disruptive innovation of technological micro- and small-sized enterprises. In addition, the results indicate that the disruptive innovation models and activities of micro- and small-sized enterprises differ from their larger counterparts, as small businesses are typically more flexible, less formalized, and quicker to make decisions than larger firms.Moreover, the research results suggest general managerial implications and specific recommendations for managers of technological micro- and small-sized enterprises. The results confirm that specific ambidextrous combinations across or within technology and market domains are suitable strategies for micro- and small-sized enterprises to engage in low-end and new-market innovations. Market exploration especially benefits micro- and small-sized enterprises when they pursue new market segments or niche market through disruptive innovation. By contrast, managers of micro- and small-sized firms achieve better low-end disruptive innovation performance by focusing on market exploitation, along with the exploration and exploitation of technology. Related Articles | Metrics

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The dynamic effect of international R&D capital technology spillovers on the efficiency of green technology innovation Liang Shengrong, Luo Liangwen 2019, 40(3): 21-29.  Abstract ( 368 )   Green technological innovation can effectively promote economic transformation, improve the quality of economic development, and is an important driving force for the sustainable development of the world economy. At present, China's green technological innovation capability is worse than that in developed countries. Most green technological innovation in enterprises is induced by external resources or pressure. Research shows that the same technology cannot produce spillover effects. Under the condition of open economy, a country's technological progress not only relies on its own technological innovation, but also on the ability of imitating and absorbing advanced technology from developed countries. With countries become more connected, international technology diffusion effect has become the core factor of technological progress, spillovers of international R&D capital technology plays a more and more important role in independent innovation in developing countries. If China pays more attention to the optimization of technological path and diffusion of green technology in the process of international transfer of technology, China would possibly narrow the gap. This paper mainly researches the impact of technology spillovers of international R&D capital on the efficiency of green technology innovation.Based on the Coe and Helpman’s model of International R&D capital technology spillover (Hereinafter referred to as CH model), this paper divided the international R&D capital technology spillovers into direct and indirect channels. The direct channels include multinational R&D investment and national technology transfer, and the indirect channels include FDI, OFDI and import trade. Then this paper incorporated all channels into CH model and compared the differences of technology spillover effect between different channels. To overcome the endogenous problem that the model may generate, we choose GMM to test the impact of R&D capital spillovers on green technology innovation efficiency. Some conclusions as follows:（1）The one lag of green technological innovation efficiency has a significant effect on the current technological innovation efficiency, and the coefficients are larger than other main explanatory variable, which shows that the cyclic cumulative effect of technology has a significant effect on the improvement of green technological innovation efficiency.（2）International R&D capital technology spillover promotes the efficiency of green technology innovation better than domestic R&D capital does. Except of OFDI R&D capital technology spillover, other channels have promoted the efficiency of green technology innovation, especially the FDI R&D capital. Domestic R&D capital has hindered the efficiency of China's green technology innovation.（3）The details are as follows: Firstly, transnational R&D investment mainly promotes the efficiency of green technology innovation by improving pure technology efficiency, which shows that technology lock-in benefits would reduce the spillover effect of local enterprise. The role of scale efficiency in this progress is relatively small, which shows that the degree of marketization of R&D investment is insufficient. Secondly, FDI R&D capital technology spillover has the most significant effect on the efficiency of green technology innovation. It mainly comes from the improvement of pure technology efficiency. The possible reason is that the imitation effect grew from the flow of talent in foreign-funded enterprises promotes the efficiency of green technology innovation. The scale efficiency is negative because of technology lock-in effect. Thirdly, OFDI R&D capital technology spillover hinders China's technological innovation efficiency, mainly because China's green technology acquisition OFDI accounts for a low proportion. Fourthly, the technology spillover of R&D capital in import trade promotes the efficiency of green technology innovation. It shows that the positive effect of import trade on the efficiency of technological innovation is greater than that of inhibition. In terms of import trade, Chinese enterprises pay more attention to the selection of countries with rich R&D capital. Fifthly, domestic R&D capital hinders the efficiency of green technology innovation. It shows that the allocation of domestic R&D capital investment resources is unbalance, the input of factors is low-end, and has not been transformed into the improvement of green technology innovation efficiency. Based on the above conclusions, this paper puts forward the following suggestions: Firstly, we should pay attention to the cyclic cumulative effect of green technology innovation. As the technology spillover of international R&D capital has a strong cyclical cumulative effect, regions should pay special attention to the cumulative effect of early accumulation of green technology innovation efficiency on later innovation in future development. Secondly, because of the technology lock-in effect in transnational technology transfer, China needs to enhance its independent innovation ability in the future, focusing on the core technology and key technologies with independent intellectual property rights. At the same time, we should strengthen the transnational technology transfer, enhance the degree of marketization, and promote the free flow and efficient allocation of factors. We should gradually increase the patency of R&D investment and foreign direct investment between regions, promote the openness of international trade, and accelerate the diffusion of technological capital. Thirdly, we should make effective use of FDI and optimize the industrial structure of technology importation. In order to introduce high-end technology, we should pay attention to further optimizing the industrial structure, carry out advanced intervention in environmental protection, focus on the development of green industry, and give priority to the introduction of large-scale, intensive and high-tech industries. Improve the skills of R&D personnel and give full play to the positive effect of FDI R&D capital and technology spillover. Improve the quantity and quality of technical talents in local enterprises, enhance the absorption effect of technology and transform the absorbed technology into real products. Fourthly, we should upgrade the level of foreign direct investment and increase the proportion of technology-acquired OFDI. We should encourage investment in sophisticated technology and grasp the trend of international consumption. We should intensify technology-acquiring FDI and strive to absorb R&D capital from developed countries through a variety of investment methods. Fifthly, we should continue to optimize the structure of import trade, increase the proportion of technology-intensive trade, and enhance the technology spillover effect of R&D capital in import trade. Sixthly, we should improve the win-win mechanism of economic growth and environmental protection, and enhance the efficiency of green technology innovation in China. Environmental indicators would be incorporated into the evaluation system of technological innovation efficiency of industrial enterprises, and a green economic development model would be established. We should change the traditional development mode characterized and promote cleaner production mode of enterprises on a large scale, strengthen the application for green label certification, promote enterprises to upgrade the level of green technology innovation, at the same time, make environmental management standardized, routine and scientific. Related Articles | Metrics

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Multidimensional proximity evolution in the low-carbon technology collaborative innovation network Chen Wenjie, Zeng Deming 2019, 40(3): 30-40.  Abstract ( 281 )   Based on the realistic consideration of climate change and energy security, low-carbon technology (LCT) innovation has become an important global issue. Multidimensional proximity is a new perspective of innovation research at home and abroad. However, the evolution of multidimensional proximity in the LCT collaborative innovation network is rarely studied. In recent years, the globe’s focus on reducing the environmental impact of vehicle emissions and fossil energy consumption has driven low-carbon vehicle technology (LCVT) innovation. In response to this significant change, this paper takes LCVT as an example to inspect whether there is multidimensional proximity in the LCVT collaborative network, and analyze the evolution of multidimensional proximity.At first, this paper analyzes multidimensional proximity and its evolution in the LCT collaborative innovation network theoretically. We propose that multidimensional proximity is an important driving force for innovation, which plays an important role in promoting the construction of partners as well as the development of LCT collaborative innovation network and evolves with the development of LCT as well as innovation networks.Then, this paper constructs the global 1992-2011 LCVT collaborative innovation network based on joint patent application data, which comes from the patent application data in the field of LCVT in the world's authoritative patent intelligence platform—Derwent database. Referring to the definition of new energy vehicles, "low-carbon vehicles" as the research object in this paper mainly refer to hybrid vehicles, pure electric vehicles and fuel cell vehicles classified by power sources. Based on the change trend of global LCVT innovation patent number and the annual distribution comparability requirements, while considering the issued time of relevant global low carbon policy, this paper extracts the collaboration matrix of patent applicants in the four stages of 1992-1996, 1997-2001, 2002-2006 and 2007-2011 through manual collection and data mining. Next, this paper uses social network analysis software UCINET to build global LCVT collaborative network, and uses the method of combining whole network with egocentric network to analyze the evolution of multidimensional proximity in the global LCVT collaborative network. The conclusions are as follows: firstly, LCT and its collaborative innovation network co-evolve with multidimensional proximity. In the past 20 years, proximity has continued to evolve, research & development area has broadened, collaborative relationship has expanded, collaborative intensity has deepened generally, the number of patent applications has increased, mutual learning, knowledge compatibility and organization compatibility have improved, and structural holes have developed more fully. The formation of new connections helps actors constructing their own structural holes to enjoy the advantages of information control and information access, therefore enhance the innovation capabilities of LCT. If the actors at both ends of the structure holes are connected to its advantage, then the actor living in the structure hole is willing to act as a bridge to enrich the existing network structure. Toyota, for example, provides platforms for collaboration among its suppliers. Overall, the actors become more closely connected, the number of cliques and network centrality have continue to increases, collaboration is more concentrated among central actors, patent output gradually increase and jumped sharply in the later period. This obtains benefit from the acquisition and accumulation of knowledge, experience, trust, reputation, norm and routine, as well as the attention and support of the state. The joint action of mechanisms such as attraction & agglomeration, integration & consolidation, interaction & learning, social embeddedness and decoupling tend to promote the co-evolution of LCVT collaborative innovation network and geographical, organizational, cognitive and social proximity. Secondly, multidimensional proximity’s evolution in the LCT collaborative innovation network involves the network status and capability evolution of different countries & regions and actors. In the evolution of LCVT collaborative innovation network and the multidimensional proximity, although the actors’ development paths are different, core actors such as Toyota are always in an advantageous position in the network, and have the advantage of information control and information access. In addition, position resources and innovation capabilities of some other actors such as Hyundai and BMW have strengthened increasingly. Core enterprises, as the main forces of LCT innovation and diffusion, tend to select neighboring actors to establish connections to promote the diffusion of low-carbon technology. The total number of cliques is increasing, whose country & regions and actors composition are presenting a trend?of?diversification, and the participating enterprises from other countries are mostly affiliated enterprises or neighboring enterprises with cooperative history. The number and the growth rate of cliques constituted by Japanese actors are higher than other countries or regions, which makes it easier to form a mutually beneficial cooperative relationship. This is mainly because the number of European and American actors is less than that of Japanese actors in the network, and most of actors from European and American are enterprises with a high degree of globalization, which have a longer history of interaction. On the other hand, Japanese enterprise groups are more closed in organizational culture and organizational system.Thirdly, the evolution of multidimensional proximity in the LCT collaborative innovation network needs to be paid attention to in the "locking effect" of excessive proximity. In the first stage, when the degree of network cohesion and compactness are not high, the average distance between actors is relatively small. When the degree of network cohesion and compactness increase slightly in the second stage, the average distance increases slightly, and more actors are needed to connect two actors in the network on average. This partly reflects the tendency of "proximity locking" as the multidimensional proximity evolves. This trend continues to decline during the latter decade and the overall organizational connectivity increases. In future, during the evolution of LCT collaborative innovation network and multidimensional proximity, it is necessary to find the balance point between partner proximity and network closure, so as to avoid excessive conformity pressure, high relationship maintenance cost, high knowledge management costs and too much homogeneous knowledge, thus hindering the development of LCT innovation. This could be brought about by the high degree of attraction & agglomeration, learning & reinforcement, norm & routine sharing, and environmental embeddedness, which may come with LCT collaborative innovation network of excessive proximity and density. Related Articles | Metrics

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A research on the effect of the academic and commercial incentives in R&D activities Zhu Guilong, Wang Xiaoxiao, Yang Xiaowan 2019, 40(3): 41-50.  Abstract ( 200 )   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. Related Articles | Metrics

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A study of the promoting paths of self-innovation ability of RJVs in SMEs Ma Zongguo 2019, 40(3): 51-62.  Abstract ( 425 )    Exploring the independent innovation capability of SMEs from the perspective of RJVs can promote the transformation and upgrading of SMEs in China. Referencing the theoretical study on the Self-innovation ability of RJVs in SMEs, the paper constructs the self-innovation ability evaluation index system of RJVs in SMEs. The evaluation index system includes five aspects: company strategy, R&D capability, organizational management capability, RJVs collaboration, government support and innovation performance. Using SPSS20 and AMOS20 to establish the structural equation model, the paper empirically analyses the factors of influencing the self-innovation ability of RJVs in SMEs in China. The results show: (1) the path coefficient of corporate strategy to innovation performance is 0.14. The support path coefficient of top management to independent innovation of RJVs is 0.617, which has great influence on company strategy. The path coefficient of leadership's attention to the development of new technology in the industry is 0.956, which has a great impact on the company's strategy; (2) the path coefficient of R&D capability to innovation performance is 0.08. Patent and technology reserve path coefficient of the company is 0.981, which has a great impact on R&D capability. The path coefficient of R&D level and experience of R&D personnel is 0.603, which has a great impact on R&D capability; (3) the path coefficient of organizational management ability to innovation performance is 0.10. The path coefficient of core R&D personnel to top managers is 0.988, which has a great impact on organizational management ability. The path coefficient of rational allocation of innovation input is 0.723, which has a great impact on organizational management ability; (4) the path coefficient of RJVs collaboration to innovation performance is 0.15. The path coefficient of financial services provided by banks is 0.521, which has an impact on RJVs cooperation. The path coefficient of sincerity among partners is 0.862, which has a great impact on RJVs cooperation. The path coefficient of resource sharing among partners is 0.709, which has a great impact on RJVs collaboration; (5) the path coefficient of government support to innovation performance is 0.14. The path coefficient of the government's preferential tax policy for SMEs innovation is 0.859, which has a great impact on the government's support. The path coefficient of government subsidies and incentives for SMEs independent innovation is 0.719, which has a great impact on government support; (6) the path coefficient of government support to RJVs collaboration is 0.26, which indicates that government support promotes RJVs collaboration of SMEs. The path coefficient of RJVs collaboration to corporate strategy is 0.16, which indicates that RJVs assistance is helpful to the formulation of corporate strategy for small and medium-sized enterprises. The path coefficient of RJVs collaboration to the R&D capability of SMEs is 0.09, which indicates that RJVs collaboration can help SMEs to improve their R&D capability. The empirical results of structural equation model show that corporate strategy, R&D capability, organizational management capability, RJVs collaboration, government support and innovation performance are interactive dynamic processes; and (7) RJVs collaboration, corporate strategy and government support have a greater impact than organizational management capability and R&D capability, among which RJVs collaboration has the highest impact. The improvement of independent innovation capability of RJVs in SMEs is a gradual process. Based on the empirical analysis of the influencing factors, the paper can design specific promotion paths to promote the continuous improvement of independent innovation ability of SMEs in China. The paper constructs a path model of the self-innovation ability of RJVs in SMEs from three levels: technology, collaboration and region. (1)The first is the technological path, and the path model clarifies that follow innovation is carried out through contractual cooperation in the early stage of development. The model follows the principle of “following innovation - Integrated Innovation - original innovation”. Following innovation is also called introduction, digestion, absorption and re-innovation. At the early stage of development, the member enterprises of RJVs in SMEs mostly adopt this form. Innovation mostly concentrates on product and process level, and Cooperative technology is often just general technology, not key technology and core technology. The independent innovation ability of RJVs in SMEs is at the initial stage, which is affected by the development level of R&D ability, organizational management ability and RJVs collaboration. Integrative innovation is essentially the intersection and integration of innovation elements, and promotes technological innovation to a new height. The innovation of RJVs in SMEs is mainly embodied in the industrial level. The member enterprises can access key technologies and realize the rational allocation. The independent innovation capability of RJVs in SMEs is at the stage of development. Primitive innovation is the most fundamental innovation. It is an unprecedented discovery or invention of science and technology. SMEs have achieved comprehensive innovation in product, process, industrial chain and industrial layout, and their independent innovation ability is in the mature stage of development. (2) The second is the collaborative path, and integrated innovation is carried out through team cooperation in the middle of the development. The model follows the principle of the “contract-team-strategy”. Contractual cooperation is the initial state of RJVs in SMEs, which aims to win the advantages of low cost and differentiation. To achieve the goal of cooperation through contracting, the independent innovation capability of RJVs in SMEs is in the initial stage. Teamwork is formed in the process of deepening the relationship and knowledge sharing among member enterprises. The independent innovation capability of RJVs in SMEs has entered the stage of development. Strategic cooperation is the most trusted mode. It can realize long-term win-win on the basis of establishing common interests, and the independent innovation capability of RJVs in SMEs is at a mature stage. (3) The third is the regional path, and the original innovation is carried out through strategic cooperation in the global development stage. The model follows the principle of the “random cooperation - cluster cooperation - network cooperation”. In the mature stage of independent innovation capability, member enterprises of RJVs in SMEs are no longer limited by region, and develop strategic cooperation nationwide or even globally. The main innovation form of this stage is to pay more attention to the original innovation of core technology. Related Articles | Metrics

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A research on the relationship between green process innovation and financial performance of the manufacturing industry Xie Xuemei, Huo Jiage, Wang Hongwei 2019, 40(3): 63-73.  Abstract ( 375 )   Environmental problems have attracted worldwide attention, and there are growing concerns about environmental destruction. Due to a large amount of pollution from manufacturing processes, manufacturing companies, especially those from heavy-polluting manufacturing industries, should shoulder the responsibility of pollution control and treatment. With the increase of people’s environmental awareness, manufacturing companies undertake environmental practices due to corporate social responsibility and consumers’ preference for green products. In China, given that environmental problems are aggravated by the rapid growth of Chinese manufacturing, it is difficult to obtain significant progress only by using traditional pollution control methods. Green innovation, which aims at reducing environmental impacts by improvements of product, process, technology and the manufacturing system, is receiving increasing attention from the government and academics, and becomes an important strategy to realize the transformation of manufacturing industry and green development. Green innovation can be divided into green product innovation, green process innovation and green organizational innovation, and green process innovation is the main focus of this study. Although some companies from manufacturing industry have tried to conduct green innovation strategies, there is limited practical experience and related literature based on the context of environmental protection in China.Green process innovation can be divided into cleaner technology innovation and end-of-pipe technology innovation. Lack of segmentation study of green process innovation makes it difficult to have a good understanding of each segment of green process innovation. On the other hand, green process innovation can create novel business opportunities; however, it can also bring high costs. Most existing literature focuses on the direct relationship between green process innovation and financial performance of the manufacturing industry. Actually, even with much resource, economic and technological investment over a considerable period of time, many companies from the manufacturing industry cannot see the expected financial rewards. This is because the possible financial awards need time to materialize, and the awards depend on the underlying mechanism and contingent conditions for the relationship between green practices and the financial performance. Thus, examining the moderators and mediators of the relationship between green process innovation and financial performance of manufacturing industry is helpful to open the black box associated with the relationship between green process innovation and financial performance of manufacturing industry.Based on the background of high environmental concerns from the government and the public, and little research on green process innovation, this study examines the direct relationship between green process innovation and financial performance of manufacturing industry from the perspectives of cleaner technology innovation and end-of-pipe technology innovation. Second, this study examines the moderation effect of resource constraints on the relationship between green process innovation and financial performance of manufacturing industry. Third, this study examines the mediation effect of absorptive capacity on the relationship between green process innovation and financial performance of manufacturing industry. Therefore, using a mediated moderation model, this study explores the moderation effect of resource constraints and the mediation effect of absorptive capacity on the relationship between green process innovation and financial performance of manufacturing industry by using a panel data of 28 manufacturing industries over 10 years. Financial performance of manufacturing industry is measured by three different financial indexes. As the emission and reduction of SO2 are closely related to environmental activities, SO2 is used as the proxy of cleaner technology innovation and end-of-pipe technology innovation. Data used in this study are mainly drawn from the China Statistical Yearbook (2002-2011), the China Statistical Yearbook on Science and Technology (2002-2011) and the China Environmental Statistical Yearbook (2002-2011). The 28 manufacturing industries are determined based on the Classification of National Economic Industries (GB/T 4754-2011) from the National Bureau of Statistics of China.The empirical results show that there are small differences between the empirical results from the perspectives of cleaner technology innovation and end-of-pipe technology innovation. More specifically, there is a positive relationship between each aspect of green process innovation and financial performance of the manufacturing industry, and cleaner technology innovation has a more significant effect on the financial performance of the manufacturing industry. The results also show that resource constraints enhance the positive relationships between cleaner technology innovation, end-of-pipe technology innovation, and financial performance of the manufacturing industry, and have a more significant effect on the relationship between cleaner technology innovation and financial performance of the manufacturing industry. Further, absorptive capacity mediates the moderation effect of resource constraints on the relationship between cleaner technology innovation and financial performance of the manufacturing industry. However, absorptive capacity does not mediate the moderation effect of resource constraints on the relationship between cleaner technology innovation and financial performance of the manufacturing industry. Thus, green process innovation has a significant impact on the financial performance of the manufacturing industry, and this relationship is affected by the moderation effect of resource constraints and the mediation effect of absorptive capacity.On the whole, both cleaner technology innovation and end-of-pipe technology innovation have positive impacts on the financial performance of the manufacturing industry. These findings provide references for the manufacturing industry, in terms of green strategic orientation and decision-making. Meanwhile, these findings also provide a new perspective for the opinion that although green process innovation can bring about extra costs largely, it pays to be green. Accordingly, manufacturing industry needs to carry on long-term investment in cleaner technology innovation, and try to develop innovation and make progress in technologies of pollution abatement. Activities of green process innovation require innovation, and such activities often face a high level of uncertainty and risks due to their possible externalities. Thus, the manufacturing industry should have a positive attitude towards the impacts of resource constraints, and improve their absorptive capacity, in order to obtain more financial gains from green process innovation. From the perspectives of cleaner technology innovation and end-of-pipe technology innovation, this study enriches the theoretical research on green process innovation, and provides novel suggestions for manufacturing industries on how to gain more benefits from green process innovation. Related Articles | Metrics

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Business model innovation of servitization of the manufacturing industry:A resource-based perspective Li Jinghua, Lin Li, Li Qianlan 2019, 40(3): 74-83.  Abstract ( 478 )   The competition among manufacturers, especially capital equipment manufacturers, is becoming more and more intensive while there is little room left for these firms to capture reasonable profit margin. It has become an inevitable industrial trend that manufacturing firms are encouraged to pursue the strategy of servitization through which value-added service-related activities such as contracting, system integration, equipment leasing, integrated solution providing and remanufacturing are carried out in order to create more values for both the clients and the firms. As a way of strategic transformation which has brought the focus of business onto the realization of clients’ value, servitization has introduced to us a brand-new business logic in which client-orientation is stressed and high-end service provision has been made as a new source of revenue with higher level of sustainability. Manufacturers need to re-construct their business models in order to realize business logic shift from being a traditional supplier-based manufacturer to being a client-focused manufacturer pursuing servitization. In essence, each element within the business model needs to be re-examined before the servitization strategy is carried out; these elements include value proposition, business procedures, external relations and profit models.The strategy of servitization means a manufacturer’ s transformation from being a simple product supplier or supplier of products and affiliated services to being a supplier of complete “product-service packages” through which process two types of services are provided, namely, services supporting the product (SSP) and services supporting the client (SSC). Since these two types of services involve different kinds of resources and capabilities and different levels of resource integration, the success of servitization transformation is dependent, to a large extent, on the smooth re-allocation and re-integration of the firms’ key resources and capabilities. However, existing literature shows a research gap that needs to be bridged where the internal logic and realization path of servitization remains ambiguous. Thus, when analyzing the path to realize servitization, both the business model view and the resource-based view should be taken into consideration.Therefore, based on the resource-based view and integration of leading-edge theories in manufacturing servitization and business model innovation, this paper builds a theoretical model encompassing both the four inter-related business model elements and the key resources and capabilities of the firm serving as the foundation of the business model transformation. Then, based on the theoretical framework, a dual-case study on two Chinese equipment manufacturers is conducted to reveal the mechanism of business model innovation in servitization in greater detail. By cross-comparison of the four business model elements of both case firms and categorizing the resource-integration processes into four different types based on the attributes of the four business model elements, this paper explores the internal logic between a manufacturing firm’s resources and capabilities in the process of servitization business model innovation, while investigating on the specific route taken by manufacturers in order to realize their business model transformation.Through the in-depth cross-case study mentioned above with integration of both the business model and resource integration view, this paper has found that first, the transformation from product-oriented manufacturing to service-oriented manufacturing has led to the shift in the value proposition focus of the manufacturers from product to service providing, which requires the inclination of the firms’ key resources and capabilities towards service provision. This process stresses the important role of such capabilities as those in client-need interpretation and service logic transformation. Second, in the aspect of business procedures, the existing manufacturing-based resources and capabilities that the firms have serve as the foundation of their servitization transformation, while the significance of the role in organizing and balancing both product and service provision grows with the deepening of the firms’ progress in servitization. Third, with regard to the firms’ external relations, while the servitizing firms are making efforts in building their own images, they should also pay attention to the evaluation of their partners’ capabilities. Last but not least, the servitization transformation of capital intensive manufacturing firms is more dependent on their financing capabilities, which are very closely related with the firms’ resources such as their brand image, capital strength and external relations and so on.Specifically, the managerial implications that this paper provides are as follows. First，as a means of strategic transformation, servitization can be understood as an intrinsic process of shift in manufacturers’ business model; thus, the essence of servitization is the process of business model innovation in manufacturing firms and the external manifestation of servitization is the restructuring of the firms’ key business model elements, which include value proposition, business procedures, profit model and external relations; so the internal momentum propelling the progress of servitization is the re-integration of the firms’ critical resources and capabilities; second, to realize servitization, resources need to be re-classified according to different attributes of the firm’s business model elements before resource integration; the existing critical resources and capabilities of the firm serve as a necessary foundation for servitization transformation, while the success of servitization transformation lies in the dynamic balance between the firm’s traditional manufacturing resources and the emerging service-oriented resources required to realize the business model transformation; third, manufacturing servitization is a long-term process, different emphases and approaches of resource integration should be applied to firms at different stages of servitization according to specific advantages that the firms have in their critical resources and capabilities. In general, at the preliminary stage of servitization, the manufacturing firms are required to stress the transformation of service logic through executing changes in their organizational structures, business procedures and corporate cultures; in the meanwhile, they also need to foster their capabilities in managing their external relations so as to acquire more external resources to promote the maturity of their servitization transformation. In addition, manufacturers should take a client-centric orientation and integrate their key resources to form specific resource bundles required by different servitization business needs in order to provide different levels of services to their clients. However, at the matured stage, the manufacturers should never forget to consolidate their manufacturing bases and ensure a healthy balance between product and service provision so to avoid over-inclination of resources towards service-provision due to the fast pace in servitization progress. 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Technological innovation, industrial structure upgrading and economic growth Li Xiang, Deng Feng 2019, 40(3): 84-94.  Abstract ( 575 )    The 19th National Congress of Communist Party of China points out that innovation driving and structure upgrading are two important aspects in “building modern economic system” while the core of innovation driving is technology innovation and the key of structure upgrading lies in the upgrading of industrial structure. Therefore, deeply probing into the mechanism of the influences of technology innovation and upgrading of industrial structure on economic growth standing in the new historical period bears important significance on realizing the China’s economy stability and high-quality growth.The existing research draws relatively more attentions on the economic growth effects of technology innovation and the discussion of combining the technology innovation and upgrading of industrial upgrading is less during the process of analyzing the core driving elements of economic growth and relatively big differences exist in the research conclusions. Some scholars believe that science and technology innovation is the main strength driving China's economic growth, and some other scholars think that the contribution of structural upgrading to economic Growth is relatively bigger. The possible reason why the research conclusions are different lies in the nonlinear effects of technology innovation and upgrading of industrial structure on the economic growth. In the content of research, the article tries to make some degrees of innovations in two aspects: firstly, considering the close connections exist between technology innovation and upgrading of industrial structure, and launching the research combining the technology innovation, upgrading of industrial structure and economic growth into the same framework system, and deeply analyzing the mechanism of effects of technology innovation and upgrading of industrial structure on the economic growth from the perspectives of “independent effect” and “synergistic effect”. Secondly, considering the possible existed nonlinear influences of technology innovation and upgrading of industrial structure on the economic growth, the article draws lessons from the research of Hansen（1999）to construct panel threshold model to validate the conclusion and it has the theoretical values and realistic significance on building modern economic system and exploring the effective routes of enhancing the quality of economic growth in the new era.On the research methods, the existing research basically adopts the analysis method of ordinary panel model and most researches all ignore the space relativity of regional economic growth and the process of analysis hasn’t yet taken the spatial heterogeneity and spatial independence of economic development on the geographic space as the variables to be taken into consideration to investigate. In fact, along with China’s economic development and the constant pushing forward of the marketization process, the economic activities such as the element flow and technology diffusion among various regions are increasingly frequent and result in the fact that there are certainly some degree of spatial connections among various regions. Therefore aiming at the deficiencies of existing research, the article takes the space relativity between the technology innovation and upgrading of industrial structure into consideration, draws lessons from the researches of Anselin.et.al（1996, Le Sage & Pace (2009) and so on to comprehensively apply the spatial error model, spatial lag model and spatial Durbin model to analyze the economic growth effects of technology innovation and upgrading of industrial structure through by setting up the spatial weights matrix including the geographical distance and economic distance in order to make the research conclusion more solid and be close to objective facts.The main research conclusion of the article is as follows:Firstly, the obvious spatial effects of technology innovation and upgrading of industrial structure exist during the process of influencing the economic growth. The promoting role of technology innovation on the economic growth is mainly concentrated on the local places and the spillover effects is not obvious; while upgrading of industrial structure showcases the inhibition effects on the economic growth both the local area and surrounding area.Secondly, there exists the tight interaction relationship between technology innovation and the emphasis of either technology innovation or upgrading of industrial structure alone can’t play the promoting role of both two in the economic growth very well and only by both promoting and coordinating with each other, can the promoting role of both two on the economic growth showcase the effect of “one plus one surpasses two”. Thirdly, the role of independent effects of upgrading of industrial structure on the economic growth being significantly negative showcases that the upgrading of industrial structure in the present stage encumbers the economic growth but the cooperation of upgrading of industrial structure and technology innovation showcases relatively strong positive effects on the economic growth and it can showcase that technology innovation is the important factor to promote the economic growth and correct the "negative effect" in the process of upgrading of industrial structure. At the same time it also showcases that treating innovation driving as the important impetus of economic growth in the new stage of the development of China’s economic growth is conducive to guaranteeing that that China’s economy develops steadily and continuously and improving the quality of economic growth. Fourthly, threshold effect analysis showcases that the thresholds of technology innovation and upgrading of industrial structure exist on the economic growth. The technology innovation and upgrading of industrial structure are the mutual conditions; on one side, only by speeding up the technology innovation can we make the upgrading of industrial structure to promote the economic growth better; on the other side, technology innovation needs the support of upgrading of industrial structure if it wants to be the impetus to drive the economic growth and only by both two matching with each other can the promoting role of technology innovation on the economic growth be played relatively well. Related Articles | Metrics

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Transformational leadership, strategic flexibility and firm performance Li Weining1, Zhan Jingyu2, Lv Yuan1 2019, 40(3): 94-103.  Abstract ( 589 )   With the continued advancement of economic globalization, the acceleration of technological innovation and the increasingly fierce market competition, enterprise’s strategic flexibility need to be improved to adapt to the dynamic environment. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) plays an important role in the process of enterprises' perception of environmental change and improvement of strategic flexibility, because CEO controls key resource of enterprise and influence the formulation and implementation of enterprise strategy. A CEO with transformational leadership can inspire the TMT (Top Management Team) members' proactivity and spirit of dedication, create a good learning environment, stimulate creativity of team members, and affect the improvement of enterprise performance. However, the existing studies on transformational leadership have focused on how transformational leadership behavior affect individual behavior. Although some scholars have studied the influence of transformational leadership behavior on group psychological characteristics from the enterprise level, such as the enterprise culture, entrepreneurship, competition strategy, and organizational learning and innovation research variables, the research is still very limited and also neglect the impact on the develop of organization ability. The research of strategic flexibility mainly studies the formation of strategic flexibility from the view of enterprise resources, products, network structure and other factors. In recent years, scholars have begun to pay attention to the impact of transformational leadership on the formation of corporate strategic flexibility and the role of corporate capability in the "black box" mechanism of corporate performance.Based on the high upper theory, this study introduces strategic flexibility (resource flexibility and capacity flexibility) as the mediating variable to study the mechanism transformational leadership behavior has on enterprise performance in dynamic environment. On the basis of summarizing the existing literature, the research model is constructed and the research hypothesis is proposed. This research uses the combination of questionnaire and second hand data to collect data. To ensure the reliability of the research data, in the measurement of transformational leadership, strategic flexibility and dynamic environment variables, the maturity scale of scholars at home and abroad were used. Through the test by means of "back translation" and pretest in the EMBA students, a formal questionnaire eventually formed. Enterprise performance is assessed through year-end total assets profitability (ROA).Control variables include enterprise age, enterprise assets (logarithmic to the number of employees), the proportion of state-owned shares, corporate asset-liability ratio and industry (divided according to the China securities regulatory commission (CSRC) industry standard, the sample companies come from 15 industries, expressed in 14 virtual variable sample enterprise industry). This study commissioned a third-party consulting company to conduct a questionnaire survey on the senior management team members of listed companies in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and other regions according to the design and requirements of this study, and 208 valid samples were finally obtained.Before data analysis, Cronbach's coefficient was used to test the reliability of the study variables, and confirmatory factor analysis in the structural equation model was used to test the scale's structural validity. The test results show that the scale of transformational leadership behavior and its dimensions, strategic flexibility and its dimensions, and environmental dynamics have good reliability and discriminative validity. Correlation analysis also shows that there is a strong correlation among the variables in this study, and without collinearity problem. In this study, SPSS statistical software was used to test the research hypothesis, and the conclusions showed that :(1) Strategic flexibility plays a full mediating role in the relationship between transformational leadership behavior and enterprise performance. In a dynamic environment, strategic flexibility, as an "intermediary" capability within an organization, strengthens the competitive advantage of an enterprise by acquiring different resources and improving the utilization rate of resources, thus affects its business performance. This conclusion uncovers the "black box" between individual behavior and corporate performance, and provides a theoretical basis for transformational leadership to enhance corporate performance by developing strategic flexibility in a dynamic environment. (2) In dynamic environment, the influence of transformational leadership on resource flexibility and ability flexibility is enhanced. When the environment is more dynamic, transformational leadership behavior is more conducive to improving strategic flexibility. (3) The relationship between strategic flexibility and enterprise performance is not affected by either high dynamic environment or low dynamic environment. Strategic flexibility is a kind of strategic ability for enterprises to obtain high returns.At present, the research on transformational leadership mainly focuses on the influence of individuals on individuals and individuals on the organizational environment, lacking the research on transformational leadership from the enterprise level. Based on the Chinese situation and the introduction of strategic flexibility, this study discusses the mechanism of transformational leadership on strategic ability from the enterprise level, providing a new perspective to further uncover the "black box" of enterprise performance, and at the same time, providing a theoretical basis for Chinese enterprise management practice. In the process of strategic transformation, the strategic leader should transform the dynamic characteristics of the external environment into positive factors to promote the strategic flexibility of the enterprise and improve the business performance by establishing corporate vision, showing consideration for and caring for the subordinates and creating the organizational atmosphere adapting to the dynamic environment.The shortcomings of this study are as follows (1) This study does not focus on the influence of senior management team members on strategic flexibility. As an important member of strategic decision-making and implementation, the executive team's leadership plays an important role in the formation of strategic flexibility. The formation of strategic flexibility and the improvement of business performance are social results of a long-term interaction between the CEO and the members of the executive team. (2) The data of this study come from multiple industries. In the future, a specific industry (such as manufacturing industry and high-tech industry) can be selected for further study. (3) The sample data of this study is a cross-sectional data. In the future, longitudinal data can be introduced to further verify this influence mechanism. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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Complementary assets specificity, relational governance and business model design Wu Dong, Yang Yang, Zhu Peizhong 2019, 40(3): 104-113.  Abstract ( 273 )   Business model design is becoming a source of sustained competitive advantage for firms. What is less well known by us is that how complementary assets specificity affects a firm’s business model design? Although complementary assets can help firms break through their own resource constraints, the inertia, conflict, and devaluation of complementary assets pose many challenges. In addition, from the perspective of complementary assets, the relationship governance of upstream and downstream partners is also a very critical contextual variable in the study of business models. Previous studies have considered these issues in a lack of detail, and there are few empirical studies to discuss these issues, which hinders us from understanding the business model design from the perspective of complementary assets. Therefore, the scientific research question of this study focuses on “how does complementary assets specificity affect the business model design of the firms?” This study aims to explore this research question by examining the main effects of complementary assets specificity and business model design, and the moderating role of relational governance. Therefore, four hypotheses of the relationship among complementary asset specificity, relational governance and business model design are proposed. The research strategy of this study is the questionnaire survey method. In order to ensure the reliability and validity of the measuring tools, the scales are taken from the classic literature. In order to adapt to the Chinese context, this study first follows the reasonable procedure of scale translation, translates into Chinese scale by means of back translation, and then appropriately modifies the items according to Chinese context to form a measurement tool for collecting empirical data. All scales use the 7-point Likert scale. The data analysis tools are SPSS 20 and AMOS 20.The dependent variables of this study are the novelty and efficiency of business model design. Since these two variables represent two classic design themes of business model, there is no orthogonal relationship between the two variables, but there is a certain correlation. When one variable is used as the dependent variable, the other variable is treated as the control variable. The independent variable of this study is complementary asset specificity. The moderating variable of this study is relational governance. Control variables include firm size, the firm age, industry type, firm ownership. The formation of the business model is also affected by the assets and capabilities of the firm itself. Therefore, the technological capabilities and asset complementarity of the enterprise are taken as control variables.This study is based on the manufacturing and service firms in the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regions, which are most developed in the domestic market economy. The questionnaire was issued in three channels. First, the middle and senior managers of the EMBA and MBA programs are invited to fill out the questionnaires, and the on-site paper questionnaires are issued and recycled. The questionnaire recovery rate is high. Second, the high-level interviews are combined with the opportunities of the enterprises to conduct research. Fill in the questionnaire on the spot, use this method to fill out the questionnaire, the time is most sufficient for the respondents, and the recovery rate of the questionnaire is high. Third, entrust the social organizations, industry associations and other enterprises with more concentrated management to issue the electronic questionnaire. The method of targeted issuance also has a high recovery rate. A total of 353 questionnaires were distributed through the above three channels, and 337 questionnaires were collected, with a recovery rate of 95.5%, avoiding the problem of non-return bias. Among them, 178 valid questionnaires were confirmed with a effective rate of 52.8%. Analysis of variance showed that there were no significant differences between the three sets of samples collected by the three channels.The hypotheses are tested by conducting hierarchical regression analysis with questionnaire survey data collected from 178 sample Chinese firms. The research results show that: (1) complementary assets specificity has a significant negative impact on the novelty of business model design, but has no significant impact on the efficiency of business model design; (2) relational governance has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between complementary assets specificity and novelty of business model design, and a negative moderating effect on the relationship between complementary assets specificity and efficiency of business model design. This research has a certain theoretical contribution. First, the mechanism that influences the design of business models is discussed from the perspective of complementary assets. In the past, such research was still relatively rare, and it only mentioned that firms need to obtain complementary assets from outside to support the realization of business models. Secondly, this study examines in detail the mechanism of the impact of complementary asset specificity on business model design, and tests the relevant hypotheses through empirical research, and draws more scientific conclusions. Previous studies have suggested that specialized complementary assets are difficult to obtain in the market and require a long time to accumulate. Therefore, specialized complementary assets can be used as a source of competitive advantage. However, this advantage is based on the preconditions that the environment is relatively stable. When the environment is highly volatile, complementary assets specificity will bring disadvantages. The results of empirical research show that complementary assets specificity will hinder the novelty of business model design and will not promote efficiency. The stronger the relationship governance, the weaker the positive effect of complementary asset specificity on the efficiency of business model design.The management inspiration of this research is that enterprises need to fully consider the role of specific complementary assets in the design of business models, and pay more attention to the role of social and non-economic factors such as relationship governance. For firms pursuing a more innovative business model design, it is an ideal strategy to circumvent investment-specific complementary assets and strengthen relationship management with partner firms; but for firms that pursue more efficient business model design, there is no need to give special consideration to the issue of complementary assets specificity, and it is better to reduce the relationship governance with partner firms. Related Articles | Metrics

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A research on innovation efficiency of universities in China：Eight-regions perspective Wang Xiaozhen, Jiang Zihao, Zheng Ying 2019, 40(3): 114-125.  Abstract ( 234 )   Innovation is the first driving force for development and the strategic support in building a modern economic system. As one of the three basic research subjects, universities are not only the source of subversive and cutting-edge innovations, but also the key to transformation of technological innovation into growth mode innovation. And universities have extensive and far-reaching impact on industrial development, economic progress and production mode change. Therefore, university innovation is considered to be the engine of social progress and plays a key role in transforming the economic development model and overcoming the lack of growth. Under the rigid constraints of limited innovation resources, how to further improve the innovation efficiency of universities is an unavoidable problem in the process of building national innovation system. Firstly, taking R&D funds and R&D personnel as innovation input variables, and the number of scientific papers and patent applications as innovation output variables, this paper calculates university innovation efficiency of 31 provincial administrative units in China during the Twelfth Five-Year Plan period. During the sample period, and finds that the innovation efficiency of universities in China is not DEA effective as a whole, with an efficiency of 69.64%.The technical efficiency of the university innovation fluctuated greatly and increased first and then decreased, reaching the highest value in 2013.The technical efficiency of the university innovation fluctuated greatly and increased first and then decreased, reaching the highest value in 2013. The scale efficiency of innovation in universities is better than the technical efficiency. The highest value is 93.08%, the lowest value is 88.33%, and the fluctuation is not prominent. At the same time, the scale efficiency of Jiangsu, Henan, Ningxia and Xinjiang is close to 1. The pure technical efficiency of university innovation is low, the average value is only 76.64%, and the fluctuation is prominent. The overall increase is followed by the scale efficiency, indicating that there are more technical inefficiencies in the research activities of Chinese universities during the sample period, resulting in low efficiency of pure technology. Hunan, Jilin, Gansu, Guizhou, Fujian, and Inner Mongolia contributed the most to the improvement of pure technology efficiency. In addition, compared to 2013, up to 20 provinces' pure technical efficiency of innovation in universities declines in 2015.Therefore, the optimization of the structure of scientific research personnel and the rational allocation of funds for innovation activities need to be strengthened. Among them, Zhejiang and Chongqing have the largest declines. Therefore, the decline of pure technical efficiency is the direct cause for increase and decreases of the efficiency of innovative technologies in Chinese universities form some eastern and central regions. From the perspective of the eight comprehensive economic zones, the regional differences in innovation efficiency of universities are more significant, showing the highest distribution in the west and the lowest in the east. The universities in the Northwest Comprehensive Economic Zone have the highest innovation efficiency, which is 1.5 times that of the Northeast Comprehensive Economic Zone. Based on the factor input quantity and configuration structure considerations, the innovation efficiency of universities in Shanghai, Guangdong and other regions fluctuated greatly during the sample period. The innovation efficiency of universities in Heilongjiang, Beijing and Anhui was deteriorating, and the innovation efficiency of universities in Tianjin and Shanxi was significant. At the same time, the paper makes a detailed examination of the dynamic evolution trend of university innovation efficiency and decomposition index by density estimation. It is found that during the Twelfth Five-Year Plan period, the nuclear density distribution curve of university innovation technical efficiency in China has shifted to the right and presented a significant "two peak" trend, indicating that the innovation efficiency of some provinces is gathering at low values, and some of them are moving toward high values, but the overall trend of university innovation efficiency is optimized, and the provincial differences are getting smaller. The pure technical efficiency of Chinese university innovation and was “two peak” before 2013, indicating that the pure technical efficiency is bipolar. After 2013, the left-peak height of the innovative pure technical efficiency distribution curve of universities increased significantly and the width changed from flat to steep, indicating that the pure technical efficiency of university innovation has generally deteriorated during 2014-2015. In 2011-2013, scale efficiency nuclear density distribution curve of Chinese university innovation increased highly, and the width changed from flat to steep. This indicates that the overall scale efficiency of university innovation has not been significantly improved in this period, but the difference in scale efficiency between universities has decreased. The peak height of the nuclear density distribution curve drops again, and the width changes from steep to flat, indicating that the efficiency of scale deteriorates and the provincial differences of university innovation become larger.Finally, the paper uses R&D redundancy and R&D staff redundancy as the dependent variables, and uses the SFA model to examine the impact of regional innovation environment on university innovation efficiency from the perspective of the eight comprehensive economic zones. We find that economic environment, social and cultural environment, institutional environment are the main external causes affecting the innovation efficiency of universities. The imbalance of the number of elements and the configuration structure caused by the heterogeneity of innovation environment is the main external factor of the innovation elements’ redundancy in universities. In addition, the mismatch between the factors of the eastern university system, internal governance structure, performance evaluation method and achievement transformation mechanism are important internal factors for the redundancy of R&D personnel in the east. The repeated investment in R&D expenditures in the western universities and the unsound budget management has aggravated the redundancy of R&D funds in the west after the loss of talents. And then the paper proposes countermeasures to improve and optimize the innovation efficiency of universities. Related Articles | Metrics

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Scientific and technological classification evaluation of university characteristics based on grey system Wang Dongmei, Wang Xiangning 2019, 40(3): 126-132.  Abstract ( 220 )   At present, in the evaluation of science and technology in China's colleges and universities, there are widespread problems of “focusing on quantity and despising quality”. The inappropriate quantitative evaluation of scientific research achievements and scientific and technological personnel which are linked with interests leads to the fact that scientific research achievements cannot be closely linked with the actual development needs of society. Especially for the universities with industry characteristics, the industry background is strong, and the application requirements for scientific and technological achievements are highly demanded. Therefore, the investigation of the practical application of scientific and technological achievements should be a key part of the evaluation indexes for the universities with industry characteristics.In view of the above problems, this paper studies the classified evaluation of universities science and technology with industry characteristics.Firstly, this paper analyzes the current situation of scientific and technological evaluation, and discusses the defects of scientific and technological evaluation methods in colleges and universities with industry characteristics. There are many phenomena that people pay attention to good reputation rather than actual content, quantity rather than quality. The criteria for acceptance and evaluation of scientific and technological projects mainly depend on whether their results can be published in authoritative journals, but such criteria cannot truly and effectively reflect the real level of scientific research projects. The evaluation of scientific researchers mainly depends on the number of published papers and applied patents, and whether they have hosted or participated in major research topics, but they do not attach enough importance to the actual value of the results, especially some of the results cannot be applied to practice at all. This emphasis makes the current scientific research achievements of colleges and universities seriously out of line with the actual needs of social development.Then, based on the present situation of science and technology evaluation, this paper puts forward three basic principles of science and technology evaluation, including insisting on classification evaluation, establishing efficient evaluation mechanism and establishing characteristic evaluation system. To persist in hierarchical classification and evaluation, it is necessary to establish classification and evaluation index system and evaluation procedure norms according to the characteristics of different disciplines such as natural sciences. The enterprise main body and market orientation should be taken as the primary objectives in the evaluation of development of applied technology and achievement transformation, mainly aiming at user evaluation, third-party evaluation and market performance evaluation. At the same time, we need to actively introduce international evaluation methods to further improve the openness and accuracy of scientific and technological evaluation. To establish an efficient evaluation mechanism, we should pay more attention to the innovation and effectiveness of scientific and technological achievements, guide the benign competition among scientific researchers, and gradually simplify the evaluation steps and improve the evaluation efficiency. To establish a characteristic evaluation institutions and systems of scientific and technological achievements, we need to put forward targeted evaluation indicators for its disciplines and specialties according to the characteristics of the industry, and should not neglect the quality requirements. Then we can establish a characteristic science and technology evaluation system which is conducive to innovation and development. At the same time, we should improve the relevant system and create a good research environment for outstanding talents.Finally, the grey theory is introduced to study the scientific and technological evaluation model of universities with industry characteristics. According to the characteristics of these universities, the classification evaluation indexes are selected, and 19 classification evaluation indexes are put forward in three aspects, including industry application, academic achievements and industry guidance. At the same time, we suggest that the mature scientific and technological evaluation system of countries such as Britain and the United States should be used for reference to improve the classified evaluation of universities with industry characteristics in our country in the paper.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows: (1) we analyze the current situation of scientific and technological evaluation in Chinese universities. The evaluation of science and technology in universities with industry characteristics is too simplified since it only evaluates the academic research level of teachers and researchers through some quantitative indicators, such as the number of SCI papers and scientific research projects and funds, which cannot evaluate the scientific research results properly. For the universities with industry characteristics, most of the scientific research results are aimed at serving the practical application of specific industries, so the investigation of the practical application of the results should become a key part of the evaluation indexes of science and technology. (2) This paper expounds that the scientific and technological evaluation of universities with industry characteristics must be constrained by the basic principles of scientific and technological evaluation, such as insisting on classified evaluation, establishing an efficient evaluation mechanism and establishing a characteristic evaluation system. (3) This paper studies the evaluation model of science and technology in universities with industry characteristics, introduces the grey theory into the evaluation of science and technology, and selects the hierarchical indexes of the evaluation of science and technology. This paper divides the scientific and technological evaluation of universities with industry characteristics into three aspects, including industry application, academic achievements and industry guidance. The three classified evaluation indicators are further divided into 19 evaluation indicators. Among them, industry applications include application certification, technology transfer, patents, appraisal of application results and guidance of practice; and academic achievements include academic reports, academic papers, academic part-time, scientific research projects, research funds, postdoctoral, doctoral, master's, works, awards for scientific research results, pilot model, and industry guidance include the formulation of national (industry) standards, decision-making advisory reports and policy advice bulletins. The index system can fully and completely reflect the basic connotation of scientific research achievements. At the same time, in order to further improve the scientific and technological evaluation method, we also put forward the viewpoint of improving the scientific and technological classification evaluation of universities with industry characteristics by introducing third parties from Britain and the United States in this paper. Related Articles | Metrics

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Gender impact assessment in innovation management and case study Wu Xintong, Chen Jin, Mei Liang 2019, 40(3): 133-142.  Abstract ( 274 )   The strong externality and social influence of innovations make it have profound gender impact. At present, the gender impact assessment (GIA) focuses on analyzing policy texts by counterfactual analysis method and analyzing policy implementation before and after comparison, which needs to be expanded urgently in terms of analyzing objects. On the one hand, it is emphasized and applied to be a policy analysis tool, which lacks gender impact assessment on real innovation outcomes. On the other hand, it lacks the consideration of process, including creating ideas, designing, manufacturing, commercialization and social construction. Due to gendered social construction and diversified forms of innovations, traditional gender impact assessment which is used to be a policy evaluation tool, has been unable to fully apply to the current era of "innovation driven development". In view of this, this study proposes "Gender Impact Assessment in Innovation Management" and its toolkit. Gender impact assessment in innovation management is an assessment tool which is able to adapt to diversified innovation achievements such as scientific and technological innovations, product innovations, service innovations, policy innovations, governance innovations, etc. Being different from previous gender impact assessment policy analysis tools, gender impact assessment in innovation management is based on the process perspective, which extends it to both real and non-real areas, covers the whole process, including screening, design, review, value realization and social impact, and has a wide range of applications.In order to ensure the logicality, comprehensiveness and systematicness of the evaluation process, this study designs gender impact assessment and its toolkits for real and non-real products, services and other innovation projects. The gender impact assessment contains mainly three parts. (1) The input-output-outcome model is a visual expression of innovative achievements, which is distinct from technical documents. It can achieve visualization and popularization as far as possible so as to facilitate multi-party communication in the process of impact assessment. (2) The impact assessment matrix is based on five criteria, that is, technology evaluation and foresight, preventive principle, ethical principle, government & stakeholder participation and public mobilization & multi-party dialogue. It can deeply analyze innovative achievements from the perspectives of methods and products design. (3) Spatial recurrence matrix recursively extents the impact scope to innovation activities and achievements on the level of  individual, family, work and social space, which involves economic activities, social culture, policy and legal fields, in order to sort out the impact of innovation achievements more systematically. Subsequently, taking the market exploration of assistive devices for disabled elderly as an example, the gender impact assessment was applied to the industry.For the disabled elderly, sexual differences will lead to differences in their physiological needs, while gender differences will lead to differences in social needs for assistive devices. There are differences in height, weight and palm size between men and women, thus, it is necessary to extend the size range of appliances. For the caregivers of the disabled elderly, women are mainly responsible for caring for the elderly in families. In the design of assistive devices, gender differences need to be addressed. (1) Reducing the self-weight of the appliances or increasing the rated power of the machinery can reduce the physical burden of female caregivers. (2) Increasing the private shelter facilities in the design of appliances can improve the convenience of heterosexual care. Embedding sex and gender differences in research and development of assistive devices is conducive to improving the sense of use and practicability and promoting market promotion. In terms of the results of input-output-outcome analysis, the main purpose of exploring the market of assistive devices for disabled elderly is to encourage the government and enterprises to develop the market of assistive devices in order to solve the low utilization rate of assistive devices among disabled elderly. The economic empowerment of the elderly has its particularities: they cannot participate in economic activities again, are in a disadvantaged position in the family and society and cannot make purchase decisions. Therefore, the target market and the way of market exploration are special. The conclusions of requirement mining for auxiliary devices are as follows. From the perspective of demand differences, female's visual, hearing, chewing and excretion disabilities are significantly higher than male's, and the demand for assistive devices is greater. From the level of demand, the lowest level of demand for the disabled elderly to use assistive devices is the body function compensation. Therefore, the design of assistive devices should investigate the physiological and psychological needs of the disabled elderly by gender, and use them to improve the devices. In addition, many assistive device operators are family caregivers and professional caregivers. They should be recruited to participate in questionnaires or market research to understand their inconvenience and key issues in the process of care. Thirdly, when developing and producing auxiliary devices, we should carefully measure the type, degree, weight, height and arm length of the disabled and compare them by sex, so as to increase the flexibility of the design specifications and adapt the shape of the elderly of different genders through simple disassembly and telescopic operation. In the operation and promotion of assistive devices, we need to pay attention to: a. In the family purchase decision-making, the decision makers and payers of whether and what kind of assistive devices to buy are often women (wives, daughters, daughter-in-law, etc.); b. Family care is mainly undertaken by women, who are also the actual operators of most assistive devices. So, in the exploration of the market of assistive devices for disabled elderly, women are key target objects.Gender impact assessment continues the critical construction and reflexive thinking, which comes from scientific research and innovation, on gender dimension. In addition, it covers the process of innovation management, innovation achievements and their gender impacts on society. It is an important assessment tool to promote the ethical value orientation in the field of innovation management and realize the social acceptability of innovation achievements. Therefore, it is conducive for policymakers, managers, innovators, stakeholders, the public to correctly understand and objectively evaluate the gender impact of innovations, emphasize the externality of innovations, and then make innovations shoulder the social responsibility of gender equality and benefit society. Related Articles | Metrics

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Effects of population density and environmental carrying capacity on organizational population extinction Xu Jin, Peng Biyu 2019, 40(3): 143-152.  Abstract ( 291 )   Organizational population extinction is a frequent occurrence and is inevitable. Analyzing thoroughly the cause of organizational population extinction has great theoretical value and practical significance. Researches on the tendency and process of organizational population extinction and analyses of the internal mechanism of influencing factors are helpful for the academia to have a deep understanding of organizational population extinction. Firstly, this paper lists the phenomena of realistic organizational population extinction in history, and then generalizes the reasons of organizational population extinction. Moreover, it analyzes the mechanisms of population extinction from aspects of organizational population density and environmental carrying capacity. Based on Organizational Ecology theory and System Dynamics theory, we utilize the system dynamics software Vensim to simulate the interactive effects of organizational population density and environmental carrying capacity on organizational population extinction.In theory, organizational population density equals to zero when carrying capacity is zero and organizational population are extinct. We simulate the evolvement tendency of environmental carrying capacity and organizational population density, the trajectory of organizational population density when environmental carrying capacity parameters are maintained and the change trend of carrying capacity when organizational population density remains constant. The simulation results verify the natural evolution of organizational population. Organizational population density and environmental carrying capacity have interactive effects to organizational population extinction. Environmental carrying capacity and organizational population density have upper limits. After reaching the limits, organizational population will deteriorate gradually, until it is downsized to extinction. When environmental carrying capacity shrinks, organizational population density will decline after four years. The study shows that:(1) In the initial stage of organizational population evolution, the increasing speed of population density is slower than that of environmental carrying capacity. The founder of the enterprise needs to mobilize various resources and establish the legitimacy of the organization and its products. A series of preparatory work takes time. As a result, when the environmental carrying capacity increases, the population density requires some preparation time to develop.(2) Population density has a lagged effect on the change of environmental carrying capacity. It was not until four years that the population density shows a downward trend when the environmental carrying capacity decrease. When the environmental carrying capacity equals to zero, population density needs three years to become zero. Organizational founders will constantly revise and adjust their expectations based on current available resources. When environmental carrying capacity decreases, entrepreneurs do not realize the changes in operation environment and market, they still eager to enter into the organizational population. New organizations are being established and existing organization struggle to stay in the organizational population, so the population density keep rising or remain stable. But the resources that the environment may supply are limited, as the development of population density, individual organization gets fewer resources in the increasingly competitive population. Inferior organizations are constantly being eliminated, and therefore the death rate of the organization rises up. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs that try to enter the population observe the phenomenon of population evolution and then give up joining the organizational population, the birth rate of the organization declines. It takes up four years for organizations to form expectations and make reactions after the environmental carrying capacity drops and available resources reduce.(3)The moderate decline of environmental carrying capacity may improve the resource utilization efficiency of organizational population, and favorable for the survival of organizational population. Resources that organizations may obtain will descend when environmental carrying capacity decrease, but will urge the population to utilize resources more efficient and effective. On the contrary, excessive resources will weaken the importance of efficiency and adds to the disadvantage of organizational population. However, the rapid shrinkage of resources will place organizational population at serious risk of extinction. We should grasp the scale of resource control and make decisions according to the environmental carrying capacity and available resources. Related Articles | Metrics

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Exploring the influence factors of collaborative conflicts in online knowledge community:An empirical research on Wikipedia Liu Fengjun, Lin Zhengkui, Zhao Na 2019, 40(3): 153-162.  Abstract ( 224 )   The online knowledge community (OKC) advocates a user-generated content (UGC) model of “anyone can edit”, providing opportunities and platforms for the civilian population to participate in knowledge production, successfully subverting the traditional professional-generated content (PGC) model and opening a new era of knowledge production. However, with the development of OKC, the phenomenon of collaborative conflict is becoming more and more common. Individuals need to spend a lot of time and energy to resolve collaborative conflicts, which reduces the willingness of individual participation and the quality of knowledge construction. At the same time, a large number of collaborative conflicts lead to increased coordination and management costs, which seriously hinders the development of the community. The main problem currently confronted with OKC is how to effectively prevent, solve and control collaborative conflict, and the key to solving this problem is to find out the reasons behind collaborative conflict. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to study the influencing factors of collaborative conflict in OKC.The pluralism of conflict determines the complexity and diversity of the influencing factors of conflict. Based on combing and summarizing the existing literature, most scholars follow the ABC (antecedent-behavior-consequence) research ideas, and take conflict as the mediator variable or moderator variable between the antecedent variable and the outcome variable. Few scholars specifically study the influencing factors of conflict. In addition, most of the existing researches are directed towards traditional teams, while the researches on virtual teams are scarce, and the research models are relatively simple and lack a systematic theoretical framework. Therefore, this paper takes collaborative conflict as the research object, explores the influencing factors of collaborative conflict, and reveals the mechanism of collaborative conflict.The collaborative knowledge construction of OKC is essentially a dynamic process in which a large number of heterogeneous individuals promote cognitive aggregation by cognitive interaction. Based on social cognitive theory, this paper establishes a theoretical model about the collaborative conflict in OKC, which consists of knowledge heterogeneity, group differentiation, anonymity, task complexity and coordination mechanism. Then, we propose the research hypotheses according to the relevant theory and research, which are as follows: There is a positive relationship between collaborative conflict and knowledge heterogeneity, group differentiation. There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between anonymity and collaborative conflicts. Task complexity positively moderates the relationships between collaborative conflict and knowledge heterogeneity, group differentiation, anonymity. Coordination mechanism negatively moderates the relationships between collaborative conflict and knowledge heterogeneity, group differentiation, anonymity.Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free encyclopedia based on a model of openly editable and viewable content, a wiki. Wikipedia, the world's largest online knowledge community, attracts participants from all over the world, and conflicts are common during collaborative editing. Currently, English Wikipedia is the largest of the more than 303 Wikipedia encyclopedias. Therefore, this study selects the English Wikipedia as the research object. In view of the huge number of Wikipedia entries, we are unable to perform full sample processing. Therefore, we select samples by random sampling according to the quality level of the Wikipedia entry. At the same time, in order to ensure that the samples are typical and representative, we only select Wikipedia entries with a quality level above B. We select 400 Wikipedia entries, 100 entries for each of featured entry, good entry, A-class entry and B-class entry. In addition, we screen the samples according to certain criteria, and finally collect 364 valid English Wikipedia entries as samples. We obtain empirical data of each variable (collaborative conflict, knowledge heterogeneity, group differentiation, anonymity, task complexity, coordination mechanism and control variables) through web crawling and manual acquisition, which is used in empirical research to validate research model and hypotheses.This study mainly adopts hierarchical regression analysis to empirically analyses the relationships between collaborative conflict and knowledge heterogeneity, group differentiation, anonymity, and specifically explores the moderating effects of task complexity and coordination mechanism. To avoid the problem of multicollinearity, we follow three steps for data processing. Firstly, we centralize the explanatory variables (knowledge heterogeneity, group differentiation and anonymity) and the moderating variables (task complexity and coordination mechanism). Secondly, we test the main effect of the three explanatory variables on collaborative conflict. Finally, we introduce interaction terms of explanatory variables and adjustment variables into the model, the purpose of which is to test the moderating effect of task complexity and coordination mechanism on collaborative conflict. The empirical study results show that knowledge heterogeneity and group differentiation both have a significantly positive relationship with collaborative conflict, and anonymity has an inverted U-shaped relationship with collaborative conflict. In addition, task complexity positively moderates the relationship between collaborative conflict and knowledge heterogeneity, anonymity. Coordination mechanism positively moderates the relationship between knowledge heterogeneity and collaborative conflict, and negatively moderates the relationship between group differentiation and collaborative conflict.This study also has important practical implications for conflict management in OKC. Firstly, OKC should strive to create an open and inclusive collaborative environment and establish a cooperative relationship based on mutual respect. When there are multiple different views on the same subject, each view is allowed to be expressed equally, avoiding arguments and conflicts. Secondly, OKC should highlight work priorities and strengthens conflict management. Anonymous users are more likely to trigger collaborative conflicts, so OKC should pay more attention to such users. At the same time, when there is a serious conflict in the community, the community should adopt temporary protective measures to force the parties to remain calm and avoid further escalation and deterioration of the conflict. Finally, OKC should strengthen group communication and improve coordination mechanism. On the one hand, OKC should enhance interactive functions (such as developing instant chat tools), solve communication barriers among members, and promote consensus. On the other hand, OKC should improve various guidelines to effectively regulate and constrain individual editorial behavior, improve group collaboration efficiency, and promote knowledge construction.In summary, this paper systematically and deeply studies the influencing factors of collaborative conflict in OKC. This paper not only enriches the theory of collaborative conflict in OKC and makes up for the shortcomings of existing research, but also has important practical significance for further optimizing community platform construction and improving conflict coordination and management mechanism. Related Articles | Metrics

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A research on the cognitive differences of intellectual property between China and America He Hua 2019, 40(3): 163-170.  Abstract ( 388 )   There is a strong contrast between the Chinese government and the United States government on evaluation of the intellectual property protection in China. In most years, China has been listed by Special 301 Report of the United States in Priority Watch List or as a Priority Foreign Country in terms of weak intellectual property protection. However, the Chinese government believes that the situation of intellectual property protection in China has improved obviously. Meanwhile the awareness of intellectual property rights in the whole society has generally increased. Simultaneously, the work of intellectual property has made great progress. This paper takes the United States Special 301 Report as the research object and analyzes the causes of this contrast by means of using literature analysis method and comparative research method. The result of this analysis shows that the United States Special 301 Report does not accurately evaluate the status of intellectual property protection in China. The main reasons for this contrast are: (1) There is a cognitive difference between China and the United States on standards for protection of intellectual property. Reasonable standards for protection of intellectual property should strike a balance between stimulating innovation and safeguarding the public interest of society. However, the rational standards of intellectual property protection in various countries are different due to the inconsistency of factors such as the level of innovation in each country and the rule of law environment. The United States has also adopted different standards of protection at different stages of development in history. At this stage, however, the United States advocates that different countries should apply the same standards of intellectual property protection and the laws of the United States should be treated as a criterion for judging the status of intellectual property protection in other countries. the United States hopes that all countries in the world will apply the highest level of intellectual property protection standards. Unlike the United States, China advocates that the standards of intellectual property protection in all countries of the world should not be uniform. The protection standards for intellectual property should be fit with the level of social and economic development of a country. On the premise of fulfilling the obligation of "minimum protection standard" established by the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), China should gradually adjust its intellectual property protection standards in accordance with national conditions and specific stages of development. (2) There is a cognitive difference between China and the United States on intellectual property policy. China puts forward the strategic goal of building an innovative country, takes strengthening its independent innovation ability and acquiring independent intellectual property as its core and closely integrates it with national security. The United States Special 301 Report argues that the emphasis on independent innovation and independent intellectual property will lead to actually differential treatment of United States rights holders, thus creating barriers to market access and often putting foreign firms at a disadvantage. The controversy between China and the United States on independent innovation and independent intellectual property policy is a distinct embodiment of the key position of intellectual property in international competition. Both China and the United States recognize the importance of intellectual property rights for national security. The purpose of China's independent intellectual property policy is to reduce its dependence on foreign technology, to improve China's ability to participate in international market competition, and to maintain national economic security. The scope of cyber security reviews in the United States often also involves intellectual property. (3) There is cognitive difference between China and the United States on the effectiveness of intellectual property protection. Since the protection of intellectual property in United States is stronger than China, there are certain situations in which it is illegal according to the US law but legal in accordance with Chinese law. China and the United States have a huge cognitive difference about the situation of trademark infringement in China's export link. The root cause lies in the different provisions of whether or not foreign-related OEM processing constitutes trademark infringement. In addition, in the software field, the measurement methods for software piracy rates are not consistent, resulting in large differences in statistical results. The US Special 301 Report is greatly influenced by US interest groups. These interest groups, from the perspective of safeguarding their own industrial interests, often exaggerate facts and losses to highlight their own victim image.The United States has formed its own characteristics in intellectual property cognition, because it attaches importance to maintaining its dominant position in international competition with intellectual property rights. How to link the technological superiority of the United States with the protection of intellectual property rights and national interests is the main task of successive US governments. In the internal policy, the United States has strengthened the protection of intellectual property rights by modifying the law. In terms of foreign policy, the United States gradually evolves its intellectual property policy into a trade policy and an industrial policy, and applies it in bilateral or multilateral trade relations, thereby realizing the international extension of US intellectual property policy.The above conclusions can provide China with the following inspirations in its reply to the US’s Special 301 Clauses: (1) Since various non-government intellectual property organizations in US have important right to speak in the Special 301 Report, China should attach great importance to the inter-communication of civil organizations. (2) From a procedural point of view, the Special 301 Report provides a channel for stakeholders to express their opinions. We must pay attention to the procedural rules of the "Special 301 Clauses" and make full use of the various channels provided by them to express China's position and appeals. (3) We must pay attention to the strategies and methods of independent intellectual property rights policies. We can learn from the American experience and adopt a more insidious and indirect approach to avoid publicly discriminating against foreign companies and products through mandatory legislation. (4) We ought to participate in international legislative activities on new topics of intellectual property actively. We should enhance the right to speak in the process of international rulemaking and transformation, and maximize the national interests of our country. Related Articles | Metrics

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Structural elements of China’s patent maintenance annual fee system and its improvement Qiao Yongzhong 2019, 40(3): 171-178.  Abstract ( 213 )   Defining the structural elements of China’s patent maintenance annual fee system and its functions are the basis for optimizing the annual fee mechanism of patent maintenance. This paper first analyzes the role of the theory of China’s patent maintenance annual fee system and its structural elements, and then under the cooperation of a number of institutions such as the Electronic Intellectual Property Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic China, the Intellectual Property Protection Association in Beijing, the China Intellectual Property Magazine, the Chongqing Municipal Intellectual Property Office, and the Xiamen Municipal Intellectual Property Office, investigate the issue of annual fees of patent maintenance for innovative entities such as Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Zhongxing Telecommunication Equipment Corporation, BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd., Feitian integrity Technology Co., Ltd., Hanwang Technology Co., Ltd., Huaqin Communication Technology Co., Ltd., Jinshan Software Co., Ltd., Leshi Holdings (Beijing) Co., Ltd., OP Lighting Co., Ltd., Qihoo 360 Technology Co., Ltd., Xinshida Electric Co., Ltd., China Guangdong Nuclear Power Engineering Co., Ltd., China Mobile Communications Group Co., Ltd., GREE Electric Co., Ltd. and more than other 200 companies from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Chongqing, Fujian, Jiangsu, Hubei, Shandong, and Sichuan, etc. 14 provinces or municipalities for the current China’s patent maintenance annual fee system in China. The questionnaire was distributed in two ways: paper questionnaire and electronic questionnaire. A total of 204 questionnaires were collected, of which 50 paper questionnaires were distributed, 38 were effectively recovered, and the recovery rate was 76%. 176 copies of effective electronic questionnaires ware recycled. Based on this survey information, the database that the opinions and feelings of innovation subjects on China’s patent maintenance annual fee system was constructed.   Comprehensive analysis of the theory of China’s patent maintenance annual fee system and the roles of its structural elements and the results of questionnaire surveys of domestic patentee on their views or preferences about them found: Firstly, the main purpose of China’s patent maintenance annual fee system are to stimulate the technological innovation and improve the patent efficiency by optimizing the patent income, and support the financial operation of the patent office by increasing the funding of the patent office. Secondly, the difficulty of the patentee in deciding whether to pay the annual fee of patent maintenance is related to the amount of patent income and its own economic ability, and the reasons for terminating a patent without paying an annual fee are nothing more than patent benefits and patent costs, and other patent management systems. In other words, the difficulty in determining the annual fee is mainly due to the difficulty in determining the patent income based on the cost-benefit theory. Thirdly, although the survey results show that most rights holders agree with the unitary system, according to the nature of the annual fee of patent maintenance and the role of the claim number, this paper suggests that the annual fee structure of patent maintenance in China should adopt a mixed system. In other words, the “mixed system” of the annual fee structure of patent maintenance is better than “unitary system” based on the stimulate innovation. Forth, the “pay annual fee once” model is better than “pay an annual fee every few years” mode based on the flexibility, the “year-to-year growth of annual fee” model is more conducive to the risk of patentee avoiding “multiple annual fees” than the “increasing annual fee by 3 or 5 years” model based on the uncertainty of patent income, and there is a difference in the support degree for the above opinions. Fifth, optimizing the annual fee amount of patent maintenance is a key step in reforming China’s patent maintenance annual fee system in China. Most holders of patentee hope that the number of annual fees of patent maintenance will be significantly reduced, slightly reduced, maintained unchanged, and slightly increased to a substantial increase in different stages.According to the theory of the institutional elements of China’s patent maintenance annual fee system and the results of the investigation of the patentee, in order to effectively play the role of China’s patent maintenance annual fee system in China to promote innovation, it is recommended to re-examine China’s patent maintenance annual fee system in China and its charging standards, and comprehensive reforms and proposed the following specific recommendations. The first is to strengthen the theoretical study of China’s patent maintenance annual fee system, systematically analyze its internal structural elements and its synergistic mechanism to promote innovation. The second is to change the growth model of the annual fee of patent maintenance: it is recommended to increase the annual fee for patents every five years to increase a large gradient, while the annual fee of patent maintenance increases slightly during each five-year period. The third is to adjust the growth rate of the annual fee of patent maintenance: significantly reduce the annual fee of patent maintenance for the first 5 years from the application date; significantly reduce the annual fee of patent maintenance for the first 6-10 years from the application date; keep it unchanged from the date of application to the 11-15 year for the annual fee of patent maintenance; increase the annual fee of patent maintenance for the first 16-20 years from the filing date. The fourth is to provide a choice of payment models: 1) A one-time payment of all annual fee of patent maintenance for 20 years, the annual fee can enjoy a 40% discount; 2) If you pay all annual fee of patent maintenance four times in 5, 10, 15 and 20 years from the filing date, you can enjoy a 7-8% discount on the annual fee; 3) If the annual fee of patent maintenance is paid in every year, the annual fee must be paid in full. The fifth is to adjust the annual fee structure of patent maintenance: in addition to the payment of the basic annual fee of patent maintenance, a certain percentage of the fee is charged according to the number of patent claims. The sixth is to optimize the payment method of the annual fee of patent maintenance, set up a special account, and allow the use of deductions, etc. Related Articles | Metrics

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Paradox of Chinese individual patent maintenance-Evidence of frictions in the patent market Sun Zhen 2019, 40(3): 179-187.  Abstract ( 188 )    This paper documents the paradox of Chinese individual patent filings, namely, individual inventors' patents are widely regarded as of lower quality compared to firm-filed patents; while on the other hand, they are maintained significantly longer than their firm counterpart. We point to the inefficiency of the patent market to explain the paradox: because of the high search cost and information asymmetry, it takes longer time for individuals to license their patents to a potential commercialized firm, without which the individual inventors cannot reap the benefit and cover the investment cost. The individual inventors choose to wait for potential buyers of their invention until the invention becomes almost obsolete. We construct a dataset on Chinese patents for empirical analysis, incorporating crawled data from Google Patents to include the number of claims and citations for the patents, and then match with SIPO data. These two variables will be instrumental in studies that focus on patent quality and knowledge flows. The ex-ante quality measures (claims, number of subclasses, number of inventors, grant lag, grant rate, etc) suggest that the individual patents are of much lower technical quality, compared to the firm or academic patents. These statistics show that individual applications are not simply disguised form of firm applications: they indeed have significantly different quality measures, even conditional on being granted. However, when we look at the ex-post quality measures, we find that individual patents have a much longer life than firm patents: they are on average maintained 10 months longer than firm patents! Since the life-in-force has been regarded as one of the most reliable indicators of patent value, the finding constitutes the paradox of the Chinese individual filings, as a large proportion of individual innovators are non-performing entities (NPEs), holding their patents longer means paying maintenance fees without being compensated. We provide an explanation based on the observation that individual innovators, especially those NPEs, need to license or transfer their patents to other performing entities (like firms) to make their innovation activity a livable business. Therefore, we postulate that individual innovators hold their patents longer not because their patents are more valuable, but because they are waiting for potentially interested firms to license/transfer their patents. They only choose to abandon the patents when the technology embedded in the patents is close to obsolete, or in other words, the patents do not have a very long economic life left even if they are developed and commercialized.We provide four pieces of evidence supporting our hypothesis. The first piece of evidence is that it takes significantly longer time for the individual invention patents to get licensed/transferred, compared to firm patents. We compute the license/transfer lag as the time elapsed between the application date and the first ever license/transfer date. The results suggest that conditional on being granted, the license/transfer lags for individual and firm patents that have been licensed/transferred at least once are around 1651 and 1445 days respectively. It takes around 200 more days for individual patents to get licensed / transferred, compared to firm patents. Higher search cost and information asymmetry for technology transfer between firms and individuals, compared to inter-firm technology transfers lead to individuals waiting longer in hope of eventually getting their patents commercialized. Since the grant of a patent is a crucial event that reduces the uncertainty embedded in the invention, we may expect the difference in the lag is due to more of the firms’ patents being licensed/transferred before they were granted. Following this logic, conditional on the license/transfer occurs after the patent has been granted, the license/transfer lag between individuals and firms should be smaller. In the second piece of evidence, we compare the difference in license/transfer lag between individual and firm patents conditional on grant. Indeed, the difference becomes smaller but is still large and significant at about 130 days. The third piece of supporting evidence is that, conditional on ever being licensed or transferred, patents originally owned by individuals have roughly equal duration in-force compared to patents owned by firms. Individual patents are maintained on average, 300 days longer than firm patents; however, the gap becomes much smaller and drops to only 76 days if we only consider the subsample of licensed/transferred patents. In the last piece of evidence, we show that individual patents are maintained close to the “ideal” economic life of patents when the technology is developed and commercialized. The licensed/transferred patents are in general of very high value, thus it’s expected that they have a longer life than the population average. If we call the life-in-force of a licensed/transferred patent the “maximum economic life in application”, we notice that the average individual patents’ life (2284 days) is much closer to this “maximum life” (2392 days) than their firm counterpart (1987 days compared to 2316 days). It seems the individual innovators hold their patents to the time point when even if they are licensed / transferred, there would be of little value left to be appropriated. It can be explained by the innovators being overly optimistic of the probability, or simply unwilling to accept the sunk cost, i.e., the “sunk cost fallacy”. In other words, individuals will hold on to their patents until they worth little even if transferred.It is well-known that the market for intellectual property (IP) is one of the last large and inefficient markets in economy. IP is the ultimate intangible asset and extremely hard to value. Moreover, there are very high search and transaction costs on both sides of the market (inventors and patent users). Information asymmetry and the risk of litigation make all potential participants even more cautious. Empirical evidence on the consequence of such inefficiencies is, however, scarce. The paper provides some much-needed evidence for the inefficiency of the technology market, based on a new theoretical mechanism to explain the paradox of individual filings in China and four pieces of empirical evidence for the mechanism. We conclude with a final implication of the findings on patent life. If the patent serves a different purpose (i.e., licensing / transferring) rather than production and commercialization, in a market with frictions on the transaction purposes, the patent life may not be a good indicator of its value. Related Articles | Metrics

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Unethical leadership and employees’ creative deviance:An analysis of the multiple mediating effects Liu Xiaoqin 2019, 40(3): 188-196.  Abstract ( 388 )   In organizational management practices, because of resource scarcity and other constraints, it is impossible for organizational leaders to support all employee innovations, and they often tend to retain new ideas that they believe are most practical and most likely to be realized. After the creative ideas are rejected by the superiors, the employees may follow the superior arrangement, cancel or reduce the innovation investment in the follow-up tasks, but it is also possible to violate the higher-level instructions and continue to increase the investment in the rejected ideas. Faced with the positive management philosophy and management measures of the superiors, when the proposed ideas are rejected by the superiors, it is very likely that the employee will not contradict the superior instructions on the one hand, and continue to practice the negative ideas in private on the other hand, it is the creative deviance. In line with this idea, if the superior leader who denies the employee's workplace initiative innovation is a passive leader, how will the employee's emotions be affected? Will this influence enhance or diminish the employee's subsequent innovation investment, which in turn affects the creative deviance? As a negative work situation, unethical leadership are likely to have a negative impact on employee workplace innovation behavior, because it is closely related to employee emotional exhaustion, and emotional exhaustion will harm the intrinsic motivation of employees' critical driving force in workplace innovation. Therefore, it is particularly important to explore the relationship between unethical leadership and employees’ creative deviance. In addition, the study also intends to explore the "black box" mechanism of unethical leadership affecting employees’ creative deviance. This study believes that intrinsic motivation will play an important mediating role in the impact of unethical leadership on employees’ creative deviance. However, although intrinsic motivation has theoretically been used as an mediating mechanism to link work scenarios with innovation capabilities, the results of previous studies on their mediating effects are inconsistent. Shalley et al. believe that the existence of other potential mediator variables may be a possible cause of inconsistent results. Therefore, emotional exhaustion is proposed as another mediating variable. It exists before intrinsic motivation. The emotional exhaustion caused by unethical leadership directly affects its intrinsic motivation, which in turn affects employees’ creative deviance.After the induction and review of the existing literature, this study is based on the current literature of conservation of resources theory and affective events theory. From the individual level of employees, considering the perspective of individual emotional exhaustion and intrinsic motivation, taking the unethical leadership - emotional exhaustion - intrinsic motivation - employees’ creative deviance as an idea, the study construct a conceptual model and propose research hypotheses. At the same time, the study draw on and refer to the relatively mature measurement tools at domestic and foreign, prepare the initial questionnaire, and through the small sample pretest, solicit expert advice from the industry, understand the true attitude of the sample participants and group discussion, adjust and improve the initial questionnaire. A formal questionnaire was eventually formed. After the questionnaire was formed, a questionnaire survey was conducted on employees of relevant enterprises in the developed coastal areas, and a total of 316 valid sample data were obtained. On the basis of relevant research at domestic and foreign, the reliability, validity analysis and common method deviation test of the data were carried out, and the verification variables and common method deviation test were carried out on the relevant variables by software such as AMOS, SPSS and Process. At last, the study discusses the mechanism of unethical leadership through the two mediators of emotional exhaustion and intrinsic motivation affecting the employees’ creative deviance.The empirical test results of this study show that after controlling demographic variables such as gender, education level, working years, and position and awareness time, the variables in this study (unethical leadership, emotional exhaustion, intrinsic motivation, and creative deviance) significantly related to each other. Among them, unethical leadership is significantly positively correlated with employee emotional exhaustion, and has a significant negative correlation with employee intrinsic motivation and workplace creative deviance; emotional exhaustion is significantly negatively correlated with employee intrinsic motivation and workplace creative deviance; employee intrinsic motivation and workplace creative deviance has a significantly positive correlation. The structural equation model (SEM) test results show that emotional exhaustion and intrinsic motivation play a chain of multiple mediations between unethical leadership and employees’ workplace creative deviance. On the one hand, the superior unethical leadership influences the employees’ workplace creative deviance by increasing emotional exhaustion and reducing the intrinsic motivation; on the other hand, the superior unethical leadership in turn stimulates the employee's emotional exhaustion, destroys the employee's intrinsic motivation, and indirectly affects the employees’ workplace creative deviance. It can be seen from the research results that in the daily organizational management practice, employees can actively intervene in the initiative innovation behavior from the perspective of superior leaders, help individuals actively reduce emotional resource consumption, enhance intrinsic motivation, and enhance innovative behavior and innovation performance.Our research contributes to existing literature in several ways. The development of this research continues the previous studies. On the one hand, we can further broaden the boundaries of relevant conceptual models by exploring the relationship between superior unethical leadership and employees’ workplace creative deviance, increase the empirical literature that is different from previous research; on the other hand, through the exploration of the mechanism of action between unethical leadership and employees’ workplace creative deviance, it provides more evidence and clues for follow-up research in this field, at the same time, it can also provide useful reference for the intervention and management of realistic workplace innovation.Our findings contribute to management revelation in several ways. First, from the source of the impact mechanism, organizations should strive to control or reduce unethical leadership behavior in the workplace as much as possible. Second, the organization should consider establishing relevant supporting mechanisms to intervene in the possible negative psychological state of employees. In addition, organizational managers must maximize their own business and leadership skills to more effectively manage employees in different mental states. Of course, the long-term and the key measure is to establish and develop a positive corporate culture, encouraging employees to help each other and preventing harming each other. Related Articles | Metrics

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A study of the improvement of project management performance by flexible contract based on trust Chen Yilin， Yin Yilin 2019, 40(3): 197-208.  Abstract ( 315 )   Trust between the employer and the contractor as well as contract flexibility as the core of relation governance and contract governance are regarded as important factors for guaranteeing project management performance. However, trust and contract flexibility are multi-dimensional concepts, and their deep impact relationships have not been adequately elucidated. In the theoretical research and practical operation of the improvement of project management performance, contract governance and relationship governance have been proved to be important research theories for improving project management performance. The two core elements of the above theories, contract flexibility and trust, have become the focus of research by scholars in the field of governance. However, research shows that in engineering practice, the combination of uncoordinated trust and flexible contract can not only fail to promote the improvement of project management performance, but even increase the risk in reverse, leading to reduction of project performance level. At the root of this, there is no clear research on the relationship between trust and contract as well as the mechanism of their influence on project management performance.In view of the relationship between trust and contract flexibility, the field of empirical research has initially formed stage results. However, contract flexibility is still analyzed and discussed as an integrated theoretical construct, and the influence of trust and contract flexibility on project management performance is not studied. The conceptual research results show that trust and contract flexibility are both multi-dimensional theoretical constructs, and lack of research on the relationship between the construct dimensions leads to the fuzzy state of the influence mechanism of trust on contract flexibility in the gray box, which cannot effectively explain the relationship between trust, contract flexibility and project management performance.Based on "relationship management, contract management, project management performance," the main line of the study, embedded trust and flexible contract are two research variables, trying to further reveal the relationship between trust and flexible contract, and their inner link with project management performance, for existing in the engineering project organization provide theoretical complement relationship management and contract management research. On the basis of the definition of the variable to construct, there will be variable dimension, and the theory model is set up, mainly from the following three aspects of research: first, based on trust, flexible contract and the performance of project management research, this paper builds up a trust, flexible contract, and the performance of project management theory research model, and further puts forward systematic research hypotheses; second, based on the questionnaire research method, this paper explores the internal relationship between trust, contract flexibility and project management performance in different dimensions; and finally, according to the research conclusion, the corresponding management enlightenment is put forward, and the prospect of the follow-up research is put forward.In conclusion, based on the analysis of contract flexibility, trust and project management performance, this paper constructs the structure model including trust, contract flexibility and project management performance, implement empirical analysis. Based on the statistical analysis results of the questionnaire, we concluded that: integrity-based trust and competence-based trust positively affect contract flexibility, and positively affect project management performance. The relationships between institution-based trust and contract flexibility and project management performance are not significant. There is a significant positive correlation between contract flexibility and project management performance. Based on the research framework of "relationship governance - contract governance - project management performance", this paper embedded trust and contract flexibility, further revealed the relationship between trust, contract flexibility and project management performance, and constructed the structural model of trust, contract flexibility and project management performance. It provides theoretical supplement for the research on relationship governance and contract governance in existing engineering project organizations.Through empirical research and comparative analysis, the following conclusions are drawn: the two contracting parties based on each other's good faith trust and ability trust have a significant positive impact on the project management performance and the setting of flexible terms of the contract; However, mutual institution-based trust fails to have a significant impact on project management performance and the setting of contract flexibility. The contract flexibility set by the contracting parties in the contract terms has a significant positive impact on the project management performance.Finally, based on the conclusions, the study puts forward the relevant management implication. This research focuses on the analysis of the improvement mechanism of project management performance and the role type of the trust relationship between the contracting parties based on the trust contract flexibility. The improvement of project performance by mutual trust in contracting is reflected in that both parties of the contract increase the proportion of flexible terms in the contract when concluding the contract, and the employer gives the contractor more autonomy through the flexible contract on the premise of trust. Contractors are effectively incentivized within the flexible contract framework to achieve continuous improvement of project management performance.Therefore, the following two approaches can be adopted in project management practice to improve project management performance by using trust and contract flexibility:(1) Both parties sign the contract with strong flexibility on the premise of trust, so as to deal with the uncertain emergencies in the implementation stage of the project. Under the relatively loose contract flexible constraint, the contractor can timely deal with it, so as to promote close cooperation between the contracting parties, so as to achieve the goal of improving project management performance.(2) The contract both sides based on the premise of trust in into flexible factors in the separate clause in the contract, pay more attention to the terms of the contract, of the looser, motivation for later in the process of engineering construction based on price changes, force majeure and engineering change losses, so as to promote the continuous improvement of project management performance. Related Articles | Metrics