Economic Benefits, Value Appropriateness And Enterprises’ Participation

During the21st century, the competition between countries has developed into that forthe innovative talents. Since the17Th NPC, Central Committee of CPC and the StateCouncil have made a series of strategic plans on Adhering to the new road toindustrialization with Chinese characteristics, building innovation-oriented country,Constructing talents power, etc. The talents that have strong innovation ability, meet theeconomic and social development needs, and are internationally competitive are in urgentneed to implement the strategic plans. Theory and practice have proven that industry-university cooperation (IU Co-op.) is the most important way to cultivate talents withstrong innovation ability and meeting the economic and social development needs.Meanwhile, that colleges and universities can really run schools orienting and opening upto industries, set up the disciplines according to the requirements of industries, andidentify the cultivation objectives and qualifications by IU Co-op. is conducive to cultivatetalents that meet the economic and social development needs, and to break the structuraldilemma between harsh employment of college students and harsh recruitment of industryemployers. What is more, practicality is the nature and need inherent in education, andsituation plays a significant role in the students learning. The school education shouldreturn to practice and the colleges and universities should actively carry out IU co-op. toprovide students the opportunities to take the initiative to practice; to solve the problems,such as school education being divorced from reality, knowledge being inert, and so on;and to cultivate students’ sound personality. But currently, The major challenge in thepractice of the industry university cooperation in cultivating talents (IUCCTs) is theinsufficient motivations of enterprises’ participations. Therefore, this thesis aims to figureout the reasons why the enterprises are lack of motivations in participating in IUCCTs.Existing studies about why enterprises participate in IUCCTs include threeperspectives, such as macro environment analysis, micro economic benefits and socialresponsibility. Macroscopic environment analysis which can be divided into two schoolsof positive and negative influence mainly explores the influence of the macroscopicpolitical, economical and social environments on the enterprises’ motivations. Superficially, the two schools are contradictory, but in fact, they hold the same logic thatthe policies coming into being in plan economy period are not effective in the marketeconomy environment. Because they miss the mechanisms of how the middle levelinstitutions and policies work, the macro analyses are of limited explanatory power. Butthe macro-perspective enlightens that enterprises’ the decision mechanisms havechanged with the changes of external environment, namely the benefits and costsbecome more and more significant in the enterprises’ decision mechanisms. Therefore,the micro economic benefits perspective gradually becomes the second and one of themost important perspectives. The micro economic perspective mainly explores theindividual enterprises’ micro decision mechanisms and takes the cost sharing and benefitsdistributing as the keys in solving the issues of enterprises’ motivations in Co-op. Themicro economic benefits perspective gets at the kernel of the problem of enterprises’motivations or catches the principal contradiction of Co-op, but misses the main aspect ofthe principal contradiction: the concrete mechanisms of how the enterprise gamblesagainst each other and weighs the benefits against the costs. Meanwhile, the microeconomic benefits perspective simplifies the enterprises, colleges and universities, etc. asonefold selfish Homo economics, which does not conform to reality. So the socialresponsibility perspective which recently appeared thinks that enterprise, school, student,etc. are not all or only the Homo economics, but maybe the Homo Sociologicus whosedecisions maybe affected by the values, culture, cognitive, etc. and whose motivations inparticipating in Co-op are for value appropriateness but not for benefit Maximization. Toavoid the extremes between macro and micro or between economic benefits and valueappropriateness, this study is a mid-level research, and adheres to the comprehensivehuman nature hypothesis. Macro environment and micro decision are integrated by themid-level institutions; both the economic benefits and value appropriateness are includedinto the same analysis framework. Firstly, the analysis framework is constructed on thebasis of institution theory insights provided by political or policy sciences, neoinstitutionaleconomics, organizational sociology, etc. Then, the framework is employed to analyze themotivations of enterprises’ participation theoretically, and to identify the critical variablesthat influence the enterprises’ participation, on which the questionnaire is developed. Secondly, the policy is decomposed into three dimensions as follows: policy philosophyand action framework, policy tools, implementation mechanisms. The historical evolutionof policy and practice of IUCCTs since1949is discussed from the above three dimensions.Thirdly, this study selects American STWOA, Ontario CETC and German VET as cases,and analyzes the policies and practices of IUCCTs of these three countries from thefollowing three dimensions, philosophy and action framework, policy tools,implementation mechanisms. Fourthly,193enterprises are administered to thequestionnaire, and five representatives of enterprises, higher schools and its studentsrespectively are semi-constructed interviewed. Then the study uses the empirical data tofind out the key factors influencing the enterprises participation, identify the enterprisesaction models, typify the enterprises into three ideal types, analyse and evaluate thecurrent policies and institutions of IUCCTs in China. Finally, this study predicts thedevelopment trends and policy environment of the new policies and institutions ofIUCCTs, explores the way to reconstruct the existing policies and institutions of IUCCTsin China to enhance the enterprises participation motivation based on the theoretical andempirical analyses, historical and international comparative studies.The major conclusions are as follows:1) the current policies of IUCCTs in China arelack of well-constructed basic action framework, policy tools adapting to marketeconomics and effective implementation mechanisms.2) Economic benefits are theextra-impetus and hygiene factors that trigger the enterprises participation. Valueidentification and cognitive are the inner-guarantees that make the participation sustainedand the incentive factors that promote the enterprises to participate voluntarily. So, thestrategic philanthropy is the basic motivation mechanism of Chinese enterprises.3) In thepractice of Chinese IUCCTs, the enterprises opportunistic behaviors prevail, such as freeriding, half-heartedness, exploiting students, preferring short term or temporarycooperation.4) The enterprises’ opportunistic behaviors are resulted from the interactionof the policy, agent preference and the attributes of human recourses. Thanks to currentpolicies and institutions of IUCCTs, the enterprises in China possess open access to humanresources, namely they can appropriate the human resources freely but offer it of their ownfree will. Thanks to the competitive and non-exclusive characteristics on consumption, the enterprises gamble like the prisoner and are entrapped into the prisoner’s dilemma whenthey act collectively to appropriate and produce human resources. For now, a majority ofChinese enterprises prefer maximizing the outside benefits. So, the interaction of theabove three factors makes the Chinese enterprises entrapped in the prisoner’s dilemma.5)China is in urgent need to reform the current policies and institution of IUCCTs in order tobreak the collective action dilemma that the Chinese enterprises are facing in IUCCTspractice. The macro environment, self-strengthening mechanism and the attributes ofIUCCTs make the reforming of the Chinese current policies of IUCCTs hard andpath-dependent. Therefore, Chinese government must get actively involved in reformingand reconstructing the policies and institutions of IUCCTs according to the principles ofthe government-led co-management theory. Specifically, the policy recommendations areas follows: firstly, formulating special IUCCTs policies to promote development and goodgovernance of IUCCTs. Secondly, defining the structure of the basic action framework toimprove its Structuralization and assure the educationality of the IU co-op. Thirdly,introducing the cost-sharing mechanisms into the policies of IUCCTs and making thefiscal and taxation policies play a better role in attracting enterprises to participate inIUCCTs. Fourthly, optimizing the implementation mechanisms to assure the enforceabilityof the policies and the democratic participation of the stakeholders. Finally, formulatingand perfecting laws and regulations about corporate social responsibility, and takingmeasures such as enterprise authentication, propaganda, etc. to enhance the enterprises’social responsibility.