Research On The Correlative Mechanism Of Openness, Technological Regime And Industrial Technological Capability

Chinese domestic industries have been rapidly developed during the3decades of "reform and opening" policy. However, with the continuous improvement of openness, the stability of industrial closed system has been gradually destroyed, the volatility of industrial development is also changing more frequently, which leads to different trends for each industry respectively. Some industries are activated, while others are suffering fierce competition from all over the world.More and more scholars began to pay attentions to this phenomenon since the mid-1990s. Theorists try to question the economical, technical and social outcomes of openness, and yield different results. At first the research focuses on the spillover effects of openness, and argues that the level of spillover impacts the development of domestic industries. Furthermore, other scholars introduce the moderate effects of absorptive capacity to deepen the understanding of the phenomenon.The extant literature is mainly focus on individual firm level or the sum of several firms. However, one industry is not simply the sum of all firms in it. Based upon experienced field work, the author finds out that when facing openness, not only the original knowledge base is destroyed, but the dominant design, product and technical standards, production process also be subverted. These factors could completely change an industry’s existing distribution structure, the allocation of interests and direction of development. Industrial development is a complex integration process, and a complicated, multi-layered evolution system. To illustrate a complete view of an industrial development, we need to open the black box of the process, which is ignored by extant literature.For deep interpretation of this process, this thesis introduces the concept of technical regime as the main explanatory variable. The first theoratical problem to be solved is the dynamic of technological regime. Using the normative analysis method, the thesis defines the different levels of the concept, differentiates the rule-sets and environment attributes, and explains he dynamic evolution of the technological regime, which provides a theoretical basis for further research.Although technological regime is dynamic, its evolution is quite a long process, and is reletively stable during a certain period of time. Thus, the data of a short period of time can not reflect its dynamic characteristics. Considering this feature, the thesis chooses longitudinal case study method to explain how openness affect the elements of the technological regime, and leads to its evolution.Comprehensively considering the representative of the industry, the availability and convenience of field research, this thesis selected the construction industry of Zhejiang Province and the pharmaceutical and chemical industry of Taizhou district. The comperative case study research describes whether there is change of technological regime under different openness degree and if so, how does its change occur. Meanwhile the research finds out another important exogenous variable, the industrial policy. Following the comperative study, the thesis uses the material of the field research of the pharmaceutical and chemical industry of Taizhou to development a deeper single case study, which analyzes the coevolution of the technological regime and industrial technology capability.In sum, the thesis builds up the correlative mechanisms model of openness, technological regime and industrial technological capabiliy. The results provide a broader perspective for understanding the industrial development which facing openness. And it also indicates that the government should carefully examine and develop some more rational opening-up policies.The main conclusions of this thesis are:(1) Technological regime is dynamic. Technological regime is taken as a rule-set which technological decision follows at the micro(firm) level. While it is treated as the environment or atmosphere within which firms conduct their innovation activities at the meso(industrial) level, which is defined in terms of conditions of opportunity, appropriability, cumulativeness and properties of the knowledge base. The rule-sets are the infrastructure, and the environment is the characteristics of the different combination of rule-sets. Diffusion of changes at the firm level leads to the dynamic evolution of technological environment at the industrial level. (2) There are two important external factors which lead to the evolution of thechnological regime, indurtrial openness and policy. The shifts of technological regime can be achieved through the changes of rule-sets that guide the day-to-day production and innovation activities under the stimulation of external environmental conditions. When the rules of a large number of enterprises change, it would be aggregated to the evolution of industrial level.(3) The internal factor which leads to the change of technological regime is technical change. The changing is a process of coordination and coevolution of technological capability and technological regime.The theoretical contributions of this thesis are manifested in:(1) the integration of the concept of technological regime;(2) the proposing and proving of the dynamic of technological regime;(3) the external and internal factors of technological changing and their mechanism of action.