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| Build the Nest and Bridge: The Relationship among Knowledge Coupling, Trust and Organizational Learning in University-Industry Collaboration |
| Wang Xiaoxiao1,Zhu Guilong2,Wang Zhonghe3 |
| (1.School of Management, Qilu University of Technology（Shandong Academy of Sciences）, Jinan 250353, China;2. School of Business Administration, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China;3.University College London,London WCIE 6BT, United Kingdom) |
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Abstract In the complex, dynamic and uncertain competitive environment, enterprises need to pursue short-term interests to obtain the maximum return of existing products and services. They also need to focus on the long term and constantly explore new technologies and new markets to gain a first-mover advantage. Scholars generally agree that enterprises must have core innovation advantages by implementing explorative learning and exploitative learning. With the deepening of research, some scholars have observed that university-industry collaboration has become an important way of organizational learning. However, most collaborations have not effectively improved the independent innovation capability of enterprises. The reason is that the improvement of enterprises' innovation capability through university-industry collaboration largely depends on the matching of the structure of technological capability between enterprises and academic-research institution and the effective internalization of external resources and knowledge through organizational learning. In addition, the essence of the innovation system of university-industry collaboration is an inter-organizational network of knowledge flow. Knowledge can only trigger organizational learning in the process of sharing. Many scholars have widely recognized that trust is a key factor in promoting knowledge sharing among innovation subjects. Knowledge sharing also includes proactive knowledge output. However, the reasons for trust and what to trust have not been studied and addressed.#br#Based on the above considerations, this study focuses on how enterprises should promote organizational dual learning largely according to their own technical capabilities. It takes the knowledge coupling as the point of penetration, and constructs a unified theoretical model of knowledge coupling on organizational dual learning, and the mediating effect of trust on the relationship between knowledge coupling and organizational dual learning. Based on 226 matching data of university-industry collaboration, the study makes a hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypotheses. The results indicate that the knowledge coupling has significant positive effect on explorative learning and exploitative learning; knowledge coupling has a significant promotion effect on cognition-based trust, rather than affect-based trust. Meanwhile, there is a matching correspondence between trust dimension and organizational learning. Affect-based trust has a more significant impact on explorative learning and cognition-based trust has a more significant impact on exploitative learning. Only cognitive trust plays a partial mediating role among the knowledge coupling, the explorative learning and exploitative learning.#br#This research provides a possible path for constructing a long-term university-industry collaboration and improving organizational learning performance. University-industry collaboration innovation is a complex systematic project. The process of collaboration innovation involves the matching of the structure of technological capability and willingness for collaboration, and the digestion and absorption of knowledge. Firstly, enterprises must realize the important role of innovative resources such as R&D investment, talents, equipment, R&D organization, and truly form a systematic synergy to provide strong support for the improvement of enterprises' independent innovation capabilities. In addition, research-oriented universities should also make efforts to determine the focus of collaboration based on their own ability and structure level, give full play to their own advantages in basic research and applied research, avoid "nanny-style" cooperation, and actively guide the cooperation forces to focus on national science and technology development strategy and frontiers of knowledge. Secondly, organizational learning is inseparable from the trust relationship between university-industry collaboration organizations. As an invisible management method, trust plays the role of bond and adhesive. The key to effectively improving organizational learning through university-industry collaboration is to enhance inter-organizational trust. #br#Future research should further validate the universality of the theoretical model by expanding the sample selection area, and be committed to collecting data in stages to analyze the mechanism and influence path of trust in the process of university-industry collaboration at a deeper level. Moreover it needs further exploration on how to build a long-term cooperation mechanism of university-industry collaboration and improve organizational learning performance.#br#
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Received: 15 July 2021
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