基于2016—2022年中国沪深A股制造业上市公司面板数据，从开放悖论视角考察企业区块链应用对产学研合作的影响，并结合非正式制度和动态能力理论剖析信任的中介作用以及吸收能力的调节作用。研究发现：①企业区块链应用能促进产学研合作，且在大企业、国有企业和衰退期企业中更为显著；②机制检验表明，企业区块链应用主要通过信任增强效应，推动产学研合作；③进一步分析发现，企业借助区块链不仅可以构建陌生人关系网络内的信任机制，而且在熟人关系网络中更能实现情感信任与数字信任的双重加固，从而有力助推产学研合作；④吸收能力能增强企业区块链应用与产学研合作之间的关系，且该调节作用部分通过信任增强效应实现。研究结论为数字化时代下区块链应用驱动产学研深度融合提供有益启示。

In the face of the pressing need for high-quality growth domestically and the increasingly unstable and complex global environment, China must take the lead in innovation and accelerate the creation of new high-quality productive forces. As an effective model for fostering innovation and development, industry-university-research (IUR) cooperation has gained widespread recognition and prominence in driving innovation-driven development. However, in practice, IUR cooperation still confronts numerous challenges. Among these, uncertainty and opportunistic behaviors generate significant risks, while inequitable benefit distribution, ambiguous intellectual property rights, and poor coordination remain the core obstacles to the effectiveness of cooperation. Clearly, there are risks and opportunities in IUR cooperation, and the openness paradox causes a significant divide in the docking process between Chinese firms and academic institutions. As a result, figuring out how to encourage the deep integration of IUR and investigate the novel avenue of collaborative innovation development has become essential.
IUR cooperation is introducing previously unexplored development potential, driven by the digital era. Blockchain is widely acknowledged as a significant disruptive force in contemporary industry, with its characteristics of decentralization, security, and transparency continually expanding its application areas. With the help of data trust (digital signatures, timestamps), result trust (smart contracts, formula algorithms), and historical trust (chain structure, timestamps), blockchain can quickly and cheaply establish trust while giving multiple subjects a strong foundation for collaborative innovation. Then, can enterprise blockchain applications enhance their IUR cooperation from the standpoint of the open paradox? If it can, what mechanisms does it specifically affect? The majority of existing literature remains at the theoretical level of analysis, lacking empirical validation.Against this backdrop, the study selects the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from the manufacturing sector in China as a research sample for 2016 to 2022, and examines the effect of enterprise blockchain applications on their IUR cooperation and its mechanism from the open paradox standpoint.
The findings suggest that enterprise blockchain applications can promote their IUR cooperation, which still holds after various robustness treatments, and the promotion effect is particularly substantial in large, state-owned enterprises and declining enterprises. According to the mechanism test, enterprise blockchain applications mainly promote their IUR cooperation through the trust enhancement effect. Further analysis reveals that enterprise blockchain applications can not only build the trust mechanism in the stranger relationship network, but also realize the "double reinforcement" of emotional trust and digital trust in the acquaintance relationship network, thus strongly promoting IUR cooperation. In addition, absorptive capacity enhances the relationship between enterprise blockchain applications and their IUR cooperation, and this moderating effect is partially realized through the trust enhancement effect. Specifically, absorptive capacity not only directly moderates the relationship between enterprise blockchain applications and their IUR cooperation, but also indirectly moderates the total effect by moderating the pre- and post-radius of the mediating effect.
This paper presents several innovations. First, it empirically investigates how enterprise blockchain applications affect their IUR cooperation from an open paradox perspective. This not only expands the scope of research on open paradox, but also provides new insights into the deep integration of technology and economy in the context of the digital era. Second, it examines the mediating function of trust between enterprise blockchain applications and their IUR cooperation from the perspective of informal institutions, carefully differentiating between the various forms of acquaintance trust and stranger trust. This not only supports the claim in the literature that blockchain can create trust mechanisms, but also further reveals the "trust-constructing" and "trust-reinforcing" effects of blockchain in the relationship networks of strangers and acquaintances, respectively. Third, drawing on the dynamic capacities theory, it further investigates the mediated moderating effect of absorptive ability between enterprise blockchain applications and their IUR cooperation. The significance of trust mechanisms is further reinforced by this investigation, which also emphasizes the critical role that absorptive capacity plays in promoting IUR cooperation.