Knowledge spillovers in science and technology parks: how can firms benefit most?

Spatiotemporal evolution characteristics and influencing factors of digital industry in China

In the era of the global knowledge economy, the rapid advancement of new-generation information technologies has positioned digital industry at the forefront of socio-economic development. Digital industrial clusters, comprising key enterprises and related institutions, have emerged as global hubs for technological innovation, drawing recognition from governments and international organizations. However, China's digital industry faces challenges characterized by being "large but not strong" and experiencing "industrial structure softening." This paper explores the temporal evolution and spatial distribution of China's digital industry, shedding light on its unique patterns. This study reveals that China's digital industry has progressed through four distinct phases, evolving from manufacturing-oriented to service-oriented, and experiencing dynamic stability. In terms of spatial distribution, it exhibits a pattern known as the "One Core, Three Poles, and Multiple Strongholds," with Beijing as the core and Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, among others, serving as growth poles. The study identifies factors influencing spatial distribution, including software development, patent authorizations, mobile phone penetration, industrial parks, digital finance, and foreign investment. Manufacturing-based digital industries prioritize innovation and IP protection, while service-based sectors rely on software development, innovation, and international collaboration. The GWR model demonstrates spatial variation, emphasizing the importance of tailored development strategies. This research contributes to understanding the dynamics of China's digital industry and provides valuable insights for policymakers aiming to create an internationally competitive digital industry cluster.

Improve energy use efficiency through free trade policy: evidence from the establishment of free trade zones in China

In the context of increasing global resource and environmental problems, it is of great practical significance to accurately test the impact of various factors on energy use efficiency for maintaining national energy security and formulating relevant policies. This paper measures firms' total factor energy efficiency (TFEE) using the two-stage stochastic frontier method within the data envelopment analysis (DEA) framework, leveraging data from listed firms in China spanning 2010 to 2022. Employing the establishment of free trade zones (FTZs) as a quasi-natural experiment, we apply the staggered differences-in-differences (DID) and stacked DID methods and analyze the impact of FTZs on firms' TFEE. The results show that the establishment of FTZs significantly promotes the improvement of firms' TFEE, and it has a greater promotion effect on heavily polluting, non-manufacturing, state-owned, private, and small-scale firms. The results of the mechanistic analysis showed that the promotion effect of FTZs on firms' TFEE is mainly realized through three channels: increasing government subsidies, reducing the financing constraint effect, and encouraging the technology innovation effect. Furthermore, industry-level decomposition results indicate that the surge in industry energy efficiency primarily results from improvements within firms rather than inter-industry variations. This paper's results propose that countries can enhance energy efficiency by progressively endorsing the implementation of FTZs.

China's pilot free trade zone and green high-quality development: an empirical study from the perspective of green finance

Achieving the integration of green and economic development has become the key to promoting high-quality economic development in China. In the context of dual-cycle development, a higher level of opening up will be an important prerequisite for achieving this goal. This article uses panel data from 30 provinces in China from 2008 to 2020 as the research sample and takes the establishment of the Pilot Free Trade Zone (PFTZ) as a quasi-natural experiment. By constructing the Green Dual-Cycle High-Quality Development (GDHD) indicator system, taking green finance as the starting point, industrial structure adjustment and technological innovation ability as the perspective of differentiation. This article uses the difference-in-differences method and the intermediary effect model to explore the impact of PFTZ on regional green high-quality development. The study found that establishing PFTZ has significantly promoted regional green high-quality development, and this effect remains valid under multiple robustness tests. Further research has found that, under the advantages of green finance in PFTZ, regional industrial restructuring and the improvement of green innovation capabilities are the main ways to achieve this goal. This study provides a new development path for China's PFTZ to promote high-quality regional development better.

New product development and supplier involvement: the role of R&D collaboration with supporting organisations

Existing research highlights the importance of sourcing external knowledge in manufacturers’ innovative processes. Specifically, supplier involvement in new product development (NPD) has been widely analysed but without conclusive results. To shed light on this matter, this paper provides a deeper insight by analysing the indirect effects in the relationship between supplier involvement and two NPD dimensions (efficiency and effectiveness). In particular, it examines R&D collaboration with supporting organisations as a mechanism by which knowledge provided by suppliers may lead to better innovation performance. This study focuses on 155 high-tech and medium–high-tech Spanish firms to test indirect effects through the PROCESS macro. The results show that while there is a positive and significant indirect effect of supplier involvement on NPD efficiency through R&D collaboration with supporting organisations, that indirect effect is not significant in increasing NPD effectiveness. This research contributes to the literature on inter-organisational networks and NPD by analysing the effects of supplier involvement on NPD through the role played by supporting organisations, with different empirical evidence for each NPD dimension and practical implications.

Environmental effects of the establishment of pilot free trade zones: evidence from Chinese resource-based enterprises

The establishment of pilot free trade zones (FTZs) is a key strategic measure taken by China to promote high-quality economic development, but there are still gaps in the research on how the establishment of FTZs affects the environmental performance of enterprises from a micro perspective. Using data from China's Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share resource-based listed enterprises from 2010 to 2020, this paper uses the difference-in-difference model to examine the impact of the establishment of FTZs on the environmental performance of enterprises. The study finds that after the city that the enterprise located is set up as a free trade zone (FTZ), enterprises' environmental performance has been significantly improved, and this effect has a continuous positive impact. As far as the influence mechanism is concerned, the main driving forces for the establishment of FTZs are technology effect, competition effect, and resource allocation effect, which are embodied in the significant improvement of enterprises' green technology innovation, total factor productivity, and environmental protection investment. The environmental performance of non-state-owned and large-scale resource-based enterprises is more prominently affected by the establishment of FTZs. In capital-intensive industries and the eastern region, the environmental performance improvement effect of the establishment of FTZs is more obvious. This study provides targeted suggestions for resource-based enterprises to effectively implement the environmental green development strategy.

Study on carbon emission reduction effect of institutional openness in China

As the main means to dovetail the domestic system with international rules, institutional openness is the key to deepening participation in the global economic governance system, breaking through energy and carbon emission constraints, and achieving green and sustainable economic development. Taking 284 prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2019 as the research sample, this paper uses the establishment of Pilot Free Trade Zones as a quasi-natural experiment to systematically identify and test the actual impact of institutional openness on urban carbon emissions in China through the asymptotic difference in difference method, instrumental variables method, spatial econometric model, and mediating effects model. Meanwhile, technological progress is used as the entry point to analyze the intrinsic mechanism of action by adopting digital transformation oriented to efficiency improvement and green innovation capability oriented to R&D innovation as the differentiated perspective. It is found that institutional openness significantly suppresses urban CO₂ emissions, and there is a certain heterogeneity and spatial spillover effect of this effect. Further study finds that institutional openness achieves carbon emission reduction through technological progress. The study aims to find new institutional innovation and development paths for low carbon development.

The effect of science and technology parks on tenant firms: a literature review

Science and technology parks (STPs) are non-spontaneous agglomerations aimed at encouraging the formation and growth of on-site technology and knowledge-based firms. STPs have diffused worldwide, attracting significant, and often public, investment. However, there are contrasting evidence and insights on the effectiveness of these local development, technology and innovation policy tools. This paper provides a comprehensive and systematic review of the STP literature (221 papers, 1987–2021), focusing especially on quantitative papers aimed at assessing the park effect on tenant’s performance. We perform an in-depth quantitative analyses, which allows us to go beyond the inconclusiveness reported in previous review papers, showing that the likelihood of finding positive STP effects increases considerably with sample size. We discuss the limitations of this literature and offer some suggestions for future research.

How to Evaluate the Green and High-Quality Development Path? An FsQCA Approach on the China Pilot Free Trade Zone

In today’s world, green development has become an important trend, and many countries regard the development of green industry as an important measure to promote economic restructuring. Green development is consistent with sustainable development in ideology. China’s economy is in the stage of high-quality development. As an important foundation for China’s external economic development, the free trade zone can play a good role in promoting its green and high-quality development. Based on the data of 18 free trade zones in China in 2020, this paper explores the green and high-quality development path of the China Pilot Free Trade Zone. Firstly, the green development index is constructed according to the existing research and experience, and then the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method is used to evaluate the green and high-quality development path. The results show that the development of pilot free trade zones is not the result of a single condition but the result of a combination of green policy effectiveness, foreign investment participation, green production growth rate, and other conditions. Combined with the green and high-quality development path, this paper further provides enlightenment for the development of the China Pilot Free Trade Zone.

Systematic literature review paper: the regional innovation system-university-science park nexus

Recent work on Region Innovation Systems (RIS) has emphasised the importance of universities. Until recently, however, related insights into the dynamics of this relationship in respect of the specific role of the science park have been limited. This paper presents a systematic review identifying the key roles of each actor in relation to innovation. We link the dynamic roles performed by the university between science parks and the RIS. Our results enable us to identify how the key activities performed by the university change during its interrelations within the RIS and with the science park. Our analysis of the literature distinguishes between three sets of relationships through which the university plays differing roles: RIS-university, RIS-university-science park, and university-science park. Respectively, the University’s relationships between these different RIS actors focuses on: resource sharing, brokerage, and commercialisation-exploitation. Secondly, we find that within each of these relationship types the university can perform three types of roles: on knowledge co-creation, acting as conduit, and inter-organisational relationship building. Distinguishing between these differing relationships and roles enables us to identify a total of nine dynamic roles performed by the University, which include: provision of information, channels of communication, infrastructure, regional networking, building research collaboration, acting as knowledge intermediaries, economic development, technological change and commercialisation processes, and start up creation and commercialisation. The review identifies several gaps in the literature in need of further research, and suggests that university relationships with RIS, interlinked with those between the university and science park itself, are important factors affecting science park innovation performance.

An integrated fuzzy framework for analyzing barriers to the implementation of continuous improvement in manufacturing

Purpose

Delivering premium services and quality products are critical strategies for success in manufacturing. Continuous improvement (CI), as an underlying foundation for quality management, is an ongoing effort allowing manufacturing companies to see beyond the present to create a bright future. We propose a novel integrated fuzzy framework for analyzing the barriers to the implementation of CI in manufacturing companies.

Design/methodology/approach

We use the fuzzy failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) and a fuzzy Shannon's entropy to identify and weigh the most significant barriers. We then use fuzzy multi-objective optimization based on ratio analysis (MOORA), the fuzzy technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) and fuzzy simple additive weighting (SAW) methods for prioritizing and ranking the barriers with each method. Finally, we aggregate these results with Copeland's method and extract the main CI implementation barriers in manufacturing.

Findings

We show “low cooperation and integration of the team in CI activities” is the most important barrier in CI implementation. Other important barriers are “limited management support in CI activities,” “low employee involvement in CI activities,” “weak communication system in the organization,” and “lack of knowledge in the organization to implement CI projects.”

Originality/value

We initially identify the barriers to the implementation of CI through rigorous literature review and then apply a unique integrated fuzzy approach to identify the most important barriers based on the opinions of industry experts and academics.

Inter-organisational knowledge spillovers: attracting talent in science and technology parks and corporate social responsibility practices

Purpose

This paper aims to propose that firms located in science and technology parks (STP) developing corporate social responsibility practices can attract talented workers as an effective knowledge management spillover mechanism.

Design/methodology/approach

A longitudinal study has been carried out from the Spanish Panel of Technological Innovation database (PITEC). The statistical method used for data treatment has been a logistic regression for panel data.

Findings

Empirical results show a positive moderating effect of corporate social responsibility practices on the relationship between the firm’s belonging to a STP and talent attraction.

Originality/value

This research follows previous claim for additional research on the phenomenon of talent management and clusters and STP. In that sense, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no previous empirical research about the complementarily effect of corporate social responsibility practices and the belonging to a STP in talent attraction.