Role of government funding in fostering collaboration between knowledge-based organizations: Evidence from the solar PV industry in China

Abstract

As a knowledge-based industry, the structure of the solar photovoltaic industry is influenced continuously by transformations which originate from technosciences. This paper adopts the notion of the ‘science’ community to include universities and research institutes to examine government funding impact on science–industry collaboration in the Chinese solar photovoltaic industry. The triple helix model of university–industry–government relations for explaining structural developments in knowledge-based economies is often used to depict integration among functions of knowledge creation, business production and governance control at the interfaces in these knowledge-based organizations. Through comparisons between subsidized and nonsubsidised R&D activities, based on 10,366 scientific publications derived from the databases of Web of Science during the period from 2003 to 2013, the impact of government funding on their research collaboration is examined in the solar photovoltaic industry take-off phase and acceleration phase. The findings show that the three helices interact to foster collaboration between the knowledge-based organizations where the government–science link and the government–industry link are fairly strong, but the science–industry link is relatively weak. In consequence, policy-makers should develop more effective mechanisms to foster knowledge diffusion between science and industry.