How to get evidence? The role of government–business interaction in evidence-based policy-making for the development of Internet of Things industry in China

ABSTRACT

This paper provides theoretical bases and a framework to describe the incremental process of macro-level innovation policy-making for emerging industry in China and the role of government–business (G–B) interactions in generating policy-making evidence. By analyzing the decision-making processes of three macro-level innovation policies for the Internet of Things as a mode of industry development, the paper finds that the macro-level innovation policy-making resulted from a gradual sub-issue solving in each of several sub-processes. The specific micro-level policy tools are formed and implemented through G–B interactions to generate evidence, and these processes are gradual and incremental, helping policy-makers to overcome the high levels of uncertainties in emerging industry development. Five interactive approaches in this research are identified: inspections, investigations, soft lobbying, conferences, and cooperation. The patterns of interactions vary with the nature of the innovation policies. Our findings contribute to the evidence-based policy-making perspective, by clarifying the innovation policy-making sub-process and the evidence-generating mechanism of G–B interactions in dealing with emerging industry development uncertainties.

KEYWORDS:

• Emerging industry
• policy-making processes
• government–business interactions
• evidence-based policy

Acknowledgements

This paper was presented at the 74th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, 2014 in Philadelphia. The authors gratefully acknowledge all the interviewees from the Development Research Center of the State Council, Wuxi city government, Shanghai Institute of Micro-system and Information Technology (SIMIT), the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Electronics Standardization Institute, and several other companies (including Huawei, Leo InnoTech (LIT), and China Mobile Communications Corporation (CMCC)). The authors gratefully acknowledge all the interviewees in our study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Zhilong Tian is a professor at the Department of Business Administration, School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China.

Jun Shi is a lecturer at the Department of Business Administration, School of Management South-central University for Nationalities, China.

Taieb Hafsi is the Walter J. Somers Professor of International strategic management at HEC, Montreal, Canada.

Bowen Tian is a lecturer at the department of economic and Trade, School of Business Administration, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, China.

Notes

1. The White Book of IOT (2014) issued by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in May 2014.

Additional information

Funding

This research is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (code: 71172089; 71572064).