Enhancing the Performance of Chinese High Education Institutions through Collaborative Governance: A Dynamic Performance Management Approach

With the development of the knowledge economy, knowledge generation and application has been a powerful engine for economic development and global competition. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are under great pressure to improve their performance in teaching, research and the third mission, to respond to the changing social needs actively. This doctoral thesis is aimed at proposing a framework to enhance the performance of Chinese HEIs through collaborative governance using a dynamic performance management approach. Based on a literature review of performance management in Chinese HEIs, a conceptual framework is proposed to enhance the performance of teaching, research and the third mission in Chinese HEIs by 1) identifying the end results of the collaborative governance; 2) finding respective performance drivers for achieving end results and 3) building-up, preserving, and deploying a proper endowment of strategic resources. Especially, the performance drivers can be gauged to examine the performance of collaborative governance. A comparative case study of a consulting project and a joint lab was conducted to demonstrate the power of the conceptual framework to foster collaborative governance between HEIs and external organizations to enhance HEIs’ performance, specifically in the Chinese context. Firstly, it provides a framework to map and model the structure and process of collaborative governance. This framework allows us to make explicit expected end results, performance drivers and related strategic resources. Secondly, by the means of the causal loop diagrams depicting the underlying processes and mechanisms of the conceptual framework, this can engage HEIs and external organizations in a learning process to foster understanding, consensus and commitments. Finally, the conceptual framework can facilitate the implementation or improvement of collaborative governance practices by cascading overall organizational goals among different actors and analyzing alternative policies with the “learning device”. The case study shows that collaborative governance can enhance Chinese HEIs’ performance by (1) providing additional resources to support the research activities, such as funding, field research opportunities, data and application scenarios; (2) improving the efficiency of service delivery and relevance of research with field knowledge and external stakeholders’ active participation; (3) contributing to the improvement of teaching through new cases, new knowledge and learning-by-doing opportunities in projects. Furthermore, the active interaction with external stakeholders builds mutual understanding, trust, shared norms and good relationships, which in turn create critical strategic resources to enhance future collaborations. This thesis is a trial to enhance Chinese HEIs’ performance through collaborative governance. Future research can also introduce the objective view and the subjective view of dynamic performance management to further examine the processes and activities, and the responsibility of different decision-makers in the collaborating process. Besides, the development of simulation models can help strengthening the substantive validity of the conceptual framework and the case studies. Finally, it would be worthy to investigate the impact of the proposed framework in non-Chinese HEIs.