社会资本与大学教师学术创新能力研究

Research on Social Capital and Faculty Academic Innovation

本文考察了高校近亲繁殖所构建的强关系社会资本对大学教师学术创新能力的影响,并探讨了其背后的内在机制。研究发现:博士研究生毕业留校任教对近亲教师学术产出的质量产生了显著的负向影响;机构近亲繁殖率与机构层面的中文学术产出质量呈“倒U型”曲线关系,并且对近亲教师个体的学术产出质量产生显著的负向影响;近亲教师学术社会关系网络较为单一,而后者对学术创新能力尤其是学术产出质量的提升作用显著,这造成近亲教师学术产出的质量显著低于非近亲教师。本文为“双一流”大学建设背景下高校学术创新和大学治理提供了实证依据。

"Academic inbreeding" refers to a recruitment practice in which universities hire their own graduates as faculty, producing a type of social capital based on "strong ties". This paper examines the relationship between inbreeding and faculty academic innovation, providing key insights into the "double-edged’ features of social capital. In the context of constructing world-class universities and first-class disciplines(also known as the "Double First-Class" initiative), counter-inbreeding seems to be a common practice among Chinese research universities. However, this practice remains controversial. The literature suggests that inbreeding can restrict the academic freedom and independence of faculty due to excessive informal control from institutions, because of their relatively simple academic experience. In addition, a higher institutional rate of inbreeding may exclude non-inbred faculty. Overall, inbreeding is perceived as detrimental to individual and institutional innovation capacity. In such circumstances, inbreeding reveals the dark side of social capital. On the other hand, the literature finds that in an academic job market filled with asymmetric information, it is still reasonable for universities to hire their own graduates, because this practice can strengthen institutional academic cultures and ensure organizational stability. In addition, for inbred scholars, staying in their graduating university can reduce their costs of adaptation, especially in the initial stage of work. In this context, inbreeding shows the positive side of social capital.In the literature on the relationship between inbreeding and faculty academic innovation in Chinese research universities, there is a lack of empirical research exploring the causal effect of this relationship and flaws in the stability and accuracy of its measurements. For instance, what is the effect of inbreeding on the academic innovation of individuals? How does the level of institutional inbreeding affect individual and institutional academic innovation? If inbreeding has a negative effect on the academic innovation of individuals, can we explain its underlying mechanism from the perspective of social capital? To answer these questions, we collect publication information on all faculty members from top universities in the fields of education and economics using Web crawling. Next, we construct more stable and accurate academic innovation indicators using the bibliometric measurement method. We use econometric methods, such as propensity score matching and the difference-in-differences approach, to explore the causal effect of the relationship and find the following results.(1) Inbreeding negatively affects inbred faculty’s academic output, mainly in terms of quality.(2) At the institutional level, there is an inverted-U shaped relationship between the inbreeding rate and the quality of academic output. Furthermore, the institutional inbreeding rate has a significant negative effect on the quality of academic output of inbred faculty.(3) Limited by the relatively simple academic network, inbred faculty rarely participate in collaboration that cross institutional borders. As collaboration is essential to improve academic output, especially its quality, the quality of academic innovation of inbred faculty is significantly lower than that of non-inbred faculty.The results provide micro-empirical evidence for optimizing the faculty structure in Chinese research universities, and have powerful practical implications for faculty academic innovation and university governance. First, the diversity of academic experience facilitates the development of scholars’ academic innovation. Second, although the excessive practice of inbreeding adversely affects institutional academic innovation, the "one-size-fits-all" recruitment policy of only hiring scholars graduating from other universities is not entirely reasonable. Universities should create a talent environment characterized by diversity and inclusiveness. Third, universities should create more opportunities for communication and collaboration across institutions, to exploit the potential academic innovation capacity of current inbred faculty.