Shi Hu
Muhammad Aamir Nadeem
Ying Wang3- 1School of Economics, Sichuan University of Science & Engineering, Yibin, China
- 2UE Business School, Division of Management and Administrative Science, University of Education, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
- 3School of Management, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia
Introduction: Successful university-industry collaboration (UIC) largely depends on the close relationship and effective engagement between higher education institutions (HEIs) and industrial practitioners. The purpose of this study is to analyze the industrial enterprise's willingness to collaborate with HEIs in the UIC regarding the development of degree curricula.
Methods: Data for this study were collected from HEIs using a questionnaire administered with a two-week time lag, yielding 521 valid responses, which were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM).
Results and discussion: It was confirmed that both ethical and servant leadership in HEIs affect industrial practitioners' trust level in the UIC. Additionally, it was discovered that industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs could foster their willingness to collaborate with HEIs in the UIC. Leaders' self-mindfulness training for ethical or servant leadership implementations in HEIs strengthens the significant associations between these two leadership styles and increased trust among industrial practitioners at the UIC. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications of this research were presented.
Introduction
It is commonly believed that the current undergraduate curricula in higher education institutions (HEIs) fail to meet and keep pace with the requirements of industrial advancements. It has become apparent that the current undergraduate curricula in HEIs primarily concentrate on the theoretical perspective with less practical integration (Evans and Miklosik, 2023). Hence, undergraduate curricula need to be updated systematically and frequently in the HEIs. Progress in university-industry collaboration has evolved at worldwide HEIs. China has been striving to improve undergraduate cultivation through the “synergistic approach to education” policy in recent years. This policy aims to promote effective collaboration and integration between HEIs and industrial practitioners to ensure the undergraduate curriculum aligns with the real needs of specific industries. It is stated that there are three primary forms of university-industry collaboration (UIC): educational collaboration, academic entrepreneurship, and research-related collaboration (Nsanzumuhire and Groot, 2020). This research targets education collaboration between HEIs and industrial practitioners in the UIC. Three main subjects are usually involved in the UIC, including government, enterprises, and higher educational institutions. This research focuses on the interactions between industrial practitioners and HEIs in the UIC. However, UIC often faces challenges and barriers regarding trust-building and conflicting interests during the synergy-building process (Cai, 2023). The existing literature on UIC has primarily discussed collaborative motivation and barriers, mainly from a research-related perspective (Nsanzumuhire and Groot, 2020; Zhuang and Zhou, 2023). Research collaboration at UIC can facilitate knowledge production and exchange (Zhuang and Zhou, 2023; Huang and Xiong, 2023). Upon discussing the points mentioned above, it is apparent that there is a lack of research on undergraduate educational collaboration between HEIs and industrial practitioners in the UIC. Additionally, from a research methodological perspective, previous studies have been predominantly conducted using qualitative analysis (e.g., interviews with parties involved in the UIC). This research examines a moderated mediation model based on quantitative analysis.
It is reasoned that industrial enterprises tend to develop trusting relationships with HEIs when these institutions have a good reputation (Hemmert et al., 2014). Hence, industrial enterprises prefer to establish cooperative relationships with well-known HEIs that possess the characteristics of trustworthiness, ethics, and humanization. Hofstede et al. (2010) stated that Chinese culture has a high level of power distance and a long-term orientation. Hierarchical institutions emphasize top-down decision-making and subordination. This type of organizational culture concentrates on the strong personal influence of institutional leaders. Previous studies identified that trust between industrial practitioners and HEIs is positively linked to knowledge transfer and innovation performance in different forms of trust-building (e.g., capitalizing on existing relationships, or use of intermediaries and guarantors; Harris and Lyon, 2013).
Nowadays, the importance of UIC has been highly recognized by Chinese HEIs. In reality, a mismatch exists between the curricula of HEIs and the real industrial requirements. The outdated undergraduate curricula appear to lag significantly behind the industrial growth of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” The “Fourth Industrial Revolution” necessitates the accelerated development of technologies in various emerging areas, including artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and robotics. This leads to a significant transformation in the labor market structure. Some scholars have raised concerns about the gap and mismatch between HEIs' course design and industrial requirements (Jung, 2020; Minh Tri et al., 2021). Thus, HEIs should emphasize the development of undergraduate curricula, rather than focusing solely on research outcomes. To analyze the synergistic approach to education in undergraduate curricula programs, we drew on the mechanisms of various leadership styles in HEIs, trust enhancement, and willingness to engage in collaboration among industrial practitioners through the moderating effect of HEIs' leaders' self-mindfulness training. The leaders' self-mindfulness training at HEIs, as a boundary condition, was geared toward identifying underlying mechanisms concerning trust enhancement in the UIC process. Furthermore, industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs would fuel their willingness to collaborate with HEIs in the UIC. This study aims to design an appropriate questionnaire approach to identify the factors that impact the collaborative willingness of industrial enterprises in undergraduate curricula development and investigate the extent to which leadership styles adopted in HEIs could enhance the trust of their collaborative partners.
Our study makes three contributions to the alliance literature. Firstly, it reveals the pivotal impact of HEIs' leadership styles on industrial practitioners' trust-building and willingness to collaborate in the UIC process. Prior research work suggested that trust formation often serves as one of the main challenges and barriers between HEIs and industrial practitioners in the UIC process (Hemmert et al., 2014; Bstieler et al., 2015). Nevertheless, current research has paid scant attention to investigating the mechanism of trust-building between industrial practitioners and HEIs in the UIC through the effects of leadership choice as a precedent. Our research assumes that the servant and ethical leadership in HEIs could facilitate industrial practitioners' trust development, and further result in their increased willingness to collaborate in the UIC. Secondly, alliance scholars have acknowledged that trust formation is difficult to achieve in the UIC process due to the different and conflicting interests that exist between HEIs and industrial enterprises. The important role of trust formation between HEIs and industrial enterprises has been identified and recognized as an inevitable factor that highly determines the UIC's success or failure (Evans and Miklosik, 2023; Hemmert et al., 2014; Minh Tri et al., 2021). However, to our knowledge, no research has attempted to examine the interaction effects of leader self-mindfulness training as a moderator on trust formation under certain leadership styles in the UIC context. This research manifests the critical contingent impacts of leaders' awareness of and attention to specific leadership style implementation on trust enhancement in the UIC. Third, this research helps improve managerial understandings of HEIs regarding how to adopt appropriate leadership styles and conduct specific leadership behaviors to foster trust and increase the willingness of industrial practitioners to collaborate in the UIC. Therefore, this research contributes to both theoretical and practical implications by offering insightful suggestions for trust-building and propensity to conduct collaboration among industrial practitioners in the UIC, under the mediating and moderating mechanisms in the area of undergraduate course development. Helping higher education institutions and industrial partners better strategize knowledge interactions and exchange within the UIC is necessary. In response to the gaps identified, we addressed three research questions. As such, research questions underpin the present research:
(1) What roles should the higher education institution's leadership adopt in developing a synergistic approach to education in the undergraduate course development area by enhancing the industrial enterprises' trust in Chinese HEIs?
(2) What progress has been made in increasing the willingness of industrial enterprises with a high level of trust to collaborate?
(3) Considering the relative attention given to certain leadership styles' self-mindfulness training by the supervisors in HEIs regarding the acceleration of trust-building in the UIC. What progress has been made in strengthening the positive relationship between HEIs' leadership adoptions (ethical or servant leadership style) and industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs?
This research was structured into five sections. The second section explored the relationships between independent variables, a mediator, a moderator, and the dependent variable, providing the theoretical foundation for research hypotheses by establishing a conceptual model. The third section focused on the research design and methodology, following the demonstrations of descriptive and hypothesis results in section four. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications, research limitations, and future research directions were discussed.
Literature review
Harris and Lyon (2013) discussed the three most common ways of building trust: leveraging existing relationships, utilizing intermediaries, and establishing new relationships from scratch. Trust-building through intermediaries and from scratch requires a certain period of time and is enhanced by constant cooperation, communication, socialization, openness, and understanding. Bstieler et al. (2015) found that reciprocal behaviors (e.g., reciprocal communication) are a strong factor that affects trust formation. Trust-building is the process of reducing uncertainties about collaborative partners (Petruzzelli, 2011; Hwang et al., 2022). It is found that enterprise managers view HEIs with high reputations as potentially suitable partners for cooperation, resulting in the desired collaborative outcomes (Mora-Valentin et al., 2004). Additionally, different leadership styles adopted by HEIs' leaders are supposed to have a profound impact on how industrial partners perceive and understand collaborative targets quickly and clearly. It has been found that a close association exists between the leadership styles and the establishment of corporate culture (Fatima et al., 2023). This study offers a fresh perspective on the positive impacts of HEIs' leadership integration on overcoming the trust barrier and increasing the willingness of industrial practitioners to collaborate in the UIC. The comparison of ethical leadership and servant leadership with other leadership models reveals that, while transformational leadership emphasizes stimulating and inspiring subordinates to better face challenges and carry out innovation through compelling visions, and authentic leadership highlights the leaders' characteristics of self-awareness, balanced processing, internationalization of moral perspectives, and relational transparency (Bass, 1985; Walumbwa et al., 2008). Specifically, HEIs' ethical and servant leadership can build the necessary trust for industrial practitioners' collaborative engagement through ethical and other-orientations. These theoretical distinctions demonstrate why ethical leadership and servant leadership may be more effective than other leadership styles in enhancing collaborative processes within UIC from the HEIs' perspective. The comparative analysis verifies the suitability of ethical and servant leadership for addressing the trust-building and cooperation-strengthening mechanism. Therefore, we assumed that the ethical and servant leadership by HEIs' leaders prompts the formation of an impression of highly reputable partners from the perspective of industrial practitioners. In the initial exchange during the UIC process, cooperation is typically oriented toward the short term and relies on contractual safeguards (Hemmert et al., 2014). Long-term and continuous cooperation depends strongly on the respected and influential leaders of cooperative partners under high-trust conditions.
Hypotheses development
Ethical leadership adoption in HEIs and industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs
Ethical leadership refers to leaders who display normative and ethical behavior through appropriate actions and interpersonal relationship building, as well as promoting ethical behavior through two-way communication, ethical reinforcement, and moral decision-making (Brown et al., 2005). Leaders with this leadership style seem to be more credible, trustworthy, reliable, and honest. Thus, ethical leadership often fosters employees' trust in their supervisors and the organization (Xu et al., 2016; Ko et al., 2018). This highlights the necessity of adopting ethical leadership as a means of facilitating a just organization. The ethical leadership by HEIs' leaders tends to leave a credible impression for collaborative enterprises within the UIC. Despite the importance of ethical leadership enactment being recognized by supervisors and organizations, the UIC literature lacks evidence about the significant impact of this leadership integration on collaborative partners' trust enhancement in HEIs, which further triggers the willingness of industrial practitioners to participate in undergraduate course development at UIC. So far, the lack of evidence about the relationship above is evident. Therefore, the hypothesis is proposed as follows:
H1: Ethical leadership in HEIs positively relates to industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs.
Servant leadership adoption in HEIs and industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs
Servant leadership is characterized by other orientations, followers-served, and offering support for employee career development with empathy and care as a “steward” (Wang et al., 2019; Van Dierendonck, 2011; Li et al., 2023). This leadership style helps build subordinates' trust and a credible working environment by conveying a supportive and careful leader's impression (Sendjaya et al., 2008; Ling et al., 2017). Fatima et al. (2023) found that the servant leadership style significantly and positively affects ideology-based organizational culture, which in turn promotes positive work behaviors and outcomes among employees. The servant leadership style is service-oriented, which embodies the characteristics of giving subordinates sincere concern as a social responsibility. This leadership style not only serves the stakeholders within the organization but also emphasizes shared goals with their collaborative partners, through their own words and deeds. This guides employees to learn and imitate their helpful and altruistic behaviors. In a service-oriented organizational culture, supervisors usually prioritize empowerment, support, and emotional care for subordinates (Si et al., 2023). The servant leadership style adopted by HEIs tends to reflect supervisors' care for employees' personal career development and growth, which leads collaborative partners to believe that they can also be trusted as trustworthy partners in the collaborative process. In empirical terms, there appears to be limited evidence regarding the linkage between the utilization of servant leadership in HEIs and industrial practitioners' trust in them. Based on this reasoning, we predict the following hypothesis:
H2: Servant leadership in HEIs is positively related to industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs.
HEIs' leader self-mindfulness training
Mindfulness-based intervention programs have typically been discussed and integrated into hospital and healthcare systems in previous stages (Hossny et al., 2024). Mindfulness training has recently gained attention as a novel method for enhancing and developing leaders' capabilities in the management area (Hougaard and Carter, 2018). A growing body of research on mindfulness in the leadership field suggests that mindfulness is a beneficial factor that can enhance leader performance and leader-member relationships (Zhou et al., 2023). Hence, leader mindfulness trainings benefit certain aspects of leadership cultivation when leaders deploy their behaviors with a high level of consciousness. This depicts the leaders exhibiting certain behaviors with a high level of awareness and attention. The main concepts of mindfulness involve individuals purposefully paying attention to their present-moment issues, thoughts, feelings, and emotions (Kabat-Zinn, 2003; Brown and Ryan, 2003).
Moreover, by practicing mindfulness daily, leaders can cultivate and refine their attention and awareness of specific leadership behaviors (Reitz et al., 2020). Urrila and Eva (2024) found that servant leadership can be developed through leaders' mindfulness intervention. Moreover, individual mindfulness can be practiced and cultivated by intentionally keeping aware and attentive to current events and behaviors spontaneously (Shapiro et al., 2018). Thus, leaders' self-engagement in mindfulness training is intended to enhance the effectiveness of their leadership practices. Previous scholars have attempted to link mindfulness training with servant leadership development (Pircher Verdorfer, 2016). The association between mindfulness training and ethical leadership development has been seldom studied. Both ethical leadership and servant leadership need continuous motivation to implement and practice. Hence, this study aims to expand the scope of certain leadership development by incorporating mindfulness training.
This research intends to capture leaders' accounts of their mental status, motivations, awareness, attention to current events, and behaviors during the UIC process. Leader self-mindfulness training plays a significant role in enhancing certain leadership capabilities, as it is associated with active leadership improvements through the implementation of mindfulness-focused strategies, such as self-observation and self-regulation (Hossny et al., 2024). By identifying mindfulness interventions, we seek to examine how ethical leadership and servant leadership could be developed and enhanced holistically based on self-awareness and self-observation. Therefore, assuming HEIs' leaders with servant and ethical leadership styles, accompanied by a high level of leader self-mindfulness training, tend to generate more trustworthy perceptions from their collaborative partners in the UIC. Thus, we predicted the following hypothesis:
H3: The positive effect of ethical leadership in HEIs on industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs is moderated by HEIs' leader self-mindfulness training, such that this relationship is stronger when HEIs' leader self-mindfulness training is high than when it is low.
H4: The positive effect of servant leadership in HEIs on industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs is moderated by HEIs' leader self-mindfulness training, such that this relationship is stronger when HEIs' leader self-mindfulness training is high than when it is low.
Industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs
It is found that UIC contains the knowledge exchange process between industrial enterprises and HEIs. During this exchange process, a trust crisis often arises due to the pursuit of different interests (Cai, 2023). To ensure a successful process of knowledge integration in the form of undergraduate educational development between industrial enterprises and HEIs, mutual understanding and trust play important roles. Hence, these knowledge-based interactions require mutual trust between industrial enterprises and HEIs in the context of UIC. Trust as a vital enabler of UIC stems from relationship-building based on aligned values and mutual understanding (Evans et al., 2023).
Undergraduate course design needs to address changing industrial requirements and developments by incorporating long-term and ongoing collaboration to improve the undergraduate educational quality. Therefore, the leadership role of HEIs in building trust with industrial partners is identified as a pivotal factor that can help eliminate the barriers and obstacles in the collaboration process. However, trust-building, especially for long-term collaboration achievement, is costly and time-consuming, requiring commitments from both HEIs and industrial enterprises (Cai, 2023; Evans et al., 2023). The rationalities behind the incorporation of ethical and servant leadership lie in the credible, ethical, and humanistic characteristics of these two leadership styles' behaviors. Before formal collaboration, a willingness to collaborate is a prerequisite and a starting point for fostering genuine collaborative behaviors. Trust-building acts as an accelerator that advances the collaborative process between two parties in the UIC process. In this research, industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs is identified as a crucial factor that can contribute to their increased willingness to collaborate within the UIC. Based on the above discussion, we came up with the following hypothesis:
H5: Industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs positively relates to their willingness to collaborate with HEIs.
H6: Industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs mediates the positive effect of ethical leadership in HEIs on their willingness to collaborate with HEIs.
H7: Industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs mediates the relationship between servant leadership in HEIs and their collaborative willingness toward HEIs.
An integrative model of organizational trust
An integrative model of organizational trust was proposed by Mayer et al. (1995). This model comprises three dimensions: integrity, benevolence, and ability. Integrity here represents the impressions of the same principles owned, while benevolence acts as the consideration of others' interests. Additionally, ability indicates a belief in one's capability. It was stated that integrity, benevolence, and competence were seen as three important factors in building trust (Schoorman et al., 2007).
Additionally, there is an interaction among trust, risk, and control systems. Trust and control systems were often viewed as complementary and compatible means of managing risks during the trust-building process (Capelo et al., 2015). Unlike Leader-Member Exchange (LMX), trust is not always reciprocal and bidirectional; it tends to be more complex to track, especially in diverse cultural contexts and situations. Previous research selected the integrative model of organizational trust as the underpinning theory to gain a comprehensive understanding of the trust-building process, based on the three dimensions of trust (benevolence, integrity, and ability). For example, Guo and Zhang (2024) utilized the integrative model of organizational trust to understand the mechanism of leaders' empowering behaviors, which are enacted by gaining trust in employees' taking charge behavior. Hautea et al. (2024) conducted research aimed at understanding the mechanisms underlying individuals' willingness to trust, focusing on their perceptions of benevolence and integrity. In addition, Legood et al. (2016) drew on the integrative model of organizational trust to understand the trust cultivation process through leaders' trustworthy behaviors and employees' perceptions of trustworthiness. According to Legood et al. (2016), the three dimensions of trust proposed by Mayer et al. (1995) can be integrated with the characteristics of leaders' behaviors, such as consistent behaviors, care and concern behaviors, and delegation behaviors.
The literature suggests that Mayer et al.'s (1995) three categories of trust perceptions are relevant in understanding the trust-building process. This reflects three conceptualizations of trust-building that can help explain why some individuals or organizations appear to be more trustworthy. It allows scholars to explore why an institution or leader tends to be more or less trusted over time. In UIC research, to the best of our knowledge, no explicit work has used this integrative model of organizational trust as the underpinning theory to understand the trust-building mechanism. This research assumed that leaders' behavior tends to enhance collaborative partners' trust, which acts as a positive psychological state under the integrative model of organizational trust in the context of UIC. This aligns with the core concepts of this theory and extends its application in the UIC context.
Trust will evolve with the continuous interactions between industrial enterprises and HEIs in a dynamic process. In this research, the characteristics of ethical leadership and servant leadership styles are highly related to the perceptions of integrity-based, ability-based, and benevolence-based trust. The characteristics of these leadership styles seem to be relatively stable at the high level of leader self-mindfulness training. The most prominent feature of ethical leadership is to set an example of moral behavior for subordinates to follow and enforce ethical standards by rewards and punishments (Brown et al., 2005). This feature is highly consistent with the integrity dimension of trust, as outlined in the integrative model of organizational trust. While servant leadership strongly focuses on serving and caring for subordinates by offering career support (Eva et al., 2019). This other-orientation highly complies with the benevolence and ability dimensions of trust, as highlighted in the integrative model of organizational trust. Hence, corresponding to the integrative model of organizational trust, HEIs' supervisors with a servant or ethical leadership style appear to induce collaborative partners' trust by demonstrating the individual traits of credibility, morality, concern, other-orientation, and trustworthiness in the UIC.
Research framework
The proposed research framework encompasses factors from individual, group, and organizational perspectives. The research framework involves the independent variables (ethical leadership in HEIs and servant leadership in HEIs), one mediator (industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs), one moderator (HEIs' leaders' self-mindfulness training), and one dependent variable (industrial enterprises' willingness to collaborate with HEIs). The proposed research framework was illustrated in Figure 1. As demonstrated in Figure 1, both the mediating and moderating mechanisms were shown.
Figure 1. Research conceptual framework.
Methodology
Research design
This research comprises a pre-test, pilot test, back-translation, and formal questionnaire distribution, employing a cross-sectional approach. Several HEIs' human resource (HR) departments were contacted by telephone. Moreover, the meaning and purpose of this research were explained to these HR leaders. Twelve Chinese HEIs agreed to participate in data collection. Among these twelve HEIs, four were located in Guangdong Province, five in Zhejiang Province, and three in Jiangsu Province. All these twelve HEIs had ongoing UIC projects. Once permission was received, the consent form, cover letter, and questionnaire were sent to the HR leaders of these Chinese HEIs by email for review purposes. The staff of industrial enterprises that collaborated with these twelve HEIs involved in the UIC project were contacted by the HR leaders of the HEIs to participate in this research. The online questionnaire survey was then sent to these industrial practitioners via inter-office emails after obtaining permission, with the assistance of the HEIs' HR departments.
The questionnaire was revised and developed by two expert consultations in two HEIs to ensure each item effectively measures the constructs. The original English questionnaire was translated into Chinese through a back-translation process. Two linguistic experts assisted in evaluating and revising the wording of questionnaire items to enhance readability and credibility. Additionally, the cover letter was attached to the questionnaire, which contains information on the research purpose, the anonymity and confidentiality of respondents, encouragement for respondents to provide genuine answers, and a statement regarding respondents' voluntary participation. We conducted the online questionnaire on June 1, 2024. The survey was conducted over a period of approximately 6 months, concluding in November 2024.
Pilot test
To evaluate the questionnaire's understandability, clarity, and applicability, a pilot study was conducted, highlighting potential issues that could arise during data collection and estimating the time required for the study. The pilot study was applied to 17 respondents in Chinese HEIs with permission. The questionnaire's reliability was evaluated using the values of Cronbach's alpha, which resulted in scores of 0.934 on the ethical leadership in HEIs scale, 0.940 on the servant leadership in HEIs scale, 0.845 on the industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs scale, 0.829 on the HEIs' leader self-mindfulness training scale, and 0.817 on the collaboration willingness with HEIs scale. Thus, it was evident that the study tools in this research are highly reliable. The results showed that Cronbach's alpha values for all the constructs were more than 0.7, indicating a high level of internal consistency for all measures.
Ethical consideration
A consent form needed to be ticked by each respondent before they filled out the questionnaire. Respondents were informed that no risks or conflicts were anticipated, and their confidentiality would be maintained throughout the data collection and distribution process. Participants were informed that their involvement was entirely voluntary and that they could withdraw from the research project at any time. Respondents were also informed that they had the right to refuse or withdraw participation at any time.
Measurement bias
We applied the guidelines of Podsakoff et al. (2012) to minimize common method bias (CMB) in the data collection process. Procedural remedies were designed to maximize respondents' motivation to respond accurately. The back-translation method was adopted as follows. First, we compared the back-translated version with the original survey to make sure the two versions were identical. In addition, a pre-test was conducted in HEIs to help review whether all the questionnaire items were clear and concise, without ambiguous, complicated, or unfamiliar items, thereby avoiding redundancies. Further, some items in the questionnaire were reverse-coded. The respondents were informed that there were no right or wrong answers, and their real thinking and opinions about the items addressed in the questionnaire were highly valued. The order of questionnaire items has been rearranged and randomized to eliminate the proximity effects. The measures of the predictor and criterion constructs were from different resources. Moreover, a 2-week time lag was introduced during the distribution of the questionnaire to facilitate procedural remedies. At Time 1, industrial practitioners were asked to evaluate the effectiveness of certain leadership styles (servant leadership and ethical leadership) in HEIs, their trust levels, and to complete their demographic profile. At time 2, industrial practitioners were asked to rate the remaining constructs (collaboration willingness and evaluation of HEIs' leaders' self-mindfulness training level). Except for procedural remedies, statistical remedies were ensured by Harman's single-factor test and a full collinearity assessment (VIF values). Lastly, both procedural and statistical remedies were applied to overcome common method bias.
Measurement of variables
Responses were measured on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all agree) to 7 (extremely agree). Ethical leadership adoption in HEIs was assessed and adjusted using 10 items from Brown's, Treviño and Harrison (2005) scale. A sample item is: “Higher education institution's leaders with whom we intend to cooperate conduct his/her personal life in an ethical manner.” Servant leadership adoption in HEIs was measured and adjusted with seven items from Fatima's, Abbas and Hassan (2023) scale. An example of the items includes: “Higher education institution's leaders with whom I intend to cooperate to make subordinates' career development a priority.” Industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs was evaluated with four items from Musarra et al. (2022). An example item is: “The relationship between our company and our cooperative higher education institution is characterized by mutual trust.” To measure the effectiveness of HEIs' leader self-mindfulness training, we assessed the extent to which industrial practitioners in the UIC evaluate leaders with whom they intend to cooperate, were aware of, and paid attention to ethical or servant leadership behaviors. The scale of willingness to collaborate with HEIs comprises four items, originally from Zheng et al. (2024), which were adjusted based on the context of this research, such as “I (enterprise) will (or prepare to) deepen the collaboration with higher education institutions for undergraduate education.”
The items under HEIs' leader self-mindfulness training were based on the six concepts from Urrila's and Eva (2024) scale. An example item is “I observe the higher education institution's leaders with whom I intend to cooperate become more curious about themself and their intention as a leader.” Although mindfulness is inherently subjective, this measurement approach emphasizes behavioral manifestations of leader mindfulness observed by external stakeholders, thereby reducing self-report and social desirability bias. Furthermore, we implemented a pilot test and a pre-test to assess the feasibility of the questionnaire before formal distribution. Through the pre-test, we estimated how long respondents took to answer all the items and whether they dropped out at a particular item. Moreover, we also examined whether the format of the response options was suitable. After the pre-test and pilot test, we collected the qualitative feedback from respondents and tested the Cronbach's alpha values for each construct. Afterwards, we revised the wording of some items and detected redundant items to make each item appear clear without any ambiguity. This process further helps make sure the items measuring each construct in the questionnaire are valid and accurate.
Sample size
To determine a suitable minimum sample size, the model structure, the anticipated significance level, and the expected effect size must be considered (Marcoulides and Chin, 2013). So, the G*Power 3.1 software was applied for the minimum sample size calculation. After the calculation, the minimum sample size was determined to be 138. A 7-point Likert scale was adopted to measure the items of the constructs, ranging from 1 (not at all agree) to 7 (extremely agree).
Data analysis
SPSS v29 software was used to conduct data screening, create demographic profiles of the respondents, assess common method bias, and perform descriptive analysis. The hypotheses were examined using SmartPLS software. PLS-SEM (Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling) includes two phases: measurement model analysis and structural model analysis.
Findings
Descriptive results
Data were collected in two intervals with a 2-week separation to mitigate common method bias (CMB). Six hundred and sixty questionnaires were distributed, with 521valid questionnaires. The response rate for the sample was 78.9%. Among these respondents, 323 were male (62%) and 198 were female (38%). Regarding age distribution, 67 respondents are under 30 years old, 224 are between 31 and 40 years old, followed by the 41–50 years age group (187 respondents). The remaining respondents belong to the 51–60 years age group. Furthermore, 28% of the industrial enterprises involved in UIC had a firm age of less than 5 years, 35% had a firm age of 5–10 years, and 37% had a firm age of more than 10 years. For the HEIs' staff involved in UIC projects, 54% held an associate professorship, 26% held a professorship, and 20% had a senior lecturer as an occupational title. The industries involved in the UIC in this survey were engineering (19%), computer science (28%), information science (36%), and materials science (17%).
Descriptive statistics were evaluated according to the guidelines of Sekaran and Bougie (2016) to understand the key characteristics of the study variables and gain insights into the dataset. The mean values ranged from 4.904 to 5.106, indicating that the average responses for all variables were relatively close to one another on a 7-point Likert scale. The standard deviation values ranged from 0.896 to 1.911, indicating that respondents held diverse opinions or perceptions about the study variables (See Table 1). The means and standard deviations are presented in Table 1. The ethical leadership in HEIs expressed greater value with the mean value of 5.071 (SD = 1.845) compared to servant leadership in HEIs (mean value = 4.904). The survey highlights that most respondents believed HEIs' leader self-mindfulness training aided in enhancing industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs (with a mean value of 5.106).
Table 1. Mean and standard deviations among study variables.
Before conducting the PLS-SEM analysis, data screening and descriptive analysis were performed. On the one hand, missing values, data normality, outliers, and common method variance were examined during the data screening process. As the questionnaire was distributed online and only the valid questionnaires were kept, the present data set was free from missing values. The data normality was evaluated using skewness and kurtosis values, which should be within ±2 (Hair et al., 2022). Both skewness and kurtosis values fell within the threshold range in this research. Therefore, the dataset does not possess any normality issues. The potential outliers were identified using the Z-score, which should be within ±3.29 (Tabachnick and Fidell, 2021). The Z-score of 13 cases out of 534 cases was not between ±3.29, which presented them as outliers. Therefore, these cases were excluded from the final dataset.
Common method variance
In statistical remedies, Harman's single-factor test was conducted. The results identified five constructs with eigenvalues greater than 1.0, and the first factor explained only 39.64% of the variance, which complies with the guidelines of Podsakoff et al. (2003). However, considering the criticism of the insensitivity of Harman's single-factor test in the literature, the correlation matrix procedure was also applied to check CMV (Bagozzi et al., 1991). The results in Table 3 revealed a correlation below 0.90 among all constructs. Therefore, through statistical remedies, CMV is confirmed as a non-issue in this study.
Measurement model assessment
The measurement model was used to determine the extent to which the items effectively measure their chosen constructs, accurately represent the underlying theoretical framework, and fulfill recognized standards of validity and reliability (Hair et al., 2022). It involves checking convergent validity, internal consistency reliability, and discriminant validity. Convergent validity was evaluated using indicator loading and average variance extracted (AVE). One item of ethical leadership adoption in HEIs and one item of servant leadership adoption in HEIs were excluded because of their indicator loadings below 0.40 (“EL6: Higher education institution's leaders who we intend to cooperate with can be trusted.” and one item of servant leadership, “SL2: Higher education institution's leaders with whom I intend to cooperate can tell subordinates if something work-related is going wrong.”). The indicator loadings of the rest of the items and AVEs of constructs surpassed the cut-off value of 0.708 and 0.500, respectively. Therefore, the study constructs established sufficient convergent validity (see Figure 2). For internal consistency reliability, Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability coefficients were assessed. The values of both coefficients (Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability) for all constructs were above the threshold of 0.700, indicating that the study constructs possessed acceptable internal consistency reliability as presented in Table 2. Regarding discriminant validity, the HTMT (heterotrait-monotrait) correlation ratio was evaluated. The lower diagonal values in Table 3 revealed satisfactory discriminant validity of the model, as all study constructs remained well below the lowest conservative threshold of 0.85 for the HTMT correlation ratio.
Figure 2. Measurement model assessment.
Table 2. Measurement items, reliability and validity tests.
Table 3. Discriminant validity (HTMT < 0.85).
Structural model assessment
Before hypothesis testing, Hair et al. (2022) recommended examining the issue of multicollinearity first. It is typically identified when the variance inflation factor (VIF) reaches a threshold of 3.00. In the current study, the VIF values for all constructs were all below 3.00, indicating the absence of multicollinearity in the data. Additionally, seven hypotheses were tested using a bootstrapping procedure with 10,000 subsamples at a significance level of 0.05. Table 4 revealed that both ethical leadership (βEL → TIH = 0.340, t-value = 7.773, p-value < 0.001) and servant leadership (βSL → TIH = 0.295, t-value = 7.088, p-value < 0.001) in HEIs have a positive influence on industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs. Interestingly, leaders of HEIs with an ethical leadership style had a more substantial effect on trust enhancement in the UIC. The rationale behind this may lie in the leaders with high ethical standards are more inclined to act with sincerity and fairness. Leaders with this leadership style emphasize specially on compliance with moral norms and tend to activate employees' moral behaviors through their ethical modeling (Brown et al., 2005). The leaders with this leadership style seem to give their partners more accountability and security. The HEIs' ethical leadership style demonstrates that their collaborative engagement has a low risk of conducting immoral behavior and harming others for their own personal gains. Moreover, industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs (βTIH → CW = 0.472, t-value = 12.439, p-value < 0.001) was found to be positively related to the willingness of industrial enterprises to collaborate with HEIs. Thus, all three direct relationships were found to be supported.
Table 4. Results of PLS-SEM hypotheses testing.
Regarding the moderating role of HEIs' leader self-mindfulness training, the interactive terms of both ethical leadership (βLST × EL→TIH = 0.107, t-value = 2.413, p-value < 0.01) and servant leadership (βLST × SL→TIH = 0.188, t-value = 3.855, p-value < 0.001) in HEIs with a high level of HEIs' leader self-mindfulness training strengthened industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs. Furthermore, a slope analysis was conducted to examine the positive effects of servant and ethical leadership styles in HEIs on industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs, moderated by HEIs' leader self-mindfulness training, such that this relationship was stronger when the level of HEIs' leader self-mindfulness was high than when it was low (See Figures 3, 4). Therefore, both moderating hypotheses were also found to be supported.
Figure 3. Interactional effect of ethical leadership and HEIs' leader self-mindfulness training on industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs.
Figure 4. Interactional effect of servant leadership and HEIs' leader self-mindfulness training on industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs.
The data analysis results also confirmed the indirect significant impacts of both ethical leadership (βEL → TIH→CW = 0.160, t-value = 6.189, p-value < 0.001) and servant leadership (βSL → TIH→CW = 0.139, t-value = 5.646, p-value < 0.001) in HEIs on the industrial enterprise's collaboration willingness through industrial practitioners' trust enhancement in UIC. Hence, both mediating and moderating hypotheses were confirmed in the current study.
Additionally, effect size (f2) and coefficient of determination (R2) were estimated by following Cohen's (2013) guidelines. Table 4 disclosed that both ethical leadership and servant leadership utilizations by HEIs' leaders have exhibited a small effect size on industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs. Whereas, industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs had a moderate effect size on their willingness to collaborate. However, Lovakov and Agadullina's (2021) guidelines (i.e., 0.005–0.01 = weak effect; 0.01–0.025 = moderate effect; and above 0.025 = substantial effect) were employed to measure the effect size of moderating relationships. Based on these guidelines, HEIs' leaders' self-mindfulness training, as an interaction term, was found to have a large effect size on the relationships between the two leadership styles in HEIs (servant leadership and ethical leadership) and industrial practitioners' trust enhancement in the UIC.
Furthermore, the results in Table 5 showed that the inclusion of HEIs' leaders' self-mindfulness training as a moderator has a positive influence on industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs, as evident by an increase in the coefficient of determination (R2) from 0.311 to 0.394. According to Cohen (2013), the model demonstrated stronger explanatory power, explaining 39.4% of the variance in industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs with the moderator, compared to 31.1% without it. Similarly, the value of predictive relevance (Q2) in both cases (with and without a moderator) remained above zero, representing moderate out-of-sample predictive performance of the model (Shmueli et al., 2019).
Table 5. Explanatory power and out-of-sample predictive performance.
Conclusions
In this research, we proposed and examined a moderated mediation model based on the integrative model of organizational trust to better understand the trust-building process of industrial practitioners and the interaction of HEIs' leader self-mindfulness training in explaining the positive effects of HEIs' leadership enactment on the willingness of industrial practitioners to collaborate in the UIC. The research findings revealed the need for HEIs to integrate with industrial partners for undergraduate curricula design and development to better align with real industrial needs, such as industry-specific skills. Due to the different priorities and interests, trust was identified as an inevitable challenge or barrier faced by HEIs and industrial enterprises in the UIC process (Evans and Miklosik, 2023). This paper contributes to the UIC research area by providing insights in four ways: firstly, additional insights were provided into the trust-building mechanism in the UIC through HEIs' suitable leadership selections; secondly, HEIs' leader self-mindfulness trainings were indicated to enhance the significant impacts of HEIs' ethical and servant leadership implementations on the industrial practitioners' trust in HEIs in the UIC; thirdly, according to the integrative model of organizational trust, a set of fundamental principles for industrial practitioners' collaborative willingness facilitation were demonstrated through the trust-building process; lastly, when HEIs' leader self-mindfulness training level is high, the positive relationships between HEIs' two leadership styles (servant and ethical leadership styles) and industrial practitioners' trust are stronger.
Based on the review of the literature and the theoretical framework, it can be said that multiple factors could be involved in enhancing trust and increasing the collaboration level through various leadership styles. Servant leadership and ethical leadership selections in HEIs might play a vital role in affecting the industrial practitioners' readiness for collaboration with HEIs in the UIC through the trust-building mechanism and HEIs' leaders' self-mindfulness training integration. Existing studies on UIC have largely focused on the research-oriented collaboration activities, with limited attention to the collaboration of undergraduate curricula development. This study enriches the existing literature by demonstrating that the strength of the indirect pathway between HEIs' servant leadership and ethical leadership in raising collaboration willingness, as systematically built through industrial practitioners' trust, varies with the HEIs' leaders' self-mindfulness training.
Theoretical implications
Empirical evidence showed that there is a lack of sufficient discussion of the trust-building mechanism in the UIC. Hence, the trust-building process, which plays a crucial role in addressing the successful UIC, remains uncertain. This research focuses on the engagement between HEIs and industrial practitioners to design and improve the undergraduate curricula. The incorporation of servant leadership and ethical leadership by HEIs plays an active role in promoting trust-building, thereby further enhancing the willingness of industrial enterprises to collaborate within the UIC. This exploration enriches the UIC literature by integrating the trust-building process from the perspective of collaborative partners' leadership styles. The most apparent benefit for HEIs regarding degree curricula development is to keep up with industrial practices and requirements. To date, empirical research on UIC has focused primarily on collaborative types of R&D activities (Cai, 2023; Petruzzelli, 2011; Mora-Valentin et al., 2004; Walden, 2016). However, this study highlights the need to consider the UIC collaborative project in the development of undergraduate curricula. Although ethical leadership and servant leadership have been extensively examined, their associations with enhancing trust to increase collaborative participation in the Chinese UIC process remain insufficiently investigated. On the other hand, per statistics, China had more than 3,000 HEIs in 2024. China is also regarded as an emerging economy and is developing at a rapid pace. This research contributes to additional cross-cultural studies to validate findings of HEIs' cooperation-strengthening mechanisms in the context of China.
Various factors have been discussed as enablers of successful UIC by previous scholars, such as trust (Hwang et al., 2022; Nsanzumuhire and Groot, 2020). Moreover, previous studies have primarily examined the barriers and challenges identified in the UIC process (Evans and Miklosik, 2023; Minh Tri et al., 2021; Alexander et al., 2020; Zhang and Chen, 2023). There is a lack of evidence of the mechanism by which industrial practitioners could build trust in UIC from the HEIs' perspective. It is no surprise that trust can help overcome the conflicts that arise in the collaborative process. The mediating mechanism of industrial practitioners' trust-building was found to exist between the option of suitable leadership by HEIs and industrial practitioners' willingness to collaborate in the UIC. This finding contributes to understanding how ethical and servant leadership in HEIs influences the willingness of industrial partners to cooperate, shedding light on the trust-building process.
Previous scholars have demonstrated that HEIs can play an active and vital role in overcoming the challenges and barriers to UIC (Walden, 2016; Alexander et al., 2020; Leischnig and Geigenmüller, 2020). This research shows that leaders of HEIs involved in UIC who possess the characteristic of being trustworthy tend to enhance trust and increase the willingness of industrial practitioners to collaborate. Additionally, this study is grounded in the integrative model of organizational trust and uncovers the critical role of HEIs' leaders' self-mindfulness training in enhancing the positive effects of HEIs' servant and ethical leadership execution on trust-building in the UIC. This type of training from leaders has been proven to be a critical individual ability and trait that complements the leadership literature and offers a new perspective on enhancing the inclination toward collaboration at UIC.
Practical implications
It is essential to investigate the industrial enterprises' perspectives on ethical and servant leadership styles in the HEIs to gain a better understanding of the role of trust in fostering collaborative willingness in the UIC. Mutual trust between HEIs and industrial enterprises could facilitate effective communications (Evans et al., 2023). Hence, such an investigation holds significant practical value for enhancing the quality of UIC. In contrast to traditional undergraduate education, UIC focuses on curriculum development, enabling students to integrate theory and industrial practices, ultimately preparing them for the future job market (Zhang and Chen, 2023). (Zhang and Chen 2023) stated that a double-type teacher should also be introduced to improve undergraduate talent cultivation in HEIs, as this type of teacher is more prioritized in the Chinese higher vocational college. The double-type teacher is defined as a teacher who possesses both theoretical and practical teaching abilities, thereby achieving a better match between undergraduate curricula and industrial practices (Jia et al., 2021).
Additionally, HEIs can also increase the collaborative willingness of industrial practitioners by educating and training relevant staff in UIC liaison offices to effectively coordinate and manage the UIC (Evans et al., 2023). HEIs' leaders with experience in UIC can exchange skills and ideas during the training session before the formal UIC project begins (Evans and Miklosik, 2023). These research findings highlight a significant contribution by discussing ways in which ethical leadership and servant leadership preferences in HEIs support industrial practitioners to increase collaborative willingness by trust-building to overcome the barriers (conflicting interests and expectations) in the UIC process. In management, HEIs can establish a leader performance evaluation system to assess the efficacy of certain leadership styles (such as ethical leadership or servant leadership) in the UIC process through a sound supervision and feedback mechanism. Additionally, HEIs should regulate and support leaders involved in UIC projects by encouraging them to develop specific leadership skills and gain expertise in self-mindfulness training, particularly when engaging in certain leadership behaviors.
This research explores the positive effects of self-mindfulness training programs on the development of ethical and servant leadership skills. This type of training is executed by leaders themselves, involving paying attention to their thoughts, feelings, and emotions in the present moment without a judgmental attitude. HEIs could hold periodic training sessions to provide guidance and instructions for the development of ethical and servant leadership skills for the UIC projects. In practice, HEIs could organize mindfulness training programs for leaders involved in UIC projects by making a mindfulness program schedule with diverse sessions. Based on the statement of Hossny et al. (2024), a comprehensive mindfulness training program for leadership skills' development should include an assessment phase (examination of the mindful attention awareness scale and leadership skills scale), planning phase (design the whole process of the mindfulness training program with six sessions), implementation phase (e.g., mental muscle relaxation exercise, 5-min-deep breath activity, self-body scan, mindful seeing and listening practices), and evaluation phase (assessment of leadership effectiveness).
As UIC is the trend of future development for HEIs, the benefits of UIC on degree curricula for HEIs can be categorized as the integration of industrial development, talent cultivation improvement, opportunities for internship programs, and increased teaching quality. On the other hand, the benefits of UIC for industrial practitioners have been identified as knowledge exchange, research opportunities, integration of theoretical knowledge, and utilization of HEIs' experimental equipment (Evans et al., 2023). Therefore, this research provides an in-depth understanding of the role of trust in fostering collaborative willingness among industrial practitioners in the UIC through the integration of credible leadership by HEIs.
Limitations and future research directions
We acknowledged that both the self-report approach and the cross-sectional research design bring some limitations. Respondents may be exposed to social-desirability pressure, emotional fluctuations, and workplace positive or negative incident occurrence. In our study, we minimized potential self-report bias by applying multiple procedural and statistical remedies (e.g., randomization of items, reverse coding, VIF, and Harman's single-factor test). Nevertheless, this research inevitably has certain limitations. First, this research was conducted among some Chinese industrial practitioners involved in the UIC. Future research could examine this research model across different industries and countries to increase its generality. Given that it takes time for industrial practitioners to observe HEIs' leaders exhibiting certain behaviors characteristic of a servant leadership style or an ethical leadership style. In future research, a longitudinal research method could be adopted to capture the trust-building process of industrial practitioners in the UIC in more detail. Third, in this research, we identified trust as a comprehensive construct, without distinguishing among its three dimensions under the integrative model of organizational trust. Hence, future research could explore the different mediating effects of three dimensions of trust under the integrative model of organizational trust on the cooperative intention of industrial practitioners with HEIs in the UIC. Future studies may capture the dynamics of the trust-building process and willingness to collaborate by tracking how trust and willingness to collaborate are built, maintained, broken, or repaired over time based on the longitudinal research design. The data collection methods could also be extended to mixed-methods research, such as the combination of questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups at multiple time points (e.g., weekly or monthly). Additionally, future research could also consider collecting the perspectives of students and academic staff in HEIs to enrich the understanding of how leadership practices and trust dynamics vary across different stakeholder groups. Lastly, cross-cultural comparative research can be considered to be done in the future, which aims to explore the trust and collaboration between HEIs and industrial practitioners in diverse economic and cultural contexts, with improving the generalizability of the results.
Data availability statement
The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.
Author contributions
SH: Supervision, Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Visualization, Investigation, Project administration, Resources, Validation. MN: Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Data curation, Methodology, Software, Writing – review & editing. YW: Writing – review & editing.
Funding
The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by Southern Sichuan Development Institute of the Chengdu-Chongqing Dual-City Economic Circle, Sichuan University of Science & Engineering, China (CYQCNY20245).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Generative AI statement
The author(s) declare that no Gen AI was used in the creation of this manuscript.
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Keywords: university-industry collaboration, ethical leadership, servant leadership, trust, collaboration willingness, leader self-mindfulness training
Citation: Hu S, Nadeem MA and Wang Y (2025) Increase collaboration willingness through trust building in university-industry collaboration: a higher education institution-level evidence from China. Front. Educ. 10:1708935. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1708935
Received: 19 September 2025; Revised: 21 November 2025;
Accepted: 25 November 2025; Published: 24 December 2025.
Edited by:
Sereyrath Em, University of Cambodia, CambodiaReviewed by:
Zi Jian Oh, Kolej Vokasional Batu Lanchang, MalaysiaAmine Moussa, Notre Dame University-Louaize, Lebanon
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*Correspondence: Shi Hu, aHVzaGlAc3R1ZGVudC51c20ubXk=