Configurational Paths of Policy and Market Tools in Promoting the Integration of "Three Chains" for IC Enterprises: An Analysis Based on NCA and Dynamic fsQCA

Properly managing the relationship between government and market, and achieving deep integration of the industrial chain, innovation chain, and talent chain (hereinafter referred to as the "three chains") for integrated circuit enterprises, it is crucial for advancing breakthroughs in key core technologies across the entire value chain. This study takes 99 A-share listed integrated circuit companies nationwide from 2016 to 2023 as a sample and employs a multi-period qualitative comparative analysis method to explore configurational pathways through which policy and market instruments promote enterprise integration of the "three chains". The findings reveal: (1) Overall, the integration of the "three chains" among China's integrated circuit enterprises remains at a medium-to-low coordination level, with uneven regional development and significant shortcomings in subsystems; (2) Single tools cannot trigger high-level integration-instead, nonlinear combinations of policy and market instruments are required, leading to four typical models: Policy-credit synergy, policy-venture capital synergy, policy-fund synergy, and market-financing dominance; (3) Dynamic comparison across two periods shows that government-guided funds have evolved from marginal supporting factors in the early stage to core driving forces in the later stage, resulting in increasingly concentrated and convergent driving configurations; (4) The driving pathways exhibit significant contextual heterogeneity and intertemporal evolution. In terms of the industrial chain dimension, upstream enterprises transition from early-stage "policy-venture capital synergy" to "policy-fund synergy", while mid- and downstream enterprises display diverse and complex characteristics. In terms of enterprise scale, large enterprises show a comprehensive trend toward "market-financing dominance," whereas small and medium-sized enterprises exhibit strong path dependence on "policy-credit/venture capital synergy".