How Governmental Policies Shape Supply Chain Learning and Responsiveness: A Service Triad Approach to Higher Education

Higher education institutions (HEIs) play a crucial role in shaping the future by educating students, advancing research, and fostering innovation. Societies, including those in developing countries, face wicked problems such as climate change, social and economic inequality, and geopolitical tensions that require all stakeholders, including HEIs, to work together and pool resources to cocreate solutions. This research explores how governmental policies for coordinating higher education influence universities’ learning and responsiveness to societal needs. Under a service triad framework, higher education is conceptualized as a supply chain where the government acts as service buyer and funder, HEIs as service suppliers, and society as service end user. Through an abductive qualitative approach and multiyear data collection, this article shows that centralized regulation and standardized procedures—intended to coordinate the higher education sector and enhance HEIs' responsiveness—often lead to captive learning, where institutions remain constrained by rigid, policy-driven structures, restricting their responsiveness. Consortium learning emerges as an alternative mode that allows institutions to overcome institutional lock-in through collaboration and shared learning processes. This article contributes to the literature on supply chain learning, service triads, and path dependency in public service supply chains. By integrating path dependency theory into the study of higher education service triads, it provides new insights into how policy structures and institutional decision-making shape learning and responsiveness.