獎項一直在我們生活各層面中扮演重要角色，人們利用頒發獎項來表揚並激勵得獎者或篩選出具有潛力的人選，獎項也常被廠商視為品質訊號，增加顧客購買意願並阻絕競爭者；最近甚至有學者指出，獎項是一種形塑場域的活動，足以決定新技術、產業與市場的發展。儘管獎項有如此廣泛的影響力，但學術上卻鮮少著墨，因此，本研究嘗試彌補此一缺口，透過文獻回顧與經濟部產業科技獎發展的案例，討論獎項的意義、效益、選擇機制與鑑別效果。本文主要結論如下：(1)獎項類型相當多元，可以從依選擇系統、得獎者、獎項目標及獎勵行為性質來區分；(2)獎項的選擇機制可能影響其鑑別力與影響力，且不同性質獎項可能需要不同選擇機制，其中，選擇機制包括評審委員組合、評審指標明確程度、評審流程及頒獎時機等；(3)品質獎通常會有完整與明確的評審指標系統，更適合採用專家選擇系統，得獎者是企業或個人；相對地，創新獎項通常不強調具體評審指標，選擇系統可能是專家、同儕與市場，視獎項領域而定，得獎者通常是產品或作品；(4)產業科技獎隨著環境演化，在評審委員會組成上從專家逐漸加入同儕，簡化評審指標系統，並將得獎者從企業與個人調整為產品／作品導向；(5)本研究利用創新調查來檢驗產業科技獎選擇機制的鑑別效果，結果發現目前的選擇機制的確有一定程度的鑑別效果；(6)獎項必須持續回應環境改變以取得正當性。

Awards have played an important role in every aspect of our lives. People give award to recognize award-winners’ great contribution and motivate them, or select candidates with good potential. Besides, awards can become quality signals for firms to attract customers and prevent competitors. Recently, research even pointed out that awards are one of “field configuring events” as ceremonies and trade shows, which could decide the development path of new technology, industry and market. Although awards are so influential, academics pay very little attention to them. Therefore this study tries to fill this gap through literature review and a case study of Taiwan Industrial Technology Advancement Technology Advancement Award and discuss about the definition, effects, selection mechanism and discrimination effects of awards. We conclude with the following key findings. First, awards can be classified into different types by selection system, award winners, the goal of an award and the target behavior which an award tries to encourage. Second, the selection mechanism of awards can decide the discrimination and its influential effects and different characteristic of awards might need different design of selection mechanism. Selection mechanism contains many dimensions, such as the combination of jury members, criterion of assessment, award process and timing and so on. Third, quality awards usually have complicated criterion of assessment for juries,more suitable to adopt expert selection system, and its winners tend to be enterprises or individuals. On the contrary, innovation awards usually don’t have specific criterion to decided award winners, its selection systems might be combination of expert, peers and market system. Innovation award winners are usually more product-oriented. Fourth, following environmental changes, Taiwan Industrial Technology Advancement Awards” (TITAA) included peers into its jury members, simplified their criterion of assessment, and adjust award winners to more product-oriented. Fifth, this study uses innovation survey to test the discrimination effects of TITAA and the result show that the current selection mechanism has partially significant discrimination effect. Finally, an award must continuously respond to environmental changes to get its legitimacy.