Studies On Sustainable Competitive Advantage Of Industrial Clusters

Human society has now entered a time where the economic globalization and the regional economic concentration co-exist. Relying on its strong competitive advantages, industrial clusters, as the main form of a regional economic concentration, have created a great deal of wealth, which vigorously promoted the development and innovation of regional economic and guided the flow of international resources around the world. Therefore, great concern is given to encourage the development of industrial clusters by introducing policies and incentives. It is noteworthy that some industrial clusters can retain the power of long-term development and make smooth transition from low-level clusters to high-level clusters, forming sustained competitive advantages. However, some clusters that are initially outstanding and very competitive, gradually declined and even demise. What are the reasons for the cause of the decline of these clusters? Why some clusters focused, and still showed a competitive advantage in the new industries, even when the leading industries have changed? What is the common law? How to maintain sustainable competitive advantages of the industrial clusters? The existing research is lack of enough concern and convincing results. The potential risks for the cluster development is not enough concerned. The rigidity of the competitive advantage of clusters has not been fully recognized. Thus, the exploration of the development of industrial clusters is biased or superficial. Here, we systematically analyzed the mechanisms, measures and approaches in depth that achieve sustainable competitive advantage of industrial clusters, from four dimensions: learning and innovation from the clusters, the cluster social capital, and the cluster brand and government policy. Our study will make up for the shortcomings of the current research on industrial clusters, supplementing and improving the cluster theory.In this dissertation, we proposed mechanisms and measures that achieve sustainable competitive advantages of industrial clusters, through theoretical analysis that makes general use of economics, management science, sociology, political science, geography, game theory and other disciplines of knowledge and methods in conjunction of empirical studies such as field surveys, interviews and comparative analysis.The dissertation is divided into several chapters.Chapter 1 gives brief introduction that presents the background and significance of the study, the progress of domestic and international study, the framework of the dissertation, methodology, innovation and deficiencies.Chapter 2 deals with the basic concepts and theoretical basis, exploring the basic concepts and characteristics of industrial clusters. This dissertation holds that the industrial clusters are a spatial organic polymer system that exhibits detailed division of work, close-knit, well-developed network of social relations, the highlighted images of market competition and regional industries. They consist of a large number of enterprises, mainly small and medium-sized enterprises, between agencies and organizations formed around the division of the same industry at a relatively small geographical area. Industrial clusters are characteristic of flexible specialization, the geographical concentration, mainly SMEs, strong embeddedness and intensive related organizations and institutions. When a cluster has gradually formed its unique competitive edge after years of accumulation, it will, intentionally or unintentionally, develop the ability to exclude others, which hinders the sustainable development of the clusters. It is mainly expressed in the closed network of original cluster relations, "free riders", shortage of technological innovation caused by psychological power, convergence of strategies and actions, the risk of specific assets caused by fixed division of work, as well as excessive government intervention. However, industrial clusters must be endogenous, sustainable, open and dynamic to keep their sustained competitive advantages. Therefore, we build up a four-dimensional model for sustainable competitive advantages of industrial clusters, considering that sustainable competitive advantages arise from integrated efforts. Innovation is the fundamental power of the sustainable competitive advantages; Culture and social capital are the basis; Cluster brand is the manifestation of market, counterproductive to its development; government policies and related institutions are supportive. Efforts in four areas have a strong power and energy, so that clusters can overcome the development of emerging risks, rising up from a lower level to a higher level.In chapter 3, we discuss the issues of sustainable competitive advantages of the clusters from the perspective of leaning and innovation. On the basis of the review of innovation theory, we put forward the concept of cluster innovation and its power mechanism. The driving force of innovation for clusters mainly comes from the competition in the market. Because of the characteristics of the cluster, the power mechanism of innovation is rendered unique, mainly in expression of the mechanism for the competition stress, cooperation mechanism and driving mechanism. We explored the meaning of the cluster and the mechanism of internal study. Knowledge of the clusters accumulated mainly through the experience research and development of enterprises in the clusters, the study and clusters and the division of labor and complementarity. Learning approaches within the same cluster, includes the lateral study of knowledge between enterprises in the value chain, business-to-customer longitudinal study of knowledge, business-to-supplier longitudinal study of knowledge, interactive learning between enterprises and inter-agencies within the cluster. Outflow of knowledge in clusters is mainly through inter-firm mobility, informal exchanges, and derivation of enterprises, cooperation and innovation. Innovation of the member enterprises of the clusters and the outflow of knowledge should be maintained in a dynamic equilibrium. We explore the mechanism of external study of clusters and put forward measures and recommendations to improve the study.In chapter 4, we discuss issues of sustainable competitive advantages of clusters from the perspective of social capital in clusters on and put forward the concept of social capital in clusters, the core and the characteristics. The core of social capital is trust. The main features of social capital are sharedness, uniqueness, rootedness, cumulation, collaboration and specialization. We demonstrate the formation mechanism of social capital in four aspects: personal social relations, division and cooperation, reputation effects, system constraints. The positive effects of social capital on competitive advantages of industrial clusters, includes lower transaction costs, improvement of economic efficiency, the promotion of knowledge, information exchange, enhancement of the ability of innovation and cluster embeddedness. Negative effects of social capital are analyzed in three aspects: the relationship between the closed lock, lock of the division Immobilization, experience-dependent lock. The increase of social capital of industrial clusters first of all come from the cluster, from the accumulation of social capital within the cluster, including strengthening their credit and reputation, strengthening communication and cooperation among members, and promoting the construction of the intermediaries within the cluster. To set up open social capital, the key lies in the improvement of the modern enterprise system, integration into the global production networks, the promotion of inter-firm interactive learning inside and outside clusters. The government not only provides the necessary physical infrastructure, policy support, reinforcement of the social construction of universal ethics, but also promotes social network, mutual embedment of social capital and economic networks, so that social capital, business rules, economic system can be integrated to play an important role in cultivation and maintenance of social capital for the clusters. Legal mechanism significantly influences social capital of the clusters throughout the entire process of their set up. It is an important external condition for inter-firm trust and resolution mechanisms of conflicts.Chapter 5 deals with sustainable competitive advantages from the perspective of cluster brand. The connotation the characteristics of cluster brand are proposed. Cluster brand have a variety of manifestations, mainly including registered cluster brand type, the type operated around the core business brand, "brand club" type that shares the leading brand, as well as neither registered nor led brands uniform business type. Cluster brand promote development of clusters by the effects of marketing, resources attraction, model driven effect, the coverage of small and medium-sized enterprises, enhancement of the image of regions. Cluster brand possesses non-exclusive, non-competitive properties of public goods as the intangible assets jointly owned by all the enterprises in the clusters. If they are not under effective control, it will definitely leads to the crisis of cluster brand and cohabitation of brand users, affecting sustainable competitive advantages of clusters. At present, to maintain and develop cluster brands, governments, industry associations, and cluster enterprises should at least address the following key issues: applications and registration of cluster trade mark (or a collective trademark, certification mark) and marking the origin country; the quality of a brand as well as quality certification and the supervision system to maintain the reputation of cluster brand ; multi-channel brand marketing activities to be carried out; collective response to trade friction; the maintenance of clusters brand. At the same time, in order to maintain a sustained competitive advantage, it is an inevitable choice to promote the development of enterprise brand and create more brand-name products, brand-name enterprises by making advantage of cluster brand. It is needed to combine cluster brand and corporate brand effectively.Chapter 6 deals with sustainable competitive advantage of the cluster from the policy point of view. We analyzed the mechanism by which the government impacts sustainable competitive advantages of industrial clusters, the theoretical basis for government intervention, and the effect of the government o sustainable competitive advantage of the cluster. We also studied the policy of industrial clusters in the United States, Japan and some European countries. There are deviations in reorganization of industrial clusters for the departments of the Chinese Government. In terms of policy guidelines, the specific contents, the formation process and the concrete implementation there are still many remarkable problems, impacting the policy effect, mainly as follows: the cluster policy is equivalent to the industrial policy; the government shows very obvious tendency to dominate in policy formation and development of the industrial clusters; dependent on high-tech industries and small and medium-sized enterprises; simply copy domestic and foreign policy of clusters, ignoring their economic and social background; There are highlighted issues for Administrative division and industry segmentation. We propose that the current policies of cluster-based sustainable competitive advantages should mainly focus on promoting the formation and development of the networks for cluster innovation, strengthening inter-firm division of work and cooperation, pushing forward the development of intermediary organizations, creating and maintaining an excellent environment for cluster development, administrative divisions split, and industry highlights the issue of partition. To the current cluster-based sustainable competitive advantage of cluster policies should be mainly located in the network to promote the formation of clusters of innovation and development, to strengthen the clusters of inter-firm division of labor, and promote the development of intermediary organizations to create a cluster development and maintenance of an excellent environment .The Government try to dominate the industrial cluster policy formation and development of a very obvious tendency; has become overly dependent on high-tech industries and small and medium-sized; cluster of domestic and foreign policy of easy copying, ignored their economic social background; administrative divisions split, industry highlights the issue of partition. To the current cluster-based sustainable competitive advantage of cluster policies should be mainly located in the network to promote the formation of clusters of innovation and development, to strengthen the clusters of inter-firm division of labor, and promote the development of intermediary organizations to create a cluster development and maintenance of an excellent environment.Chapter 7 reviews the full text, summarizes the main conclusions of the study and points out the problems that require further study.Of course, because of the lack of available mathematical tools as well as difficulties of data collection and processing, the data for the research do not distinguish sub-sectors and the study does not distinguish between the objects on the scale. Therefore, we have not given more systematically and accurately theoretical evidence and empirical analysis. Research methods are too extensive and systematical and in-depth study on the issues of the development of industrial clusters lacks. These are the subjects of future study.