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Industrial Clusters To Share Resources, Dynamic Evolution Mechanism

Posted on:2008-06-19Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Z G GuFull Text:PDF
GTID:1119360242465950Subject:Management Science and Engineering
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
For almost two decades, industrial clusters have received more and more attentions from scholars both at home and abroad, because of their increasingly significant effects on regionally economical growth. In spite of the great number of researches on them, little has been devoted to extend recent firm strategy theories to the application of industrial clusters, in order to deeply parse their internal development mechanism.In virtue of theory analysis, case study, and demonstration research as well, this paper manages to resolve three interrelated questions as follows, depending on the outcomes of researches on resource-based view and its theories of firms.1. How to define the concept of shared resources of industrial clusters, as one of the most important outcomes of studies of resource-based view and its theories on industrial clusters, and how to discover their sources and contents?2. As for abundant content of shared resources of industrial clusters, how to theoretically propose the dimensions to divide them, and based on which, how to define the concept of dynamic evolution of industrial clusters' shared resources?3. How can the dynamic evolution of industrial clusters' shared resources be realized? What are the factors to influence the dynamic evolution of industrial clusters' shared resources? And how do they influence the growth of industrial clusters?Based on these three questions described above, depending on literature review on resource-based view and its theories, the paper starts with analyzing the firms as resources complex and investigating the evolving process of firm's resources from acquisition, assimilation, internalization to transformation to shared knowledge inside firm, which spans firms' boundaries. And then, the evolving process of clustered firms' resources from acquisition, assimilation, internalization to transformation to industrial clusters' shared resources, which spans the boundaries of both industrial clusters and their clustered firms, has been explored. In virtue of case study on individual industrial cluster in Zhejiang, the sources of industrial clusters' shared resources, and the dividing dimensions employed to describe their factors' common characteristics, will be abstracted. Meanwhile, with the analyses on the mutual processes of dynamic evolution of both industrial clusters and their shared resources, the concept of industrial clusters' shared resources, the theoretical method to describe their dynamic evolution, and the related theory model have been achieved. Demonstration research also helps discover clustered firms' nature of relative heterogeneity based on relative homogeneity, which consists with resource-based view and its theories and therefore becomes the precondition of research on industrial clusters' shared resources.And then, the theoretical construction of industrial clusters' shared resources has been abstracted in virtue of both 'resource picking' theory and 'capability building' theory. Based on literature review on organizational learning and collective learning, the concept of industrial clusters' collective learning is put forward and deeply parsed, the method for measuring collective learning is also discussed. After all these studies have been done, the dynamic evolution model of industrial clusters' shared resources further modified is confirmed, which describes the paths and relationships among factors of industrial clusters' shared resources, factors of industrial clusters' collective learning, and technological innovation of clustered firms as well. In the end of the paper, SEM is applied, the model is tested, several policy implications are achieved, and further research issues are put forward, which help rethink the theoretical research and empirical exploration on the competitiveness of industrial clusters.In order to accomplish the research work, the paper will divide all contexts into seven chapters. Literature review and definitions of main concepts are proposed from chapter 1 to chapter 3, which become the bases of the paper. The model of dynamic evolution of industrial clusters' shared resources will be put forward in chapter 4 and 5, based on theory analysis, case study, and demonstration research as well. SEM is applied in chapter 6 to testify the model above. In chapter 7, some conclusions and discussion will be achieved. The structure of this paper will be given as follows.Chapter 1 establishes the foundation of the whole work through describing the background, objective value, research methods, structure and innovativeness of this study.Chapter 2 comments on the resource-based view and its theories, and settles a theoretical ground for the following work. Literature review on organizational learning is applied.Chapter 3 comments on the researches on industrial clusters and shared resources. Literature review on collective learning is accomplished.Chapter 4 discusses the concept, sources, dividing dimensions, and dynamic evolving process of industrial clusters' shared resources in terms of case study. And then the exploration on the logic of dynamic evolution of industrial cluster is accomplished also in this chapter by statistics analysis.Chapter 5 constructs a conceptual model, which represents the relationship among shared resources, collective learning and technological innovation of clustered firms. Related relationships among them are deeply discussed.Chapter 6 applies SEM to estimate, verify, modify, and modulate repeatedly the conceptual model, and then analyze and discuss the conclusions drawn from the above research. Some suggests aim at the practice of enhancing shared resources to improve the technological innovation and competitiveness of industrial clusters are put forward.Chapter 7 takes a brief summary of the whole research, which indicates the limitations of the study and provides some ideas for further researches.Based on prior research, some conclusions can be achieved as follows.1. The dynamic evolving process of shared resources possesses such mechanism as 'shared resources - collective learning - technological innovation of clustered firms', which consists with the viewpoint of resource-based view and its theories about matching between resources and environment. The factor of shared resources, collective reputation, plays positive direct influence on relative absorptive capability of clustered firms. The factor, participation of the local institutions, plays positive direct influence on organizational learning, exchange and combination of resources, and technological innovation of clustered firms as well. The factor, differentiations of complementary resources, plays positive direct influence only on technological innovation of clustered firms. The factor, interactive atmosphere of both competition and cooperation among clustered firms, plays positive direct influence on both organizational learning and relative absorptive capability.2. Collective learning plays important intermediary functions on dynamic evolution of industrial clusters' shared resources. The factor, organizational learning, is the decisive power for dynamic evolution of industrial clusters' shared resources. The factor, relative absorptive capability of clustered firms, reflects the direction of dynamic evolution of industrial clusters' shared resources. And the factor, exchange and combination of resources, becomes the key element for realization of dynamic evolution of industrial clusters' shared resources.3. Both internal and external innovation networks of industrial clusters can be expressed by diversity of paths and their loaded coefficients among factors of both shared resources and collective learning of industrial clusters. The heterogeneity among clustered firms can be therefore formed, which becomes the forces to propel dynamic evolution of industrial clusters' shared resources, and consists with the general precondition for the application of resource-based view on industrial clusters. Based on the construction and analyses of dynamic evolution model of industrial clusters' shared resources, theoretical innovations of the paper will be as follows.1. The theoretical concept of industrial clusters' shared resources and their sources have been proposed. Several scholars argue that, shared resources refer to those intangible resources and capabilities shared by industrial district firms, which are neither exclusive to nor the property of the individual firm and not made available to outside firms. However, the concept in this paper refers to those resources, which are collective contribution of clustered members and their resources influencing their competitive advantage, shared unevenly by all the clustered members, and supported by both the interaction among clustered members and the interaction between clustered members and those resources influencing their competitive advantage.2. The dimensions, which helps understand the dynamic evolving process of industrial clusters' shared resources, can be drawn. That is, the dynamic evolution of industrial clusters' shared resources can be expressed as the transformation of both embeddedness and heterogeneity of shared resources. Embeddedness reflects the state of shared resources in the internal network of industrial cluster. Heterogeneity reflects the possibility of shared resources embedded in the internal network of industrial cluster.3. The dynamic evolving process of shared resources can be recapitulated as the dynamic evolution of both embeddenness and heterogeneity of industrial clusters' shared resources, regulated by industrial clusters' collective learning. Technological innovation of clustered firms can be used to express value creation of clustered firms, the heterogeneity of clustered firms, and the accomplishment of dynamic evolution of industrial clusters' shared resources as well.Of course, some further research issues have also been proposed as follows.1. More cases studies of industrial clusters both at home and abroad can be implemented for deeply understanding of relationships among factors of industrial clusters' shared resources and collective learning.2. Comparative researches among various industrial clusters both at home and abroad can help us comprehend the differences, which will provide better instructions about the strategic design for further development of industrial clusters.
Keywords/Search Tags:Resource-based View, Industrial Clusters, Shared Resources, Dynamic Evolution, Mechanism, Collective Learning, Clustered Firms, Technological Innovation
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