Research On Knowledge Management Capability Evaluation Of Industrial Clusters In The Multinational Outsourcing System

The knowledge economy is rapidly developing and the international market competition is fiercely intensified. There are a non-linear trend and a rapid expansion in a saltatorial way which the environment faced by the main market players shows. In order to pooling of resources to maintain their own core competencies and preserve their own flexibility to quickly respond to the ever-changing market, international large-scale enterprises have joined the wave of international outsourcing. These enterprises outsource the non-core areas to developing countries with abundant resources, to consolidate their dominant position in the international market. In the meantime, they can also obtain superior resources from developing countries at an affordable price, to reduce their operating costs of production.The separation of property rights in the transnational outsourcing is initiated by enterprises situated in the high value-added sectors of the global value chain. However, it’s also the opportunity that developing countries can integrate into the global value chain and have access to the low end of this chain. Engaging in the production and manufacturing for enterprises leading in the high value-added sectors, the small-and medium-sized companies in developing countries in this low-end are successfully embedded into the multinational outsourcing system. This phenomenon becomes a part of the global production network.However, those industrial clusters in the multinational outsourcing system only obtain the low-end aspects of the business and conduct simple manufacturing from leading enterprise, in order to integrate into the global value chain system. And they have to accept the governance for the global value chain of the dominant firms. Dominant firms improve the production capacity of the contractors from developing countries, to maintain their competitive advantages. Various obstacles would be set up to lock the contractors in the low-end link and prevent them into the highly value-added core areas. Aspects in those obstacles include research and development (R&D), design and marketing. For the sake of achieving industrial upgrading and getting out of the low-end part in the chain, industrial clusters embedded into the outsourcing system must have a high degree of flexibility and capability of rapid knowledge innovation.The essence of innovation is continuing to accumulate knowledge and generating new possibilities from collisions. In the era of knowledge economy, the core elements of market competition consist of the possession, production, distribution and use of knowledge resources. Therefore, the focuses of the industry cluster management have shifted from the possession of the original material resources to the management of knowledge resources.In this paper, based on analyzing the characteristics of industrial clusters embedded into the multinational outsourcing system, the model of knowledge accumulation in the outsourcing system is presented, and the way of its knowledge management is also introduced.Then, the assessment criteria of the knowledge management are screened, in accordance with the principles of optimization, purpose and systematization. According to the principles of operability, adaptability and guiding, the evaluation index system of the capability of knowledge management is designed. The rights of the indicators to the upper layer of indicators in the evaluation index system are calculated and arranged, by the method of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Finally, on the basis of the principle of fuzzy comprehensive evaluation, the assessment model is used to evaluate the knowledge management capabilities through data analysis, providing a guidance of the corresponding targeted improvements to industry clusters for knowledge management.