Cooperation Patterns And Mechanism Among Logistics Clusters Based On Asset Specificity

With the rapid overall development of China’s logistics industry, the number of logistics parks taken as a form of logistics clusters, has been drastically increasing in the past few years. Yet a few of them do not match the economic development pace of their region, due to the weakness of resources coordination, redundant construction of homogeneous parks, and insufficiency of cooperation among these parks. These phenomena then result the unreasonable configuration of resources or assets. Thus, the topic concerning the synergy among logistics clusters has already been given substantial attention. However, the organization or system consisted by logistics industry clusters is a dynamic and complex entirety, and the cooperation among logistics clusters refers to a large number of various, complicated and potential factors. How to take advantage of relationships among particular logistics clusters and the role of a specific factor of importance as research perspectives to study the above issue is significant and meaningful for understanding synergies by other key factors and general sense of logistics clusters cooperation. From the perspective of the logistics industry, taking logistics asset specificity as media and logistics cluster as object, based on the synergetic and other relative theories, this thesis mainly studied the disciplines of logic, patterns and mechanism of synergy among logistics clusters, in order to further extend the theory field and guide the practice of China’s logistics clusters.To begin with, this thesis made literature review of series of theories regarding regional logistics and asset specificity, and also updated research concerning five topics including organization coordination, regional logistics, logistics clusters, logistics assets and asset specificity. Through discuss of these literatures, the author then built a conceptual framework for the whole study. This part contains various conception bases such as a clear definition of logistics assets, the differentiation and analysis between logistics specific assets and logistics assets specificity, a qualitative and quantitative combined method for the degree measurement of logistics asset specificity, the content and features of logistics clusters, and objectives and environments of logistics clusters synergies based on assets specificity.Besides, on the basis of the conceptual framework, this thesis outlined the main theoretical framework from three aspects including collaborative logic, patterns and mechanism. As for the collaborative logic, this thesis discussed the logic of general collaborative logistics system from the resource based perspective, then further focused on the one based on asset specificity. As for the collaborative patterns, the coordination subjects, elements, motivation, sphere of influence were defined, and mathematical models were utilized for quantitative analysis. A three-dimensional model for collaborative patterns was constructed by four types of relationship between synergistic elements with variation of assets specificity degree. And the applicable environments, characteristics, conditions of each pattern were also elaborated. As for the collaborative mechanism, the author arranged three key synergistic mechanisms by contract, trust, government support and regulation, according to the characteristics of logistics clusters synergies based on asset specificity, and then further discussed the operation of incentives, sanctions and benefit distribution mechanisms through mathematical models. Through the time phases and generating sources of mechanism, this thesis made connection between collaborative patterns and their applicable timing, which provided suggestion and support of decision making for administrative departments and organizations.Finally, based on these theoretical framework and models, taking Hubei cold chain logistics network as the object for empirical research, the author carried out static evaluation for various indicators such as sphere influences of each extant key node, the degrees of regional dominance for hubs, distance and connections of the overall network. In addition, future potential node was also considered in dynamic evaluation in order to observe the possible changes for these indicators. Furthermore, a comprehensive assessment of regional social and economic attributes of each logistics cluster was illustrated by official statistics data and principal components analysis. In accordance with the overall evaluation, this thesis established the future network and nodes hierarchy of Hubei cold chain logistics, and also provided corresponding suggestions for its improvement.