Research On The Growth Of Industrial Cluster Firms Based On Cluster Knowledge Network

Industrial clusters are important industrial organizational forms and carriers of China’s regional economy development. However, the majority of domestic clusters are still at the lower end of the value chain, and they are of lower value and lack self-owned brands and innovation. Therefore, upgrading has become the strategic task confronted with a lot of industry clusters. Based on the upgrading background of Chinese industrial clusters, this paper attempts to answer the following questions. What are the key factors affecting the development of cluster firms during the upgrading phase? What are the characteristics of these key factors, and what’s the specific content? How these key factors affect the development of cluster firms?To answer the above issues, this paper proposes the key issues facing cluster firms during the growth phase of the upgrade ——source of innovative knowledge and its management. Then, based on the analysis framework of cluster learning, the paper attributes the source of innovative knowledge and its management to three aspects: Internetwork learning through the clusters, obtaining innovative knowledge from outside the cluster, and transferring and exploiting innovative knowledge by collective learning within the clusters. Then, the paper illustrates the spatial arrangement of innovative knowledge—the structure and content of cluster knowledge network, and reveals the impacting mechanism of the structure and content of cluster knowledge network on the growth of cluster firms. A relationship model between cluster knowledge network, cluster learning and growth of cluster firms has been established. And the hypotheses of the impact of cluster knowledge network on the growth of cluster firms have been proposed from the three aspects of cluster learning:the acquisition, transferring and utilization of knowledge. The hypotheses have been tested by collecting empirical data. The research findings are as follows. (1) The acquisition, transferring and utilization of knowledge among the members of the cluster knowledge network significantly promote the growth of cluster firms. (2) The greater the openness of the cluster knowledge network, the more centralized cluster firms in the global industry network, the easier the clusters firms can acquire more new knowledge. (3) The absorptive capacity of firms in cluster and industrial vision ability are important mediators mediating the effect of cluster knowledge network on cluster firms’obtaining new knowledge. (4) The greater the density of cluster knowledge network, the stronger the structural equivalence, the better the effect of knowledge transfer and knowledge utilization. (5) The tacitness of knowledge and the absorptive capacity of cluster firms are the key mediators of the transfer of knowledge among the members of the cluster knowledge network. (6) Cognitive conflict and cooperative goodwill are the key mediators of the utilization of knowledge among the members of the cluster knowledge network. (7)The relationship governance of the cluster knowledge network is the key moderating variable of the cluster learning among the members of the cluster knowledge network.The major innovative contributions are as follows.(1) Previous research have studied the growth of cluster firms from the perspective of the whole the life cycle stages, and researched the cluster upgrade from the industrial level, but this research probes to combine cluster upgrade with the growth of cluster firms in an attempt to reveal the mechanism of firm growth in cluster upgrading phase.(2) Previous research have applied resource theory to the analysis of the growth of cluster firms, but this research studies the growing mechanism of cluster firms by combining organizational learning theory and cluster knowledge network theory.(3) While the previous research have studied knowledge network based on structuralism, this study integrates network member attributes, network structure and network governance rules to study the effect of cluster knowledge network.(4) Differing from the previous static study on cluster knowledge network and cluster growth, this study dynamically examines the effect of cluster knowledge network on cluster growth from the three stages of knowledge flow.