The Relationship Btween Embeddedness Of S&T Intermediary And Performance Of Cluster

Globalization has brought the development opportunities; meanwhile, it leads to re-integration and redistribution of production factors. For competing with transnational giants and large enterprises that make further resources pooling through their own natural channels and technology, capital, labor power and other advantages, SME forms industrial clusters in geography, and joins the market depend on advantages such as returns to scale and regional brand. At the same time, with further exacerbation of technology cross integration, linear innovation model based on limited internal resources gradually replaced by new model which emphasizes exchange, complementary, and learning. The enterprises tend to be at a loss in front of complex external information once they seek new sources of innovation, due to their cognitive level, maintenance costs and other factors, even some enterprises have path dependence on resource carrier and competition mode formed by geographical proximity, which could lead to lock the cluster technology. S&T Intermediary, whose main business is information and resource exchange, effectively expands scope of resource acquisition. Moreover, information advantages brought by cross position increase depth of resource acquisition, which is considered as an important factor to promote the performance of the cluster. Currently, more studies focus on status analysis, experience summary, concept analysis, and macroscopic countermeasures, while rare papers analyze S&T Intermediary’s mechanism from a microcosmic view about its characteristics.In this dissertation, the problem of “How S&T Intermediary influence Performance of Cluster” is discussed by using theories of cluster development, embeddedness and innovation network. Methodologies include the combination of theoretical research and empirical research, literature review and field research, qualitative research and quantitative research.This dissertation focuses on the following four aspects:(1) Literature review and theoretical development. Through reviewing the theories about clusters development, embeddedness and innovation network, analyzing S&T Intermediary concept by comparing similar concepts, to find out the limitations and determine the appropriate research point, thereby forming the basis of this dissertation.(2) Construction of conceptual model. From the perspective of “embeddedness ", relationship between S&T Intermediary and other actors in the cluster will be classified into two dimensions, which are relational embeddedness and structural embeddedness. This dissertation will analyze their influences on process and mechanism of cluster performance, then provide relative conceptual model.(3) Empirical research. Based on data of 41 industrial clusters in Zhejiang province and survey data from 461 enterprises, the model is tested by using factor analysis and hierarchical regression analysis, and the mechanism model is confirmed.Through above research, the main conclusions of this dissertation are listed as follows:(1) Relational embeddedness of S&T Intermediary has a positive impact on the performance of clusters. Based on differences on assisting enterprise’s innovation activities, it can be divided into three sub items, namely resource search, the communication and the commercialisation. Resource search embeddedness enrich the knowledge resources of enterprises, increase the heterogeneity of access to information, improve the possibility of complementary resources, and further reduce the cost of search, which benefits performance of the enterprise. Communication embeddedness stimulate enterprises to carry out technological exchanges, participate in technical cooperation, promote the formation of industrial clusters, enhance their cognitive ability, reduce the barriers to technology transfer, promote the spread of knowledge within the cluster, and thus promote the the performance of the group. Commercialization embeddedness reduces the asymmetry of information, promote the achievement of technology transfer, provide new technology to the cluster, and then promote the development of the cluster.(2) Structural embeddedness of S&T Intermediary has a positive impact on the performance of clusters. Structure embeddedness can be divided into two dimensions: the center degree and the occupation of structural hole. Higher center degree and more structural holes improve the performance of cluster. When S&T Intermediary is located in the center of network, the distortion and attenuation of the information in the cluster might be reduced relied on its own information advantages and various connection channels, thus accelerate the transfer and diffusion of technology, and optimize the internal development environment of the cluster. S&T Intermediary tend to absorb special information benefits from structure hole, to enhance the operational capacity. In addition, more structural holes in cluster network means better compensate for the network fault, which produces positive bonding effect, reduces the cost of maintaining the necessary connection. Therefore, it plays a positive role in the cluster development.(3) Structural embeddedness of S&T Intermediary plays partial role in regulation of mechanism when its relational embeddedness affects the cluster performance. Center degree and structural hole occupation have a positive effect on the relationship between resource search embeddedness, the communication embeddedness and the performance of the cluster, however, has rare effect on commercialization embeddedness. The higher network status could bring rich and special information advantage, so that S&T Intermediary can grasp more heterogeneous resources and higher information operation ability, which make them better carry out business activities, consequently deepen the relationship between enterprises.(4) S&T Intermediary can be classified from the perspective of structural embeddedness. From micro perspective, considering center degree and structural hole occupation as the basic measurement dimensions, S&T Intermediary can be divided into four types, namely basic type, redundancy type, edge type and bridge type.However, due to limited time, experience, and research level, limitations will be discussed in last chapter; the further studies will be presented as well.