Based On The Shared Resources Concept Of Clusters Of Competitive Advantage

In recent years, owing to their significant effects in promoting regional economic growth, industrial clusters attract more and more researchers' attention from all over the world. In spite of the great number of studies and theoretical propositions in this field, most of them are based on the perspective of industrial economics or geographical economics and treat the industrial cluster as one economic unit. Little effort has been devoted to justifying the benefits for firms in these industrial agglomerations in the light of recent research into firm strategy. Based on the resource based view, this paper proposes the shared resource based theory of the firm's competitive advantage in cluster. Moreover, by taking the mechanism, which existing when shared resources on the level of industrial clusters effecting the competitive advantage of firms in cluster, as the main research subject, this study does a tentative research work through applying the resource-based view (RBV) into the analysis of industrial clusters.At first, this paper starts with investigating the method which is applied by the RBV to classify the resources related to the firm's competitive advantage. By pointing out the limitation of this method when using it to explain the competitive advantage of firms in cluster, another kind of resource which is beyond the classification of RBV is put forward. This kind of resource is the shared resource of firms in cluster. Based on the theory of RBV, the paper discusses the idiosyncrasy of shared resources which is regarded as the root of Richard rents and put forward the shared resource-based view (SRBV) of the competitive advantage of firms in cluster. And then, by clearing about the relationship of the shared resource, strategic resource and the competitive advantage of firms in cluster, a concept model of SRBV is constructed, and the mechanism of the shared resource effecting on the firm in cluster is discussed. Based on the analysis and test by the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), the concept model is modified properly and the final model is confirmed by the experiential research. At last, this paper indicates some new advisements begotten by the mechanism which found by this study to the practice of enhancing the whole competitiveness of industrial clusters.Based on the research work, some conclusions can be achieved as follows: 1) When taking the firms in the industrial cluster as the research object, due to the shared resource is not included in the three kinds of resources classified by RBV, a limitation is exposed in the method of resources classifying of RBV. 2) By taking the industrial cluster as boundary, the shared resource is public to firms in cluster and exclusive to firms out of cluster. In addition, time compression diseconomies, role of history, social complexness and casual ambiguity of the shared resource give it the competence of Richard rents seeking. 3) The shared resource not only does exist on the level between the industrial cluster and firms, but the positive impact which the shared resource is on firms in cluster is significant. On the perspective of statistics, firms in cluster have competitive advantages contrast to the firm out of cluster. 4) The effects which the shared resource is on the competitive advantages of firms in cluster are not direct. They are through the transfer of strategic resources in firms and then enhance the competitive advantages of firms in cluster. 5) The shared resource can be reified to different kinds of resources, and these identified resources have different modes of effecting on the competitive advantages of firms in cluster.Focusing on the framework constructing of shared resource based theory of firms' competitive advantages in cluster, this paper does some tentative work of theoretical innovation as follows. At first, based on putting forward the concept of shared resources, this study not only perfects the method of resource classifying by RBV, but makes an extension to the applied range of RBV in research work. The second, through exposing the m...