| Since the nineteen nineties, along with the rapid development of science and technology, the world economy has entered the era of globalization. In this era, the network information science predominated technology revolution make knowledge become the main element in production factors. By replacing the traditional labor, capital and so on as the most important resources, it has become the main driving force of value creation. As a new kind of typical development model of regional economy, industrial clusters are capable of bringing fierce regional economy effect, and improving industrial competitiveness. Through the information communication among organizations and knowledge sharing and transmission inside the industrial clusters, the innovation of knowledge is able to provide strong power for the development of industrial clusters and powerful support for the improvement of the industrial competitiveness.The transfer of knowledge depends on the scale of difficulty in the knowledge's transmission, explanation and assimilation. For the enterprises within a cluster, they cooperate as well as compete with each other, which will cause the difficulty of transfer and sharing of knowledge, tacit knowledge in particular. So, transferring knowledge actively and consciously is the best way to improve the efficiency of knowledge transfer between enterprises within a cluster. How to realize effective knowledge transfer, to promote the acquisition, reusing and innovation of the knowledge within a cluster, and to improve the innovation ability of the enterprises within a cluster, are important issues during the development of enterprises.The paper is based on the review of relevant literature which analyzed the domestic and foreign industrial clusters, knowledge and knowledge management, knowledge transfer, factors on knowledge transfer and so on, and sorts the literature out. From the knowledge transfer process perspective, and drawn from the theory framework of knowledge transfer of Cummings and Teng. this paper analyzes the crucial factors affecting knowledge transfer and their effectiveness from the aspects of knowledge-source enterprise, knowledge-receiving enterprise, knowledge transfer itself and the context. Taking the features of industrial cluster into consideration, the paper divides the cluster context into organizational and outside organizational one and further constructs the knowledge transfer model within the industrial cluster contexts with a combination of knowledge transfer subject, knowledge transferred.This model and framework has great theoretical significance, by making up for a lack of the study on the correlation of industrial cluster, knowledge management and knowledge transfer, and by improving the present studies, which pay most attentions to economic benefits. At the same time, the study of the factor affecting the knowledge transfer enables the enterprises within the clusters to understand well the process of knowledge transfer and the variables affecting the process, and to identify the favorable knowledge, to gain the access to the knowledge of high quality, to transfer the knowledge effectively, and to promote the knowledge innovation and application of industrial clusters. What's more, the study helps the enterprises increase their knowledge stock. and transform the knowledge into their ability, which lay a foundation for knowledge innovation in turn.This paper applies to the methods of literature review and deduction, questionnaire and mathematical statics analysis. First, the paper collects the relevant studies on industrial cluster, knowledge and knowledge management, knowledge transfer and its affecting factors and effectiveness, then sorts them out. and forms theoretical models and hypothesis by combining the industrial practices. Second, from the aspects of knowledge attributes, knowledge-sending enterprises, knowledge-receiving enterprise, the cluster context, this paper summarizes the factors affecting knowledge transfer, their connotations, and their interactive relationships. It then states the ways of measuring the variables by the widely-used scales. Based on this, questionnaires are designed. At last, by choosing the samples and adopting mathematical statics, the paper analyzes the data to examine the constructed theoretical research models and hypothesis.There are six chapters in this paper. The first chapter is an introduction of the research background, which puts forwards the issues and explains the research goal and its meaning. It also gives a brief view of the research content, the whole structure and the innovational point. The second chapter is the literature review. It sorts out such theories as the foreign and domestic industrial cluster, knowledge and knowledge management, knowledge transfer, and the factors which affect the knowledge transfer. This chapter also redefines some relevant concepts, including the knowledge, the process of the knowledge management, the knowledge transfer and the knowledge contexts and reviews the relevant research. The third chapter is about the theoretical model and research hypotheses. Based on the research of the knowledge type, level and the main characteristics, it analyses the knowledge flow within the industrial cluster and the localized knowledge spillover, clarifying the main body of the knowledge transfer and analyzing its mechanism within the industrial cluster. It builds the knowledge transferring model and explains how the elements affect the knowledge transfer mechanism in details. On the basis of those analyses, the paper comes up to the hypotheses. The forth chapter is about the questionnaire and variable design. It firstly designs the questionnaire to study the knowledge transfer in certain contexts and then chooses some companies as sample to get data. The fifth chapter is mainly about statistical analysis and empirical study. By analyzing the data which gets from the sample and discussing the result, we use the empirical study to verify the model and the relevant hypotheses and draw a conclusion. The sixth chapter gives some suggestions to the knowledge transfer within the industrial cluster, aiming to heighten the knowledge transferring effect from the main body, mechanism, and the outside environment of the knowledge transferring. According to the results, we discuss some measures to heighten the knowledge transferring effects by managing and controlling the relevant factors.The major conclusions of the paper include:first, the process of the knowledge transfer among the enterprises within a industrial cluster is complicated and is affected by four major elements, including relevant factors of knowledge-source enterprises, relevant factors of knowledge-receiving enterprises, knowledge attributes and contexts of knowledge transfer. Second, knowledge-source enterprises, knowledge-receiving enterprises, knowledge attributes are basic affecting factors for traditional knowledge management studies. The factors of knowledge-source enterprises contain the willingness and capacity of sending knowledge, which is highly and positively related to knowledge transfer effectiveness. Knowledge attributes include ambiguity and embed ability, which to some extent hinder the knowledge transfer effectiveness. Third, the context of knowledge, independent of the other three elements and affecting directly as well as indirectly the process and effectiveness of knowledge transfer among enterprises, include the two dimensions of micro context and medium context. The former include the distance of organizations, the distance of relationship, and the distance of knowledge, all of which are clearly negatively related to knowledge transfer effectiveness and which adjust the relationship of the other three elements and knowledge transfer effectiveness. The latter, including means of cooperation and development phase of industrial cluster, can adjust effectively the relationship of the other three elements and knowledge transfer effectiveness, too, which is an important innovation of this paper. Fourth, in the practice of knowledge transfer, in order to explore the knowledge resources within a cluster, improve the efficiency of knowledge transfer, an enterprise within a cluster should identify the factors affecting knowledge transfer, and manage and control them effectively, highlighting the favorable factors and diminishing unfavorable ones. Besides, the enterprises within a cluster should manage knowledge transfer independently as well as enforce the collaboration and seek to the help of industrial associations and government to achieve more.In conclusion, in an ear when knowledge resources replace the traditional resources as the major agent of economic increase, and with industrial cluster as a significant strategy for the nations to realize the fast economic development in a time of economic globalization, the enterprises should participate actively in industrial clusters and other cooperation forms, actively recognize all factors influencing the effectiveness of knowledge transfer. During this process, the enterprise should take the initiative to identify the many factors contributing to the effectiveness of knowledge transfer and their impact as well as their interactive relationships from the aspects of subject, object and context. Based on this, the enterprise can manage and control the factors to maximize the effectiveness of information exchange, knowledge share and spread, accelerate the integration of its internal and external knowledge, and provide intellectual support for its development as well as powerful motives for the cluster's development. |
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