Research On The Technological Competence Of Enterprises In Cluster Based On The Ecological Outlook

Along with the industrial restructuring and upgrading in China and the implementation of the strategy of building an innovative country, technological competence is now playing a more and more important role as a decisive element of the core competitiveness of an enterprise. What are the factors influencing the technological competence of an enterprise? How can the technological competence be enhanced? These have become questions drawing wide attention from industrial economics, technological economics and enterprise competition strategy theories. Meanwhile, it has been observed that industrial clusters, as an important and widely perceived phenomenon of modern industrial development, has exerted a decisive force on regional economic development. Current research holds that clusters integrate functions of the market and organizational levels, and has integral competitive advantages in the power of integration, competition, attraction and influence. Therefore, does the technological competence of enterprises in a cluster boast special competitive advantages because of the organizational features of the cluster? The concept of 'cluster' originates from ecological science. Does the cluster, as a stable, continuous and consistent ecological organization create a favorable technological eco-system for the technological innovation of enterprises in cluster? How does such an eco-system influence the technological competence of the enterprises? How can the technological competence be enhanced through a perfect system and an operation mechanism? These are some issues that this paper tries to probe into.This paper thus analyzes the technological competence of enterprises in cluster from an ecological perspective. The basic goal of the paper is to analyze the technological competence of an enterprise following the 'enterprise - cluster - external environment' route, on the basis of an interpretation of the enterprise technological competence theories and relevant theories of ecological science. The paper starts out from an analysis of the ecological niche of the enterprise technologies on the enterprise level. It studies the correlation between the ecological niche of technologies and technological competence, and shows how changes in the ecological niche of technologies influence the technological competence of an enterprise. Then, the paper analyzes features of the ecological niche of the technologies of enterprises in cluster on the cluster level, the focus being on the research into the characteristics of industrial cluster and their influence on the technological competence. The third part of the paper analyzes factors of the external environment and their influence on the technological competence. The last part of the paper deals with theoretical conclusions based on an empirical study on the theoretical framework as well as main arguments of the paper.This paper uses normative analysis, empirical research and methods of generalization and summarization to conduct systematic research into the technological competence of enterprises in cluster. The following conclusions are made: (1) Technological innovation of enterprises in cluster can be studied from theoretical perspectives of ecological systems of technologies. Such systems consist of individuals of technology, population of technology and environment of technology. (2) The ecological niche of technologies of enterprises in cluster consist of tangible assets, intangible assets, individual competence and organizational competence. The relationship between ecological niche of technologies and technological competence of an enterprise is that of recycle and catalysis. The ecological niche of technologies influences the technological competence of an enterprise through the changes of the consisting factors. The development of technological competence is in essence the process of coordination and evolution of all the factors that constitute the ecological niche of technologies. (3) The features of integration, coordination, sharing and support are positively related to the technological competence of an enterprise. In addition, in different aspects of the development of the technological competence of an enterprise, the four features of a cluster play a different part. (4) While the various factors of the ecological niche of technologies influence the technological competence of an enterprise, they are also influenced by the features of the cluster to which the enterprise belongs.This paper is innovative in the following ways: (1) The paper studies the technological competence of an enterprise with features of industrial clusters, analyzes the technological competence of enterprises in cluster and studies the ecological nature, ecological features and ecological system of the technological competence of enterprises in cluster from an ecological perspective. Therefore, this paper can be unique in the selection of the research approach and research focus. (2) This paper redefines the concept of the ecological niche of technologies, analyzes the consisting factors and the condition of the ecological niche of technologies as well as the relationship between the ecological niche of technologies and the development of the technological competence of an enterprise, and proposes the 3-D model of the level system of the ecological niche of technologies of an enterprise. This kind of analysis has not been seen previously. (3 ) Previous studies on the technological competence of an enterprise were mostly qualitative studies, and were relatively week in positive research. This research has a questionnaire study of large number of enterprises in the textile industrial cluster (350 questionnaires were distributed and 218 collected) as well as in-depth interviews. Thus large quantities of data were collected, measured, tested, regressed and analyzed, to test the validity of the proposed model. Therefore, the empirical study of this paper is quite comprehensive, in-depth and innovative.