On Changchun Automobile Manufacturers Cluster Performance

With the development of industrialization and information, the growth of Chinese auto production enterprises faces the unprecedented challenge of economic globalization and the pressure of international competition. Multinational auto firms with advanced production technology and management ideas enjoy an apparent advantage in the domestic and overseas market competition. Whereas most Chinese auto production enterprises with low technical levels, weak economic bases and poor management face an unfavorable situation in the intense market competition. To meet the demand of market competition, Chinese auto production enterprises have to further implement specialized labor division and association, using limited fund, technology and human resources for gaining a stronger competitive power. The formation of auto production cluster is an inevitable consequence of enterprises implementing specialized labor division and association and raising their competitive edges. As a high-efficiency production organization, auto production enterprise cluster has been universally acknowledged and applied in the theories and practices within and beyond China.This thesis makes the point that the competition of auto production enterprise clusters is essentially the competition of their performance levels. As the earliest region of developing auto industry in China, Changchun boasts a certain competitive edge in the domestic market. To hoost the market competitive power of Changchun auto production enterprise cluster, this thesis focuses on the performance studies on Changchun auto production enterprise cluster for finding the strategy of raising its performance level on the basis of exploring the factors on the cluster performance and analyzing the current situation and development trend.In particular, we comment the present industrial cluster theory and status, compare and analyze the features of various performance evaluation methods, argue the situation and problems of Changchun auto production enterprise cluster, investigate the mechanism of formation and impact factors on performance for Changchun auto production enterprise cluster, assess and research the performance of auto production enterprise cluster using data envelop, and explore the strategy for growth.Presently Changchun auto production enterprise cluster suffers weak industrial kernel competitive power, incomplete accessory system of parts, insufficient effect of scale, poor capacity in research and development, low technical level, slow growth of self brands, few channels of financing, backward logistic accessory industry, and shortage of high-quality auto professionals.For Changchun auto production cluster system, its target is to maintain a smooth operation of the cluster system, to develop orderly and steady, and finally, to realize overall functional effect and improve the cluster's market competitive power and earning power. The factors influencing the performance of Changchun auto production enterprise cluster mainly include the key elements such as condition of location, local economic level, system, cultural ideas and professionals supply, and other elements such as clusting level and space layout, abilities in cooperation, competition and creativity, organization, scale of kernel enterprises, and accessory capacity of parts. The centralization degrees and causalization degrees of the all factors are irrelevant with the order of indices. The overall performance level of Changchun auto production enterprises are mainly impacted by the performance of site enterprises; the competition and coordination of all enterprises within the system are correlated and interacted, jointly determining the trend and status of Changchun auto production enterprise cluster system.We build an index system for performance evaluation of Changchun auto production enterprise cluster. From the comprehensive technical efficiency, the cluster's present technical efficiency is not very high; the average pure technical efficiency should be raised; the scales of enterprises are generally inappropriate and subject to adjustment; the enterprises are unable to control their costs efficiently with considerable waste; the effectiveness of resource allocation is not high. For most enterprises, their comprehensive technical efficiency are greater than or equal to the efficiency of resource allocation. The technical efficiency (including pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency) of Changchun auto production enterprise cluster is relatively high, but the management level is low. From the measure of comprehensive performance, several foreign (or joint-venture) enterprises boast a high utilization of current technology, a high effectiveness of production recourse allocation, and a relatively high effectiveness of production scale. Some enterprises are not best in utilization of current technology, effectiveness of production resource allocation, or effectiveness of production scale, but their comprehensive performance is high due to the balanced and high efficiency. Others have a high effectiveness of resource allocation, but their comprehensive performance is low due to the low level of technical utilization and low scale effectiveness.From the variation of total factor productivity, Changchun auto production enterprise cluster exhibits the trend of general decrease; From the variation of technical efficiency, Changchun auto production enterprise cluster generally increases; From the technical progress, the technical levels of Changchun auto production enterprise cluster decrease every year, which is mainly due to the outflow of considerable high-end professionals; From the variation of pure technical efficiency, Changchun auto production enterprise cluster slightly increases; From the variation of scale efficiency, Changchun auto production enterprise cluster generally increases; From the variation of cluster overall productivity, Changchun auto production enterprise cluster generally decreases. From the decomposition of total factor productivity, except the worsened technical performance, all other technical indices are improved. The decrease of total factor productivity is mainly due to the lagged technology, which offsets the slight increase of technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency.The comprehensive management efficiency of Changchun auto production enterprise cluster has greatly increased, but there are more room for increase. For enterprises with high reference performance, if their current performance level is high, then their secondary relative effectiveness is high; For enterprises with low reference effectiveness, if their current effectiveness has been greatly improved, then their secondary relative effectiveness is high; For enterprises with high reference effectiveness and low current effectiveness, their secondary relative effectiveness is low; For enterprises with low reference effectiveness, low current effectiveness and slow increase of current effectiveness on reference effectiveness, their secondary relative effectiveness is low. It is reasonable to use secondary relative effectiveness as the evaluation index for Changchun auto production enterprise cluster, for it may effectively eliminate the influence of objective basic conditions on the assessment of enterprise performance, really demonstrate the actual effectiveness of enterprises by their efforts, encourage each enterprise, and boost the overall performance of Changchun auto production enterprise cluster.For the strategy of Changchun auto production enterprise cluster, we mainly suggest that the significant increase of enterprise operation cost and development of logistics industry is the key for improving performance level; the growth of kernel enterprises plays a great role in boosting the performance of auto production enterprise cluster; the development of specialized labor division and association contributes more to cluster effectiveness than expansion of enterprise scale; and technical innovation capacity, management level, enterprise competitive power, when eliminating their influences on cost factor, are not significant in their contributions to cluster efficiency. Since the growth of regional enterprises are constantly been restricted by the influence of cluster growth and peripheral enterprises enjoy a quick increase of performance, we should focus on raising the kernel competitive power of regional enterprises.