| As the rapid development of communication and information technologies, economic activities appear the trend of diffusion obviously. But this kind of trend does not represent all the characteristics of economic spatial activities. Firms and production factors agglomerate in some regions during the process of diffusion and form industrial clusters. Inside industrial clusters which are characterized by embeddedness, geographic concentration and collective learning, the phenomena of firms obtaining competitive advantages through their local networks cause widespread concerns in theoretical circles. The present studies are concentrated on cluster’s whole network and the research focus is the influence of cluster’s whole network on competitive advantages of all the clustered firms. In these studies, clustered firms are assumed to be homogeneous, have equal opportunities with each other, and acquire "asymmetric" resources advantages compared to firms outside cluster. While in practice, clustered firms can’t share cluster’s knowledge resources equally. There are significant differences between their knowledge transfer performances. The studies based on cluster’s whole network can’t make a reasonable explanation to the "heterogeneity" of knowledge transfer within cluster.Based on above, this thesis deepens the research level to the specific individual local network of clustered firm, reviews related literatures on cluster theory, social network theory and knowledge transfer theory, expatiates the components and characteristics of clustered firm’s local network, puts forward a research framework on the relationships between clustered firm’s local network, knowledge transfer’s key factors, knowledge transfer performance and environment dynamicness through analyzing clustered firm’s knowledge transfer approach and its local network partners’functions in knowledge transfer. Furthermore, through theoretical deduction and interviews with some senior managers of clustered firms, this thesis puts forward hypotheses of relationships between variables and constructs a conceptual model to explaining the influence mechanism of clustered firm’s local network on knowledge transfer performance. In the empirical study, software SPSS16.0 is used to do descriptive statistic analysis, validity analysis and reliability analysis. Software LISREL8.70 is used to do confirmatory factor analysis and confirm the final conceptual model through amending.The main conclusions drawn from above researches are as the followings:Firstly, clustered firm’s local network has positive influence on knowledge transfer. Different with previous literatures which analyze knowledge transfer within clusters from the perspective of the whole network, this thesis introduces the "structure-relationship" analysis method of ego-centric network, selecting network scale, network range, network ties’intensity degree and network ties’ duration degree as characteristic variables to describe clustered firm’s local network, and analyzing the influence of clustered firm’s local network on knowledge transfer performance by structural equation modeling. The more ties a firm sets up in cluster, the more easily for it to access to controlling advantages, which is conducive to its acquisition, absorption and application of knowledge in cluster. The more types of ties a firm sets up in cluster, the more easily for it to avoid homogenization of technologies and redundancy of information by pluralistic relationships. The more frequently a firm contacts its local network partners, the more expediently they share complex technologies and tacit knowledge. The influence of network ties’ duration degree on knowledge transfer is not clear. Firm’s specific environment should be taken into consideration when analyzing this effect. The result of empirical sduty shows that it is just because the difference of their local networks’ relationship and structure characteristics that clustered firms can’t share knowledge resources equally, which indirectly explains the reason for the heterogeneity of knowledge transfer effects inner cluster.Secondly, the influence of clustered firm’s local network on knowledge transfer performance results from the transmission of knowledge transfer’s key factors. At present, theoretical circles pay more attention to the key factors of bilateral knowledge transfer. The empirical study on knowledge transfer’s key factors and their mediating effects in ego-centric network has not been found yet. Based on researches of bilateral knowledge transfer and analysises on clustered firm’s knowledge transfer approaches, this thesis constructs a research framework of "clustered firm’s local network-knowledge transfer’s key factors-knowledge transfer performance", combining the theories of social network, industrial cluster and knowledge transfer. The result of empirical study confirms the full mediating effects of knowledge transfer’s key factors, revealing the mechanism that clustered firm’s local network influences its knowledge transfer performance through the transmission of knowledge transfer’s key factors. Specifically, the mediators between network scale and knowledge transfer performance are knowledge source’s sharing will and credit, knowledge recipient’s priori knowledge, knowledge transfer channels’richness. The mediators between network range and knowledge transfer performance are knowledge source’s sharing will and credit, knowledge recipient’s learning motivation and priori knowledge, knowledge transfer channels’richness. The mediators between network ties’ intensity degree and knowledge transfer performance are knowledge source’s sharing will and credit, knowledge recipient’s learning motivation and priori knowledge, knowledge transfer channels’richness and knowledge transfer context’s similarity.Lastly, environment dynamicness has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between clustered firm’s local network and knowledge transfer performance. Although environment dynamicness has important influence on ego-centric network’s utility, present researches havn’t analyzed the phenomenon that relationship between ego-centric network and knowledge transfer changes according to environment dynamicness. This thesis divides samples into the high environment dynamicness group and the low environment dynamicness group by K-means clustering method in software SPSS 16.0, comparing the path coefficients of two groups through multi-group analysis in structural equation modeling. The result of empirical study shows that high degree of environment dynamicness promotes the positive influences of network ties on knowledge transfer, which reveals that clustered firm’s local network is significant to knowledge transfer when today’s production technologies and customers’needs change rapidly. At the same time, the truth that network ties’duration degree has opposite influence directions in two groups means that clustered firm should select to establish stable or loose cooperative relationships according to environment dynamicness. By comparison, this thesis also finds that the orders of characteristic variables’influences on knowledge transfer vary in two groups. Hence, when having limited resources, clustered firm should optimize its local network and cultivate related network capabilities according to both environment dynamicness and its own characteristcs.To sum up, this thesis tests the influence and its mechanism of clustered firm’s local network on knowledge transfer performance from a relative micro-level. The research results provide theoretical instructions for clustered firm’s practical activities of promoting knowledge transfer performance through optimizing its local network. |
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