Inter-Organizational Learning Within Knowledge-based Services Industrial Cluster

Globalization, fade of trade barriers, e-business, and rapid progress of technologies forced firms to re-consider and evaluate their strategies. Organizational structure must be more flexible and adaptable to changes and these strategies. A new trendy of strategic management explaining firm's sustainable success from knowledge perspective suggests that such sustainable success relies on firm's resources and capabilities. Among all the resources, knowledge is the key for firms to gain competitive advantages. The capability of acquiring and absorbing knowledge is the key capability to sustain competitive advantages. Meanwhile, a new model for regional development attracts many attentions from scholars and government officers. This model is industrial cluster. Since 1990s, Knowledge-intensive Business Services (KIBS) industrial clusters have grown rapidly and become a critical force promoting economic progress.This dissertation investigates the relationships between network characters of Knowledge-intensive Business Services industrial clusters and organizational learning capacities and the impacts of such characters on organizational learning capacities. Additionally, the relationships between organizational learning capacities and firm's performance are also analyzed. Architecture industrial cluster around Tongji University is selected as research sample and data are collected from the cluster. Research on organizational learning with in KIBS clusters has much significance not only to the development of the architecture industrial cluster, but also to some metropolises such as Shanghai which can obtain competitive advantages through establishment and development of KIBS clusters.Based on the literature review of organizational learning, inter-organizational learning, industrial cluster and network characters, a model concerning the relationships between network characters and organizational learning capacities and the relationships between organizational learning capacities and firm performance is established. Subsequently, some hypotheses concerning these relationships are suggested. Then, data are collected from the sample and statistical analyses are conducted to test the hypotheses addressed above.Four network characters are tested in the dissertation. They are Extensiveness of Out-ties, Extensiveness of Ties to Universities, Relational Embeddedness, and Knowledge/Resource Redundancy. Results suggest that Extensiveness of Ties to Universities, Relational Embeddedness, and Knowledge/Resource Redundancy impact significantly on organizational learning capacities. More important, the relationships between these characters and firm performance can be explained by the relationships between organizational learning capacities and firm performance. Impacts of Extensiveness of Out-ties on organizational learning capacities are influenced by firm's age. Empirical results suggest that organizational learning capacities impact positively on firm's performance.