Research On Factors Of Knowledge Transfer Of Dominant Firms In Industrial Clusters

Industrial clusters have developed rapidly and become core competencies of regional economic development in many areas as a new economic development model since the reform and opening up. Many scholars have studied industrial clusters deeply, and systematic theory about industrial clusters has appeared. Preliminary studies pay more attention to the formation mechanism, competitive advantage and evolution path of industrial clusters from a macro. But the researches pay more attention to the heterogeneity among enterprises in industrial clusters, especially for the role and function of the dominant firms. Dominant firms play a role of leading and demonstrating for the development of industrial clusters, and introduce external knowledge for the development of other firms by the knowledge diffusion in the clusters as a class of powerful firm. Therefore, the cognition of the function of dominant firms based on the perspective of knowledge transfer has a distinct meaning.This paper researches the influence factors of the transfer result from dominant firms to small firms and summaries the mechanism of knowledge transfer by theoretical study and empirical analysis. Firstly, this paper reviews the related theory of industrial clusters systematically, and summarizes the research progress of dominant firms in industrial clusters for the theoretical foundation of the follow-up study. Based on these, this paper proposes research hypothesis, and builds research model. In addition, the author makes the questionnaire survey of small firms, and interviews government departments, industry associations and typical enterprise in Haining and Changshu to get the required data. Finally, the paper tests the model and hypotheses by empirical analysis, and gets the research conclusions.This paper shows that the factors of knowledge transfer from dominant firms to small firms in industrial clusters include propinquity, network relationships and competition relationships between them, and knowledge absorptive capacity of small firms. These four factors all affect knowledge transfer, but degrees of the influence are different. Propinquity between dominant firms and small firms has positive impacts on knowledge transfer frequency and knowledge value, but has no significant impact on promotion of production and operation by knowledge transfer. Network relationships between dominant firms and small firms have positive impacts on knowledge transfer frequency, knowledge value and promotion of production and operation by knowledge transfer. Competition relationships between dominant firms and small firms have negative impacts on knowledge transfer frequency> knowledge value and promotion of production and operation by knowledge transfer. Knowledge absorptive capacity of small firms has positive impacts on promotion of production and operation by knowledge transfer, but has no significant impact on knowledge transfer frequency and knowledge value. Therefore, knowledge transfer from dominant firms to small firms in industrial, as an important way of accelerating development of small firms and industrial clusters, will be promoted or restricted by a number of factors, and the interaction of these factors determines the final effect of knowledge transfer. Finally, this paper gives some suggestion on encouraging knowledge transfer from dominant firms to small firms, to help dominant firms play a better role in leading small firms and industrial clusters.