Introducing the T-shaped model of cluster competence – an integrative framework and first empirical evidence from the German craftsmen sector
本文从资源观和关系观出发，提出企业层面的四种集群能力构成T型模型，并用德国中小手工业企业的调查数据验证该模型对企业成功的解释力。
Although cluster research has been an enormously vivid field in the past years, the idea that firms’ individual competences influence the knowledge gain from collocation is still under-researched. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap in two steps. First, we derive four firm-specific cluster competences from existing literature as key components of a T-shaped model which is based on the resource and the relational view on knowledge spillovers. Second, we evaluate the explanatory power of our model in terms of firm success by conducting empirical testing on the basis of several logistic regressions in the form of proportional odds models. For this purpose, we use a hitherto unexploited firm-level data set, gained from a survey conducted among small and medium-sized craft businesses in Germany. The results provide evidence that idiosyncratic cluster competences on the firm level are supportive of firm success in business clusters.