Search within or beyond the industrial cluster? The effect of perceived competition and knowledge base tacitness on strategic location choices of external knowledge search

ABSTRACT

From a knowledge-based perspective, this paper highlights the need for a framework linking perceived competition of the industry and firms’ strategic location choices of external knowledge search and examines whether the perceived competition increases the propensity of cluster firms to search more widely from extra-cluster knowledge sources than intra-cluster knowledge sources. Furthermore, we emphasise that cluster firms with varying degrees of tacitness in their knowledge base might respond to such competition differently when conducting external knowledge search activities. Using a sample of 310 cluster firms in the Zhejiang Province of China, we find that the cluster firm would increase the propensity for more geographic boundary-spanning search relative to local search while under the pressure of competition. Moreover, the positive relationship between perceived competition and the propensity towards geographic knowledge search is weaker when the tacitness of the cluster firm’s knowledge base is higher. The findings contribute to the understanding of the relationship between competition and the choice of location strategies in external knowledge search.

KEYWORDS:

• Competition
• geographic boundary-spanning search
• knowledge base tacitness
• industrial cluster

Acknowledgements

We deeply thank anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions and constructive comments. We are grateful to the editors for their patient work for our manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Qiang Li is an associate professor of Business School of Zhejiang University City College, Hangzhou, China. His research topics include innovation network and knowledge search in emerging economies.

Jingjing Guo is an associate professor at Institutes of Science and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences and School of Public Policy and Management, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr. Guo’s research concentrates on topics such as innovation management and innovation policy.

ORCID

Qiang Li http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5077-2194

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province, China [grant number LY17G020011], the Humanities and Social Sciences Project of Ministry of Education, China [grant number 16YJC630054], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 71603235, 71672185], and the Youth Innovation Promotion Association, Chinese Academy of Sciences [grant number 2017201].