Influences of embeddedness on knowledge transfer within knowledge-based industrial clusters and the impact on performance

Drawing on organizational learning and economic sociology, this paper advances and tests an overall theoretical framework explaining how relational embeddedness influences tacit knowledge transfer and explicit knowledge transfer, then the effect on firm's performance. The relational embeddedness is defined as some latent constructs: tie strength, trust, and shared values and system based on knowledge-based industrial clusters. We predicted that knowledge transfers from a firm to other firms would be positively associated with the relationships embedded in the cluster. Then, these predictions should be tested empirically with data collected from a questionnaire, in order to determine whether our predictions supported by these data. And we find that our predictions are partial supported.