Wudu Abaynew, Singh Kanchan, Kassahun Samson
Ethiopian Civil Service University, College of Urban Development and Engineering, Department of Urban Planning and Development, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
FDRE Policy Studies Institute, Addis Ababa Ethiopia.
Heliyon. 2024 Oct 17;10(20):e39486. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e39486. eCollection 2024 Oct 30.
Industrial clustering is the co-location of firms in a geographic area, which can lead to numerous economic benefits such as joint resources and knowledge pooling, R&D collaboration, technology sharing, and joint marketing. This study aims to examine the influence of industrial clustering on the performance of firms in the leather and leather products industry in Addis Ababa. Moreover, this study aims to investigates whether innovation capacity and collaboration networks indirectly contribute to the relationship between clustering factors and firms' performance. In this study, both primary and secondary data were collected for analysis. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling was employed to explore the impact of clustering on performance in terms of innovation, job creation, attracting investment, export intensity, and productivity growth. This study found that a one-unit increase in cluster factors is associated with a 0.43-unit increase in firm performance. The mediation analysis revealed that collaboration networks mediate the relationship between cluster factors and firm performance by 0.21 and innovation capacity mediates the relationship between cluster factors and firm performance by 0.15 units. The findings indicate that industrial clusters strongly influence firm performance within the leather industry in Addis Ababa. Therefore, the results suggest that innovation capacity and collaboration networks are mechanisms through which industrial clusters affect firm performance. Future researchers should explore the cluster effect in other industrial sectors and regions to validate the research findings.
产业集群是指企业在地理区域内的集聚，这能够带来诸多经济效益，如联合资源与知识共享、研发合作、技术分享以及联合营销等。本研究旨在考察产业集群对亚的斯亚贝巴皮革及皮革制品行业企业绩效的影响。此外，本研究还旨在探究创新能力和合作网络是否间接影响集群因素与企业绩效之间的关系。在本研究中，收集了一手和二手数据用于分析。采用偏最小二乘结构方程模型来探究集群在创新、创造就业、吸引投资、出口强度和生产率增长方面对绩效的影响。本研究发现，集群因素每增加一个单位，企业绩效会增加0.43个单位。中介效应分析表明，合作网络在集群因素与企业绩效之间的中介作用为0.21，创新能力在集群因素与企业绩效之间的中介作用为0.15个单位。研究结果表明，产业集群对亚的斯亚贝巴皮革行业内的企业绩效有强烈影响。因此，研究结果表明创新能力和合作网络是产业集群影响企业绩效的机制。未来的研究人员应探索其他工业部门和地区的集群效应，以验证研究结果。
