Research on Human Capital’s Accumulation in the Development of the Industry Cluster

Since over30years reform and opening up, industrial clusters have been flourishing across the country and becoming important economic growth point for regional development. However, the achievements that have been made are excessively relied on the input of material capital and natural resources. So, human capital, as a factor of production, is playing an increasingly important role in the industrial cluster development. It has become an important issue for academic researchers on how to improve the level of human capital accumulation and thus to accord with the development of industrial clusters. In recent years, in order to enhance the clusters’human capital accumulation performance, governments at all levels have taken a series of initiatives. The dissertation studies the performance effects on the development goal of the industry cluster by government’s support and enterprises’ input, and is of great theoretical and practical significance to Hangzhou Hi-tech Software Park who is facing staff’s scale limit, average productivity’s low increase and human capital structure’s impropriety.The dissertation, based on industrial cluster theory and human capital theory, firstly sorts out the studying achievements on human capital accumulation issues within the development of industrial clusters, and proposes the mechanism of industrial cluster’s human capital accumulation from the respects of investors, investment forms, accumulation dimensions and accumulation procedures. Secondly, by employing system dynamics theory, this paper constructs the theoretical models which manifests the features and the forming mechanism of industrial cluster’s human capital accumulation. Based on these theoretical models, integrating the present situations, problems and influence factors of Hangzhou Hi-tech Software Park, the paper expands the models with variables and parameters, and describes the constructing procedures and structures’characters in detail, and concludes in system dynamics simulation models demonstrating the mutual relationships between Software Park’s human capital’s quantity accumulation, quality accumulation and structure level with the goal of the industry cluster. Finally, under the changing senarios of external supporting policy and internal investments, this research analyzes the effects of cluster’s human capital accumulation level to the development of the industry cluster by employing the above simulation models. The main contents and the conclusions of this study are as follows.First, the theoretical analyzing framework about the issue of human capital accumulation in industry cluster’s development is built. Based on the relative theories and literatures’ review and integrated the characteristics of human capital accumulation in industry clusters, this paper analyzes the forming mechanism of cluster’s human capital accumulation in depth, and then constructs the theoretical models manifesting the mutual influence of cluster human capital’s quantity accumulation, quality accumulation and structure level with the development of industry cluster by employing the theory of system dynamics, and this provides the basic analysis methodology for the following research.Second, the influence factors of human capital accumulation for Hangzhou Hi-tech Software Park are analyzed. Base on the descriptive statistical analysis results from the surveyed enterprises data of the software park, this paper compares these results with the statistical data of the whole park, and confirms the typicality of the surveyed enterprises, and puts forward the influence factors of human capital accumulation, namely government’s support, enterprises’ investments, cluster development space and human capital structure, and analyzes the relationship between each factor and the cluster’s development goal. These influence factors are the key variables for the models to be constructed later, and are also the theory foundation to the senarios’ selection for the simulation.Third, system dynamics simulation models of human capital accumulation are constructed for Hangzhou Hi-tech Software Park. According to the influence factors of the Park, the paper expands the models with variables and parameters, and describes the relationships between variables and parameters, and then assign the initial values of the above parameters with the surveyed data and statistical analysis results and thus to specifically reflect the mutual influence effects of quantity accumulation, quality accumulation and structure level with cluster’s development goal.Fourth, simulation analysis is done under different scenarios. Proper scenarios are designed to simulation models of human capital’s quantity accumulation, quality accumulation and structure optimization respectively. The main conclusions show that:(1) it is feasible to adjust the cluster’s human capital accumulation level in quantity, quality and structure respectively under the current inconsistency situation in software park’s human capital accumulation and the cluster’s development goal;(2) the cluster’s human capital accumulation level can meet the cluster’s development requirement if the government raises the proportion of human capital’s quantity accumulation fee in the total human capital investments from17%to24%, or raises the proportion of human capital’s quality accumulation fee in the total human capital investments from83%to95.5%;(3) if enterprises within the park raises the proportion of human capital’s quantity accumulation fee of the profit from5%to7.1%, or raises the proportion of human capital’s quality accumulation fee of the profit from25%to28.6%; the above goal can be achieved as well;(4) under the scenario that without the limit of cluster’s development space, it is more efficient to invest in human capital’s quantity accumulation than quality accumulation either for government or for the enterprises. In fact, from the end of2013, the cluster’s development space available will be the most important restraint to the further staff scale’s expansion. So, the government should make the trade-off in human capital’s quantity investments and quality ones while the enterprises should enhance the input and output efficiency on R&D and staff’s training;(5) without changing the recruiting time length, when the newly recruited staff’s training time is adjusted from0.25year to0.5year, the increasing trends both for the newly recruited staff t and the working staff are more suitable to the actual development of the cluster;(6) if the upgrade time of primary level talents and medium level talents shortens from5years and2years to3years and1year respectively, the optimized structure with the proportion of36%for medium level staff and60%for high level staff can make the park achieve the desired goal.Fifth, according to the above theoretical research and simulation analysis, main conclusions are drawn and policy enlightenments are proposed to enhance the cluster’s human capital accumulation level and thus to be accord with the cluster’s development. The main policy implications points out that the government should make the labor market system mature, strengthen the cluster’s external environments’ construction and improve human capital investments system while the enterprises within the cluster should establish and develop its staff training system, speed up in personnel training, raise intensity to attract high-quality personnel, enhance the efficiency of R&D investments, and optimize the human capital structure.Laying on the special organization pattern of industry cluster for the issue of human capital accumulation, the dissertation breaks through the limitations of previous studies either on the industry cluster issue or on human capital accumulation issue separately and extends the study’s boundary limit, And what’s more, it breaks through the limitation of previous studies on one or two dimensions of human capital accumulation instead of the three. The theoretical models featuring the characteristics of industry cluster’s human capital accumulation and the present situation of Hangzhou Hi-tech Software Park reveals the relationship and mechanism of cluster’s human capital accumulation in quantity, quality and structure with cluster’s development goal. The conclusions drawn based on the analysis of the above simulation models are of high practical value both to local government’s strategies making and the cluster staff scale’s expanding, productivity’s enhancing and structure’s adjusting.