Cluster Initiatives as a Competitiveness Factor of Modern Enterprises

Abstract

1. Introduction In modern market economy, the most important problem is provision of competitiveness of enterprises. This problem could be solved by formation of cluster system. Theoretical and practical works, devoted to development of competitiveness, are dominated by studies of the processes which take place within enterprise. The role of location is not taken into account in competition and competitiveness. There is a tendency for diminishing the role of location in these issues. Some researchers explain the concentration of enterprises in view of agglomeration economy (Carneiro et al., 2015), which are usually viewed as ones emerging at the level of a sphere or in diversified economy of a city. Those who explain the economy of agglomerations put emphasis on minimization of expenses due to similarity of production factors or similarity of markets (Geldes et al., 2015). However, such explanations are devalued by globalization of markets, technologies, and sources of supply, as well as by increased mobility and reduction of transport and communicational expenses. At present, the character of agglomerations' economy has changed a lot: it becomes more important at the level of clusters and not only within narrowly determined spheres. Globalization allows enterprises to receive capital, goods, and technologies from different regions and locate production where it is more effective in terms of expenses. It is considered that governments lose their influence on competition, as compared to powers which work at the global scale. Though this vision is very popular, it does not correspond to the real situation in the processes of competition. During study of the issue of location's influence on competitive struggle, comparatively small attention is paid to the fact HOW enterprises conduct the struggle. Competitive struggle was seen as static one, based on minimization of expenses in comparatively close spheres (Mihajlovic, 2014). In this case, the decisive role belongs to comparative advantage in factors of production and economy which is predetermined by the growth of production scales. The purpose of this article is the analysis of cluster activities' influence on creation of competitive advantages of its enterprises and on their competitiveness. 2. Methodological Aspects of Evaluation of Enterprise's Competitiveness There are a lot of various methods for evaluation of enterprise's competitiveness. At present, it is possible to determine the following main groups of method for evaluation of enterprises' competitiveness. First group is comprises of product methods, which are based on the idea that competition of companies in market economy has a form of competition of products, while company's possibility to compete in the certain product market directly depends on its product's competitiveness. This position is proved by economic practice which shows that absolute majority of competitive companies is represented in the market by competitive products. Product methods are based on the opinion that evaluation of competitiveness of economic subject can be performed through evaluation of competitiveness of its products: the higher the product's competitiveness, the higher the enterprise's competitiveness. At that, in order to determine the competitiveness of products, various marketing and qualimetric methods are used, most of which are based on determining the ratio price-quality of a product. There are many methodologies of determining the mentioned ratio. As a rule, indicator of enterprise's competitiveness is determined by finding the average weighted value among indicators of competitiveness for each type of products, where the scales are volumes of realization of corresponding product type. Certain researchers suggest using the market share of product as indicator of its competitiveness, which is more accurate reflection of competitiveness. Second group includes matrix methods. …