Evaluation of cluster efficiency measurement tool

Abstract

This study aims at verifying the validity of cluster efficiency measurement tool. In previous study benchmarking was employed (Tvaronaviciene et al., 2015) to compare the performance of participating clusters which would enable to improve their results by getting the information about their strengths and weaknesses over other clusters. A further comparison of data of four participating clusters was pursued while paying attention on the importance of three groups of criteria, which are activity, resources and processes, giving them different prominence. Two more values were added to previous study, one indicating the results when all three groups of indicators get the same weights and the other shows their efficiency when processes get the major part and the other two groups are equally relevant. There was a significant change in results when these conditions were applied showing the importance of literature and case analysis. Further analysis is needed to verify the validity of a cluster efficiency measurement tool as there were no previous attempts to assess cluster efficiency through benchmarking clusters performing in Lithuania. This study may give controversial results as the prominence to each group of criteria is given regarding to literature analysis as well as author's personal opinion. Limited number of clusters may influence the choice of the alternatively best ratio of three criteria characterizing the performance of clusters.