Research on Role of Knowledge Transfer in Division of Labor and Modularity: Opportunities for Innovation

摘要

The combinative perspectives of division of labor and disintegration of industry value chain lead to a gloomy prospect for the transitional countries like China with globalization of the world economy, that is, these countries seem only to be characterized by low labor cost, low end of industry value chain and low innovative capacity. We disagree with this conclusion because divisions of labor in sense of classical economics with little knowledge transfer are being substituted by modularization of industry value chain with large amount of knowledge transfer. Contrast to the divisions of labor coordinated by market, the alignments of cooperation (interests) and coordination (actions) among modules with large amount of knowledge transfer is very difficult but is becoming to be more and more important. In this paper, we explore the opportunities for innovation in division of labor and modularity by studying the role of knowledge transfer in division of labor, and find that: (1) the knowledge transfer is negative to the alignment of cooperation and coordination among modules if no commitments is made; (2) the knowledge transfer can also play the positive roles in the alignment of cooperation and the alignment of coordination among modules if commitments are made; (3) finally, based on the alignments of cooperation and coordination among modules only, the knowledge transfer becomes to be possible among the divisions and modules, and then the opportunities to innovate for the transitional countries like China through the transfer are also discussed.