Modern studies consider the issues of spatial development of territories from different theoretical-methodological and scientific-practical positions. At the same time, scientific literature pays increased attention to clusters as tools of development of socio-economic space in regions and countries. The review of relevant literature that we have carried out shows that foreign studies on clusters focus more on determining the success factors of clusters and on the development of state programs to support them. While Russian scientific literature mainly tackles the issue of developing methodological foundations and techniques for identifying and assessing clusters for the purpose of developing the cluster potential of territories. Moreover, if we consider world’s best practices of cluster development, we see that in many works of Russian and foreign researchers on identifying clusters their effectiveness as highly organized self-developing systems is postulated and not subjected to thorough consideration. Therefore, the goal of our research is to study and develop fundamental criteria of efficiency of development of territorial clusters on the basis of achievements of economic science in the understanding of essential nature of the category of “efficiency” and to analyze a system nature of the cluster. Methodological basis of the research is represented by hermeneutic, system integration and institutional approaches. The most significant results that characterize scientific novelty of our research are as follows: 1) we postulate and prove that the differentiation of approaches to the hermeneutics of the category of efficiency is determined by the stages of evolution of scientific knowledge (classical, nonclassical, post-nonclassical) and complexity of the research object (development of simple, self-regulating and complex self-developing systems); 2) we clarify the definition of the cluster as a self-developing system based on decomposing the essential content of the term “cluster” as a complex system in the works of Russian and foreign scientists; 3) we determine and characterize the following distinctive features of the cluster as a self-developing system: stability, complexity, openness, dynamic organization, differentiability, controllability, cognition; 4) we develop a model of criterial configuration for the efficiency of cluster spatial development of economy, taking into account the interdependence and integration of institutional, organizational, managerial, economic, innovative and social aspects of cluster cooperation in the cluster system. We associate the prospects of future studies with the urgent need to identify and study the determinants of institutional technology for cultivating and supporting efficient cluster structures
Keywords
efficiency, regional economy, cluster, quality, hermeneutics, system, efficiency criteria, configuration