The Investigation and Analysis of Relationship Industrial Clustering and the improvement of Learning Capabilities in the Printing / Publishing and Furniture Industries in Qom Metropolis

The industrial cluster approach is one of the successful approaches for regional development, Causes the improvement of learning capabilities in urban and regional environment, using physical, social-cultural, economic and institutional proximities of the surrounding environment. This paper aims to The Investigation and Analysis of Relationship Industrial Clustering And the improvement of learning capabilities in the Printing / Publishing and Furniture Industries in Qom’ Metropolis. This is a survey based study (184 completed questionnaires) whit applied approach which required information gathered through the library study and field work. The Study’s sample size is based on the “minimum sample size for population table” (94 firms in the furniture industry and 90 firms in the publishing industry) and “Stratified random sampling method”. Furthermore, apparent validity, content validity and reliability of test are verified by “using experts”, “KMO and Bartlett's sphericity test” and “Cronbach's alpha test” respectively. Research instruments include learning capability questionnaire with 10 items and institutional cluster proximities with 36 items. Using Pearson correlation, data obtained by questionnaires are analyzed. Findings indicated that: printing/ publishing industry cluster with social-cultural and economic proximities industrial cluster furniture with only social-cultural proximity and general characteristics of both industrial firm’s (education manager / owner firms, the number of workers, the age of establish and average annual sales of the firm) indicate a significant relation between improvement of learning capabilities. Moreover, it seems that institutional, physical and economical proximities in the furniture industry and institution, physical proximities in printing/publishing industry haven’t a significant role in the learning capabilities enhancement. This study recommends that proximities of institutional, physical, economic, social- cultural industries should be strengthened for success of these clusters and improvement of learning capabilities and finally stimulates regional development.