External Control and Regional Development within the Federal Republic of Germany

This article reports the results of a questionnaire-based survey of externally controlled manufacturing plants in Trier, a peripheral region of the Federal Republic of Germany. Characteristics of the externally controlled plants are compared to those of independent plants in order to evaluate several hypotheses from the literature. Among the findings are that branch plants, in particular, tend to be more rapidly growing with employment relatively concentrated in production and lower skill occupations. They also have weaker input linkages within the region. Thus, the internal functional division of labor in multi-establishment firms produces positive quantitative effects on peripheral regions, but less encouraging qualitative effects that will affect their indigenous growth potential.