Problem definition and methodological approach Companies seek the highest possible level of performance and competitiveness. In order to reach this goal, the company's location has to provide a number of so called location factors to offer the optimal business environment. Traditionally, this includes numerous criteria (e.g. traffic connection, markets for labour, sales and education) that are important for the individual economic success of an enterprise. Accordingly, there is a catalogue of various location factors that determines new companies' choice of and established businesses' satisfaction with their location. As legal requirements force the companies to interact with the local public administration concerning enquiries, applications and permits, the municipal administration also seems to influence the choice. Accordingly, the study addresses the question whether the public administration needs to be included as an independent key element in the theoretical discourse of local factors. To do so, the relevance of municipal administration is explored from the companies' perspective. In addition, the analysis questions the influence of local business development agencies on the location satisfaction. Besides the theoretical discussion of aspects of both administration science and economic geography, the analysis primarily includes a survey of municipal administrations, companies and local business development agencies and is thus incorporates multiple perspectives. The chosen methodological approach uses a mixed methods design in which qualitative and quantitative survey methods are connected in several ways and are also partly recursively. The research objectives are a theoretical description of the municipal administration as a local factor on the one hand and the presentation of practical approaches to improve the mentioned local factors by optimizing administrative services on the other hand. Theoretical foundations and insights An introductory discussion will illuminate the interdisciplinary background of the research in administration science and geography in order to define the problem in terms of the theory. A brief historic outline will then show that the importance of public administration for companies' location decisions has been sufficiently acknowledged by neither administration science nor geography. The theoretical approaches of New Economic Geography and New Public Management reveal that the nature of the interaction at a location is gaining importance. Thus, it becomes clear that the public administration is currently transforming into a service provider for companies. This move is also characterized by a growing “entitlement mentality” within the companies that now expect better service quality from administration. Numerous determinants of social and economic development such as globalisation, municipal financial crisis and administrative integration, just to name a few, reinforce this transformation. It will be shown that this development influences the location choice made by companies and is thus also affecting aspects of companies' location satisfaction concerning municipal administration. Empirical analyses The empirical analyses take up the implications of the theoretical considerations and look at the relevance of municipal administration and business development services for location decisions. In order to do so, the employees of communal services as well as the companies have been polled in contrasting surveys. The analyses point out that municipal administration service has a high relevance for location satisfaction but nonetheless does not meet the companies' requirements. Furthermore, there is the realistic danger of companies relocating due to constant insufficient administrative service, which would imply loss of workplaces and falling tax revenue for the municipality. Formative features of the administration as a local factor are several service criteria concerning administrative procedures. Of highest importance is the processing time of enquiries and applications. This point is even more important to the companies than the legal reliability of the information provided. The empirical results furthermore prove an overall transformation of the companies' “entitlement mentality” towards the local administration. The authorities' employees are very well aware of their importance but not of the negative ratings given by the local companies. Even though both parties describe similar quality expectations for administrative procedures, the administration employees are not able to provide the best possible service due to internal processing problems or legal barriers. Local business development agencies and their services are in a similar situation. Assessment of the relevance of local business development varies, but the overall rating is rather low. The companies wish the institutions to have more power to enforce processes within authorities as well as to offer a bundling of procedures. Conclusions for theory and practice Concerning the theoretical discourse, these results mean an inevitable modification and extension of the classic local factors model to include the influence of municipal administration as a separate factor. For questions of practical administration, the results show that reliable quality criteria are essential for the optimal location satisfaction of companies. To meet these service demands, changes in process management and bundling of procedures at key positions such as entrepreneurial service agencies have proved as suitable measures for a modernization of administration. Nevertheless, considering the increasing virtualization of service processes in public administration, it remains uncertain in what way the local significance of municipal administration services will develop in future.

This study describes and analyses the influence of immigration and integration of German expellees and refugees in the former administrative district of Osnabrueck. It is a contribution to a new regional social and economic history as well as to the history of integration of German refugees after World War II. The main goals are to close the gaps in regional pre and post war history of population, administration and economy. To a certain extent this thesis is of global importance with respect to the history of refugee integration in Germany. It deals with the refugee administration that was in place until the 1970s as well as the methodology of econometric analysis. The latter is used to show the process of modernisation from an agrarian economy to one that is dominated by industry and services. The applied methods are those of narrative history as well as social and econometric statistics on historical long-term analysis. The study describes and analyses the regional history of population, administration and economy, the latter with special respect to history of farming. To show the impact of expellees on social and economic structure, each of the three sections is analysed in a similar way: Chronologically by comparing the history and structures from about 1900 to 1945 with the period after World War II up to the 1970s. Geographically by comparing regional to country and national statistical patterns. It can be shown that the refugee administration suffered from early "ad hoc administration" days until its agony in the 1970s from the dualism with the traditional social administration. At the beginning there was no survival without the support of British military government, which consideres this area as a test field for the influence of new democratic conditions on pre-democratic administrative structures and daily work. In the 1950s the influence of military government was replaced by political power of refugee organisations and party. There decline leads to agony and subsequent take-over by traditional administration in the 1970s. The study shows the role and impact of refugees as part of the labor immigration in between the "Fremdarbeiter" and the "Gastarbeiter" on regional economy. It displays the intersectoral changes by the shifts in figures and index’ of gainfully employed people (domestic and refugees) demonstrating the shift towards an industrial or service oriented economy. From a refugee point of view there was no integration in the sense of equal opportunities in the job market as compared to native Osnabrueckians. This led to a decline in social status, especially for those who had been independent farmers in the east. The "integration" by discrimination and declining social status caused geographical and job mobility especially among the younger refugees – into better paid and modern jobs. Qualified refugee labour sped up the long term process of industrialization. Those sub areas which in pre-war times had been dominated by an agricultural sector on a 19th century level changed to an industrialized or service driven level within 15 years – much faster than during the Industrial Revolution. The study shows also that refugees had been a very successful political vehicle for claiming and getting public economic subsidaries – which mostly reached not the immigrants but native (Emsland-) farmers and companies. All in all the integration of refugees was a bivalent process of interdependent mutual adaption: On the one hand that of immigrants towards the conditions to live and work in the Osnabrueck area. On the other side the impact of refugees onto speed and direction of post war development and modernization of regional structures. The general result is that refugee immigration and integration had a major impact on regional post war development and modernisation of an administration with a pre-democratic understanding and an pre-war economy dominated by agriculture.