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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uni-osnabrueck.de/oai:repositorium.ub.uni-osnabrueck.de:urn:nbn:de:gbv:700-2012122110614 |
| Date | 21 December 2012 |
| Creators | Göbel, André |
| Contributors | Prof. Dr. Norbert de Lange, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Stember |
| Source Sets | Universität Osnabrück |
| Language | German |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | doc-type:doctoralThesis |
| Format | application/pdf, application/zip |
| Rights | Namensnennung-NichtKommerziell-KeineBearbeitung 3.0 Unported, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ |
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