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Peripheral and economically lagging regions are short of an adequate supply of human capital and know-how. In order to make the best use of their endogenous potential they have to be able to attract highly qualified workers from other regions. This dependency poses considerable problems; for ambitious individuals central regions are more attractive because they off er a variety of job opportunities and better career perspectives. The findings presented in this paper indicate that, as long as the Jobs offered are attractive on a national scale, there is a higher number of managers and Professionals who are willing to migrate into peripheral regions. It is the job and hardly the region that motivates a move. However, the role of culture as a location factor should not to be neglected and may even increase since interests of family members have become more important in the decision making process.

An adequate supply of highly qualified workers is a central prerequisite for the ability of peripheral and economically lagging regions to develop. In order to take advantage of endogenous potential, bottlenecks in human knowledge and know-how must be overcome by means of support from outside. An important element in this is migration. Taking as an example the Weser-Ems region in northwestern Germany, the strategies used by local enterprises to motivate managerial staff to move from other regions are shown and the level of success achieved is described. As is shown, the regional labour market has lost significance for the upper segment in the course of structural changes in the economy, which has led to an increase in the necessity for cross-regional searches in order to fill managerial posts. As enterprises in peripheral locations have poor starting conditions in the cross-regional competition for highly qualified workers, this development demands that more and more enterprises mobilize considerable reso...