ABSTRACT
OUR discussion will have shown that ‘ concern ’ is a generic term for very various types of organization ; it is even incorrect to regard the concerns as invariably the outcome of a movement towards concentration of firms. The founding of subsidiary companies is often due, not to any concentration movement, but to a movement which in a sense is the precise opposite, a movement which may be said to aim at decentralization or diffusion. This shows itself to-day in the way in which particular activities which were hitherto an integral part of one enterprise are formed into companies that are juristically independent of and economically may stand in very various relations to the parent company. The first subsidiaries of this kind were local electricity works ; then came the foreign branches formed as independent companies owing to political conditions or differences of company law. Finally, the private-company structure became frequently used to give the status of independent companies to home branches also, e.g., in the shoe and grocery trades.
