Service industries at a crossroads: some fragile assumptions and future challenges

Service research has been slowly evolving for more than 40 years. At the start of the twenty-first century some of the assumptions about the behaviour of services have become more fragile in the context of increased global economic dependencies and whether it is now realistic to treat them as a disc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Service industries journal 2012-03, Vol.32 (4), p.619-639
Main Author: Daniels, P.W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
assumptions
changing context
Economic theory
economy and services
Operations research
Service industries
service research
Studies
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Summary:Service research has been slowly evolving for more than 40 years. At the start of the twenty-first century some of the assumptions about the behaviour of services have become more fragile in the context of increased global economic dependencies and whether it is now realistic to treat them as a discrete set of activities. The embedding of services into seamless production chains characteristic of a 'manuservice' economy points to new challenges for a research agenda that is less focused on services per se. The components of a possible research agenda are many and varied, reflecting different disciplinary priorities or the rise of the new field of service science. Those outlined in this paper are offered from the perspective of an economic geographer.
ISSN:0264-2069
1743-9507
DOI:10.1080/02642069.2011.596536