Methodological approaches to studying the service sphere productivity

Abstract

The article is dedicated to analyzing methodological approaches to assessing the productivity level of the service sector and the challenges that arise in their application. The author during the research examines the state of productivity assessment of the service sector in Ukraine as of today, in particular, the lack of systematic research on this issue at the state level. Also, the investigator describes the main peculiarities of services such as intangibility, the inseparability of the place of creation and consumption, the inconsistency of quality, and timelessness. They affect the evaluation of the productivity of this field of economic activity. In addition, the article describes important differences compared to classical performance measurement approaches that need to be considered, such as advanced technology, and customer involvement in service productivity. Likewise, the paper has characterized the issues that influence the quantity and quality of data necessary for measuring and analyzing the productive capacity of the service sector. There are issues related to determining the costs (input) for the production (provision) of a unit of service, determining the output of services, issues related to sizes (most of the services businesses are medium, small, or micro-enterprises), and geographical orientation (most of the businesses are focused on target groups of consumers located close to the place of service provision) of service sector enterprises, and others. The author underscores the influence of the category of quality and its variability on the measurement of service productivity and its partial indicators such as labor productivity, capital productivity, etc. Finally, the article outlines two main models (the first one proposed by Lashhof in 2006 and the other by Grönroos with Ojasalo in 2004), according to which scientists and researchers are suggested to form a methodological approach to the research of the service sector in the future. It has been established that the development and wide implementation of the new model will require significant changes in the system of collecting statistical indicators since its application is not possible without the accumulation of data on numerous small and micro enterprises, which today are often left out of calculations even by organizations such as the OECD.