Service-dominated Economy Research Articles

The Arndale Property Company and the Transformation of Urban Britain, 1950–2000

AbstractThis article tracks the remarkable role played by a commercial property developer, the Arndale Property Company, in the transformation of urban Britain across the second half of the twentieth century. This was an era of great change in cities, as urban environments were remodeled and urban centers had to adapt to deindustrialization and the rise of a consumer-driven and service-dominated economy. Arndale was at the forefront of these changes, installing dozens of shopping centers in British towns and cities from the 1950s to the 1990s. The company imported American-inspired commercial architectures, furnishing cities with new landscapes of consumption and mass leisure through which the affluent society was encountered and made concrete. Arndale was also a driving force in the growing financialization of urban property development that began in Britain as early as the 1950s and gathered pace as the century wore on. The company's history thus illuminates important shifts in economic activity and cultural life that had far-reaching impacts on British cities and society. It also highlights Arndale's role at the heart of the postwar urban renewal order, showing how far the company's success depended on its status as a favored partner to public planning authorities pursuing town center redevelopment. The centrality of such public-private developmental partnerships, often overlooked, particularly within adjacent urban disciplines, reveals much about the precise contours and political economy of the British postwar settlement.

On the Margins: Considering the Relationship between Informal Work and Reoffending

Research suggests that job stability and job quality are vital in enhancing the crime suppression effects of employment. Unfortunately, with the erosion of the manufacturing economy and the increase in the service-dominated economy, offenders who are typically on the margins of society, are pushed towards the informal economy now more than before. The current study attends to the relationship between informal work and crime by analyzing data from the Pathways to Desistance study. Results from fixed effects linear probability models show that informal work is associated with a higher probability of engaging in expressive crimes, but not instrumental crimes. Neither informal nor formal work arrangements seem to work as crime suppressants, but informal arrangements appear more criminogenic.

Psychometric Properties of the Service Leadership Attitude Scale in Hong Kong.

Positive attitude to service leadership is fundamental for the development of successful leadership qualities in the service-dominated economy. The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the 46-item Service Leadership Attitude Scale (SLA) in Hong Kong. A total of 2,240 undergraduate students in Hong Kong (mean age = 20.44±1.64 years; 66.9% were female) completed a questionnaire containing the 46-item SLA and other leadership-related scales. The psychometric properties of SLA were assessed using confirmatory factor analyses (CFA), reliability analyses, measurement invariance tests, and convergent validity test. Previous exploratory factor analyses suggested a seven-factor model of SLA which was supported by CFA in this study. By adding an additional dimension (“Implicit leadership theory”) in the scale, the final eight-factor model with 46 items showed superior fit using CFA. Factorial invariance tests showed that the factor structure was invariant in terms of construct dimensionality, factor loadings, intercepts, and factor covariance across gender and subgroups split based on “odd” and “even” case numbers. Convergent validity tests showed that the scale scores were correlated with several leadership-related scales. The scale and subscales also demonstrated good internal consistency reliability. This study is the first scientific work to validate a measure of attitude to service leadership via CFA. It contributes significantly to the development and validation of measures of attitude to service leadership, particularly in the higher education sector.

Economic Regulation Directions Regarding the Essential Shift in the Structure of Economy

This article analizes the esential shift in the structure of the economy from industrial to service-dominated economy and the impact of the increasing role of the service sector to the development of economic system and effectiveness of current economic regulation means. Two key theories are dealing with structural changes – deindustrialization theory and post-industrial economy theory. There are distinct research communities providing different perspectives on the rationale, design and delivery of the economic development and economic regulation. The comparative analysis provide an integrative and organising lens for viewing the various contributions to knowledge production from those research communities addressing economic regulation directions and means. The first part of the paper presents a critical assessment of the recomendations to the employment and equality policy makers provided by the deindustrialization theory developing research community. The second part of the paper is devoted for the evaluation of the post-industrial theory perspectives to develop service-dominated economy. This study provides three main trends in economic regulation, which are identified as main accelerators of the economic system evolution, namely: i) creation and maintenance of information-communication infrastructure; ii) servitization of manufacturing and agriculture, and iii) essential reform of educational system.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ppaa.16.3.19343

The changing nature of labour protest: Comparing the fragmentation of protest rituals on May 1st in Berlin and Budapest

The transition from industrial to post-industrial society has changed the conditions for labour protest in Europe fundamentally. In this paper recent forms of labour protest are explored in two European capital cities, Berlin and Budapest. In the context of growing job insecurity, flexibilisation and fragmentation of labour markets, the motivations and class positions of protest participants are scrutinised, along with the diversified geographies of protest events. Building on empirical results by means of a survey based on structured mini-interviews, the paper argues, first, that a fragmentation of labour protests on May 1st is observable. This fragmentation is driven by an overall change of Labour Day celebrations from trade union oriented demonstrations towards segmented party zones of protest in both cities. Second, neither traditional forms of labour protest is nor newly created, more festive forms of labour celebrations attract a significant proportion of people suffering from precarity or unemployment. Thus, most marginalised people in the service-dominated economy do not have a voice in labour protests today.

The knowledge worker is dead: What about professions?

This article examines the uncertain and ambivalent position of professions and professionalism in the post-industrial service economy driven by the collapse of the concept of the knowledge worker with which professions have largely been identified since the 1990s. The poor definition of knowledge activities, which are uncritically identified with service activities and creativity of all types, including low-skilled/wage occupations, suggests that the service-dominated economy has significantly challenged the classical concept of professions. In order to understand directions of change in the concept of professionalism the article discusses the reasons for the rise and fall of the knowledge worker and the evolution of the technical-rational to ‘creatocratic’ model of profession. It critically examines the statistical measurement of ‘knowledge-intensive activities’ (KIAs), which is based on poor definition of ‘knowledge intensity’ and cannot serve as a proxy to measure the extent of knowledge occupations in the service economies. Although many concepts for new types of professions have been devised which follow either ‘idealistic’ or ‘realistic’ discourse, the theoretical and normative aspects of new professionalism have not been captured, which makes the idea of a profession a fluid and ephemeral concept. This calls for a more precise definition of occupations and professions in a service economy and their working conditions to understand structural changes and polarization of the labour market, particularly the aspects related to growing social inequalities among new type of professions with the aim to better value professional work and reduce disparities.

What Affects the Main Engine of Growth in the European Economy? Industrial Interconnectedness and Differences in Performance of Business Services across the EU25

The main purpose of this study is to determine what are the main factors which stand behind the diversity in performance of business services measured by their contribution to growth in the EU Member States. We show that in addition to typical growth factors which enhance labor productivity, also the extent of interconnectedness of business services with upstream industries is important to explain service-based economic growth. Our analysis yields two interesting results. Firstly, we show that patterns of industrial interconnectedness of business services are considerably diversified across the EU Member States indicating large differences in the integration of services as supplier with other sectors on a country level. Secondly we show that the diversified growth performance of business services across the EU25 countries can be explained by differences in labor productivity and differences in forward linkages. Our results indicate the fundamental role of business services as the main engine of growth in the European economy. This service-based growth is channeled mainly through increases in labor productivity and forward interconnectedness of services with downstream industries. On the policy making level our results indicate that investment in human and intangible capital are crucial for the service-dominated economy as they not only enhance economic growth inside knowledge intensive services but also facilitate transmission of growth impulses to downstream industries by increasing diffusion and integration of services as suppliers of high value added inputs to the economy.

Post-crisis, post-Ford and post-gender? Youth identities in an era of austerity

In this review I explore the connections between debates about the transformation of work in a service-dominated economy and those about classed and gendered identities. I suggest they might usefully be connected in analyses of disadvantage and exclusion among working-class young people. Youth involvement in protest and unrest in English cities, as well as rising rates of unemployment, raise questions about the connections between labour market exclusion and young men's and women's construction and performance of acceptable versions of gendered identities. Performative identities are crucial in gaining employment, especially in the forms of low-waged interactive employment open to young people with few skills or little educational capital.

Viewing Systems as Services: A Fresh Approach in the IS Field

Despite wide agreement that we are in a service-dominated economy, there has been little movement toward treating service and service metaphors as core aspects of the IS field. This tutorial proposes that viewing systems as services is a potentially fruitful but generally unexplored approach for thinking about systems in organizations, systems analysis, and numerous applications of IT. An extension of past research in several areas, viewing systems as services proves to be an umbrella for developing new systems analysis and design methods, improving business/IT communication, and finding practical paths toward greater relevance and significance in business and society.

The role of brands in a service-dominated world

Long gone are the days where a brand was merely a logo or trademark that distinguished a company's products from those of competitors. The fastest-growing sectors of the modern economy are dominated by companies whose offer is complex and delivered in the context of long-term service partnerships. In such a service-dominated economy, we must re-conceptualise our notion of brand so that it provides the context in which such service-based marketing flourishes. The notion of services marketing is not new, and there is a rich literature about the notion of brand building through a series of service encounters, each one exceeding the expectations of customers, thereby building brand equity. For almost 20 years, these key moments of customer–company contact, the bricks and mortar of the service brand structure, have been measured by SERVQUAL, a battery of measures for assessing the quality of service delivered at any customer–company contact point. Drawing on emerging research at the Cranfield School of Management, the authors question the means by which we currently measure service quality on the basis that it fails to measure that which truly builds brands in a service-dominated world. The authors offer the concept of Experience Quality, which incorporates service quality but extends to aspects of customer experience not related directly to service that we believe better predict consumer behaviour with respect to brands.

Services and Economic Growth in ASEAN Economies

I. Introduction The ASEAN economies have shown remarkable economic performance, measured in terms of growth of gross domestic product (GDP) (see Table 1). Increasing sectoral specialization and competitive advantage in many ASEAN economies perhaps contributes to these ASEAN economies' phenomenal GDP growth rate. The growth and development of manufacturing industries and the presence of global corporations are thought to be facilitating the emergence of a service-dominated economy. It is noted that with increased globalization of economic activities and extensive overseas networks and connections by global corporations, many leading service-related firms have penetrated the Asia-Pacific region since the 1980s (Yeung 1996). The expansion of the service sector seems to play a crucial role in the economic development of the ASEAN economies, as services in general bind the other sectors of the economy such as manufacturing (see Shelp et al. 1984). In general, the service sector has been traditionally deemed the residual tertiary sector, after the primary and secondary sectors (Toh and Low 1989). While the nature and the extent of the service sector is a much debated issue, its definition and scope is, however, more specifically defined by Hill (1977), Riddle (1986), and Bhagwati (1987). In fact, Gershung and Miles (1983) and Park and Chan (1989) have, in general, categorized service activities into two major groups: market and non-market. Market services include producer services (for example, banking and finances); distribution services (for example, transport and storage); personal services (for example, hotels and restaurants), and communications (for example, the Internet). The non-market services include social services (for example, health and education). The development of market services seems to have a significant impact on the ASEAN economies' service sector and their growth performance (as discussed in Section II). The main objective of this article is to assess the proposition that the expansion in the service sector has been a determining factor of per capita economic growth in the ASEAN economies during the last three decades. The proposed methodology to explore this proposition is similar to methodologies common to the fast increasing literature on the new growth theory, for example, Barro (1991); Mankiw, Romer, and Well (1992); and Barro and Sala-i-Martin (1995). Data used in this study are from a cross-ASEAN country set for the period extending from 1965 to 1994. The rest of the article is organized as follows. The next section describes the ASEAN sectoral composition. Section III presents the estimation framework followed by a discussion of the data in Section IV. The estimation results are presented in Section V. Section VI presents a discussion on the limitations of this study, and also highlights opportunities for further research. Section VII provides some concluding remarks. II. ASEAN Sectoral Composition Table 2 presents the data on ASEAN economies' sectoral composition. Two distinct features can be seen from the data. The first and foremost distinct feature is that the service sector is the dominant contributor to GDP in the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam during 1995-99, while in Indonesia, the service sector's contribution to GDP was slightly below that of the industrial sector for the same period. The second distinct feature is that over the last two decades, the contribution of the agricultural sector to GDP has declined gradually in many ASEAN economies. Meanwhile, the share of services to GDP has increased over time in Brunei, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. The share of services to GDP is the highest in Singapore among all ASEAN countries. However, their contribution to Singapore's economy has remained almost steady even though they are the prime mover of the Singapore economy. Another feature of ASEAN's service sector is the robust growth rates experienced in recent times. …

Education Priorities for a Service Dominated Economy: The Case of Kuwait

Education Priorities for a Service Dominated Economy: The Case of Kuwait