Abstract
Tertiary activities and among them business services represent an increasingly dominant share of GDP. The main purpose of this paper is to show that the concepts and theories which have been developed mainly with reference to industrial, essentially material, activities are not relevant for service, dominantly non-material, activities, more particularly for informational business services. These-the way they operate, the relations between the actors, the processes through which values are created and prices are determined...-are substantially different, and would thus seem to require substantially, or even radically different approaches and theories.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Baumol, W. J., Blackman, S. A. B., and Wolff, E. N. (1989) Productivity and American Leadership: the Long View, MIT Press, Cambridge.
De, Bandt, J. and Gadrey, J. (1994) Relations de service, marchés de services, CNRS Editions, Paris (translation forthcoming).
De, Bandt, J. (1995a) Services aux entreprises: informations, produits, richesses, Economica, Paris.
De Bandt, J. (1995b) ‘Cooperation, accords interentreprises, concurrence’, in J. Ravix (ed.) Coopération entre les entreprises et organisation industrielle, CNRS Editions (forthcoming).
Hill, T. P. (1977) ‘On Goods and Services’, The Review of Income and Wealth, Dec.
Holmstrom, B. (1985) ‘The Provision of Services in a Market Economy’, in R., Inman (ed.) Managing the Service Economy: Prospects and Problems, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Inman, R. (1985) Managing the Service Economy: Prospects and Problems, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Summers, R. (1985) ‘Services in the International Economy’, in R., Inman (ed.) Managing the Service Economy: Prospects and Problems, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Tirole, J. (1989) The Theory of Industrial Organization, MIT Press, Cambridge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
De Bandt, J. Business services: Markets and transactions. Rev Ind Organ 11, 19–33 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00163595
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00163595