Abstract
The period of 1974–1975 marks the end of a phase of relative “optimism” in the analysis of the services. Indeed, many of those who earlier studied the services now express in the mid-1970s concern about the “services crisis” and its more visible manifestations, such as unemployment, inflation and lower rates of growth. Although the themes of post-industrial society do not disappear in later theoretical debates, by the late 1970s other opposing concepts begin to question the further continuation and development of the service society. This neo-industrial interpretation becomes the dominant way of analysing the development of the services.
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References
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The same could be true for the concept of economic growth itself, whose measurement would appear less and less relevant in a service economy. For a very suggestive critical approach of this issue, see the recent book by Orio Giarini and Walter Stahel, The Limits to Certainty, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1990.
More traditional tertiary industries are also affected by these conceptual limits. See, for example, the reassessment of the alleged poor productivity performances of the U.S. retailing industry, in: Jean Gadrey, Thierry J. Noyelle, Thomas M. Stanback, Productivity in Retailing: Some Evidence from Food Retailers and Eating and Drinking Places in France and the United States, Working Paper 91–01, New York, The Eisenhower Center for the Conservation of Human Resources, February 1991.
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Delaunay, JC., Gadrey, J. (1992). Service Society Versus Neo-Industrialism. In: Services in Economic Thought. International Studies in the Service Economy, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2960-2_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2960-2_6
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