Abstract
The service economy has been subject to a huge number of changes over the course of the last century. These can be grouped into a series of stages, from Service Economy 1.0 to Service Economy 3.0, with digitalisation increasingly prominent in the later steps of this process. Major elements in this evolution are discussed here through the lenses of personal experience (both from everyday life and from research), and questions raised about how far they can be described as human-centred. Finally, the contours of an emerging Service Economy 4.0 are examined, and it is argued that to be human-centred services will be need to give much more centrality of environmental challenges.
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Notes
- 1.
Metcalfe (2008).
- 2.
The major output was Gershuny and Miles (1983).
- 3.
I studied this development in real time: see Thomas and Miles (1989).
- 4.
For a provocative account of the prospects for professional work, see Susskind and Susskind (2015).
- 5.
See the striking analysis in Steffen et al. (2018).
- 6.
“Climate services” are human actions intended to limit climate change (whether geoengineering is one of these is debatable). They should not be confused with “ecosystem services”, which refer to the benefits that the natural environment provides us with, such as fresh air and much else. This latter construct is anathema to those adhering to versions of “service-dominant logic” that see service as a uniquely human activity. On the other hand, it is seized upon by those that would like to attach a value to these benefits, so that the costs of losing them can be incorporated into economics.
- 7.
This essay is in large part based on personal experiences, and proper documentation of all of the transformations discussed here would fill many pages. Some of the key texts drawn on, however, are listed as references here.
References
This essay is in large part based on personal experiences, and proper documentation of all of the transformations discussed here would fill many pages. Some of the key texts drawn on, however, are listed as references here.
Gershuny, J. I., & Miles, I. D. (1983). The new service economy. London: Frances Pinter.
Metcalfe, J. S. (2008). Restless capitalism – The evolutionary nature of competition. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Steffen, W., Rockström, J., Richardson, K., Lenton, T. M., Folke, C., Liverman, D., Summerhayes, C. P., Barnosky, A. D., Cornell, S. E., Crucifix, M., Donges, J. F., Fetzer, I., Lade, S. J., Scheffer, M., Winkelmann, R. H., & Schellnhuber, J. (2018). Trajectories of the earth system in the anthropocene. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 15(33), 8252–8259. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1810141115.
Susskind, R., & Susskind, D. (2015). The future of the professions: How technology will transform the work of human experts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thomas, G., & Miles, I. (1989). Telematics in transition. Harrow: Longmans.
Acknowledgement
The work was prepared within the framework of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, where Ian Miles heads the Laboratory for Economics of Innovation.
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Miles, I. (2019). Transformations of Services. In: Toivonen, M., Saari, E. (eds) Human-Centered Digitalization and Services. Translational Systems Sciences, vol 19. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7725-9_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7725-9_1
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