The rise to prominence of the service sector - heralded over half a century ago as the great hope for the twenty-first century - has come to fruition. In many cases, employment in the service sector now outnumbers that in manufacturing sectors, and it is accepted that in all developed countries, the service sector is the only one in which employment will grow in future. The reasons for this is the subject of much controversy and debate, the outcomes of which are not merely of academic interest but of decisive importance for economic policy and the quality of working and living conditions in future. In order to examine these various arguments, research teams from eight European countries worked together for three years on a comparative study of the evolution of service sector employment in EU member states. They also investigated working and employment conditions in five very different service industries (banking, retailing, hospitals, IT services and care of the elderly) in a number of countries, and the results of their research are presented in this informative new collection, of interest to students academics and researchers involved in all aspects of industrial economics.

1.Democracy and Efficiency in the Economic Enterprise 2.Towards a Competence Theory of the Firm 3.Uncertainty and Economic Evolution 4.The End of the Professions? 5.Shopfloor Matters 6.The Organisation of the Firm 7.Organizing Industrial Activities Across Firm Boundaries 8.Economic Organisation, Capabilities and Coordination 9.The Changing Boundaries of the Firm 10.Authority and Control in Modern Industry 11.Interfirm Networks 12.Privatization and Supply Chain Management 13.The Governance of Large Technical Systems 14.Stability and Change in High-Tech Enterprises 15.The New Mutualism in Public Policy 16.An Econometric Analysis of the Real Estate Market and Investment 17.Managing Buyer-Supplier Relations 18.Supply Chains, Markets and Power 19.Managing Professional Identities 20.A comparison of small and Medium Enterprises in Europe and in the USA 21.Workaholism in Organizations 22.The Construction Industry 23.Economic Geography of Higher Education 24.Economies of Network Industries 25.The Corporation 26.Industrial and Labour Market Policy and Performance 27.organization and Identity 28.Thinking Organization 29.Information Warfare in Business 30.Business Clusters 31.Markets in Fashion 32.Working in the Service Sector 33.Strategic and Organizational Change 34.Transprotation Economics