Much of the growth in the services sector has been fueled by the growth in
services. Empirical data and economic theory
suggest that this is no coincidence but an
inherent feature of economic development. In the early stages, economic growth was
driven by vertical integration of assets and
people under the roof of integrated corporations. As economies grew, competition
increased and forced companies to focus their
assets and competencies on areas where they enjoyed competitive advantages. For
doing so, companies had to design organizational structures to capture
entrepreneurial opportunities and draw corporate
boundaries around the most promising areas. As a
result, many activities that used to be organized in-house began to be sourced from
external service providers. Strategies of
redrawing corporate boundaries started on a large
scale in IT-outsourcing, when globally operating companies began to hire external
business providers for managing data and
information operations. Soon this practice became common in a growing range of
corporate activities, including custodial
services, customer contact centers, payroll
operations, consulting for a growing range of
expertise and even contract manufacturing. Today, there is almost no business activity
one cannot source from a specialized service provider in a competitive business
service market.
To a significant extent, new business services do not necessarily
contain substantially new or revolutionary
activities. Rather, in many cases the crucial step in
the evolution of a business service resides on the switch from internal to external
sourcing of a process, activity, operation or asset.
As a manufacturing company outsources to external service providers, the
corresponding share of GDP and employees are being
moved from the manufacturing to the services sector. |
