ABSTRACT
The importance of services in the contemporary global economy is beyond dispute. Clearly services facilitate economic transactions and play a vital role in development (Daniels, 1993; Daniels and Moulaert, 1991; Illeris, 1996; Begg, 1994). But in addition, services may be used to secure competitive advantage in the global economy (Porter, 1990; Porter, 1996; Dicken, 2003). National economies are much less insular than even a decade ago and more interdependent, a process that is inextricably linked to, in part, the presence of ‘enabling or space-shrinking technologies’ transportation, communication and organizational innovations that aid in the internationalization process (Dicken, 2003:89-93). In this process, forward and backward linkages in global production networks make the service sector essential to manufacturing and development planning. Remaining competitive means that firms require, as they develop value chains, efficient logistics services applied to their procurement and distribution networks. Yet the service sector remains relatively understudied, leaving large gaps in our understanding of services especially in global context (Daniels, 1987; Martinelli, 1991).
