ABSTRACT
The business services sector has recorded remarkable growth all over the industrialised world at least since the 1960s, but with a marked acceleration since the early 1980s (Keeble et al, 1991). Business services (here defined as professional business services and financial services) are the biggest source of direct job increases, with growth figures such as a 140% increase in US employment between 1971 and 1991, and a doubling of UK and French employment in the sector over the same period. More recently, employment in the sector increased by 50% in the UK between 1986 and 1994. In 1994, business and financial services together accounted for around 20% of employment in, for example, the UK, France and the Netherlands (Townsend, 1997). The business services sector accounts for 14% of employment, or over 3.2 million people, in Britain (Annual Employment Survey, 1997).
