ABSTRACT
The services should mind their cores! The socio-cultural developments that were discussed in Chapter 2 have put a lot of pressure on the services. Every single service appears to be individualizing its provisions, as well as rationalizing them. Most services have been unable to escape the current transformations that professionalism is undergoing. No wonder that many services appear to be in danger of losing their grip. In fact, their core services, in particular, appear to be under duress, and this may even be cause for some worry. As the old psychotherapeutic motto has it, you can only manage your boundaries and have meaningful relationships with the outside world if you know who you are. Accordingly, we take as a starting point in this chapter the notion that the services may very well consider their core services as a very practical response to this issue. Here, we will have a more profound look at the variety of core services and associated client relationships mentioned in Chapter 1, and pay some more attention, in particular, to the ‘inconveniences’ and ‘risks’ that may be involved with these various transactions. Although the risks, in particular, may sometimes effectively harm an organization’s position, they may also help reinforce this same organization’s determination that ‘during reconstruction its business must go on’.
