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Service activities of all kinds are now acknowledged as key players in economic development, societal change, and policy-making worldwide. This exciting new Handbook helps to clarify ongoing conceptual debates about the nature of service-led economies and push back the frontiers of current critical thinking and research agendas on the role and impact of service activities at a variety of scales. The Handbook features original and stimulating essays by international scholars from a range of disciplines. They actively raise awareness of and provoke debates on the opportunities and challenges pos

The operation both of private and of public sector organisations consists of a complex interplay between in-house and external expertise and knowledge. The authors use a unique survey of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in England to explore their use of external expertise and the location of external advisers. They also draw upon surveys both of private sector consultants and of personal business advisers (PBAs) employed by Business Link companies. Network analysis is used to identify the ways in which weak and strong ties either enable or constrain opportunities for SMEs to access the knowledge and expertise available both from private sector business-service companies and from state agencies. SME owner-managers have too many strong ties with their local business community. The paucity of weak tics with individuals located elsewhere in the United Kingdom restricts the ability of SMEs to search for business-service expertise outside their local area. An analysis of the Business Link initiative is undertaken which suggests that the spatial monopoly held by each Business Link company does not encourage them to participate in the development of a national knowledge-and-enterprise network. The analysis suggests that a dual information economy may be developing in the United Kingdom in which large firms arc able to access specialist external expertise irrespective of location, whereas SMEs are tied into local providers of more generalist expertise.

ABSTRACTThe restructuring of urban economies from manufacturing to service industries has been a major feature of the last twenty‐five years. Large cities with a population of at least one million have been at the forefront of this change with the primate cities of the newly industrialized countries increasingly affected. The growth characteristics, planning experiences, and policy implications of the expansion of service industries in large and medium‐size metropolitan areas around the world are examined. This has illuminated issues connected with the interurban competition for services. The service sector has shaped new urban planning and public policy agendas and the way in which metropolitan areas in this study have started to reshape their policies provides a good lead for others to follow. It is likely that new pressures will strengthen the need to look beyond their established urban planning policies to broader, integrated urban management policies.