James L. Heskett

This book was written in 1986...more or less at the start of the period when services in the economy started to attract more attention by economists. And the story is familiar to those of us who worked with the services sector: services are important; they employ the majority of workers, they contribute the major part of the GDP of advanced nations and the relative contribution of Manufacturing and Agriculture has declined steeply. By 1984, service industries were responsible for 74% of all nonfarm jobs and 69% of national income.
It's interesting that still, today, most people haven't come to grips with these facts and still consider "real " jobs as those in manufacturing or in agriculture ...where people produce "things".
Heskett's book, in many ways is prescient. He draws attention to the growing importance of service industries and works through the basic elements of what a Strategic service vision might look like for a forward looking service company...all fairly straight forward really: Target market segments; the service concept (what are the important elements of the service ...in terms of results for customers); the operating strategy (operations, finance, marketing, organisation, human resources, control); and the service delivery system (including role of people, technology, equipment, facilities, layout procedures).
I think, basically, Heskett gets the issues right but he was writing pre-internet and so much has changed with service delivery because of the internet. Basically, the book is very dated..so only two stars from me.… (altro)