Business service firms, service space and the management of change

The growth of business service firms represents the latest stage in a continuing twentieth century process of technological and organizational restructuring of production and labour skills. It is associated with the rising information intensiveness of production and the development of an economy of signs. Business service activities located in service spaces drive innóva.tions both in production technology and in management systems. The co-presence of business service firms with their clients as well as other business service firms shapes the possibilities of trust between them. A detailed case study of the way in which large client firms utilize the services of independent business service companies is provided. This is followed by an examination of the relationship between small firms and business service expertise. A dual information economy may be developing in which large firms are able to search for specialist business service expertise irrespective of its location, while SMEs are tied into local providers of more generalist expertise.