Steps toward a science of service systems

The service sector accounts for more than 80 percent of the US gross domestic product and employs a growing share of the science and engineering workforce. Yet it's one of the least-studied areas of the economy. Some see economics, operations research, industrial engineering, or the science of complex systems as the appropriate starting point for a general services theory. Others contend that the pervasiveness of services creates a need for many specific disciplines. An interdisciplinary effort called Service Science, Management, and Engineering provides a solution that falls between those two approaches.