Information Technology and the Service Industry: White-Collar Work

Abstract

In the more developed countries, the service industry has grown to such an extent that it has all but eclipsed other sectors. Having begun with the manufacturing industry, now agricultural activities have also come to depend so much on information technologies and the service industry that no clear demarcations can be made and we might have to abandon the model of three distinct sectors.¹ In this chapter, we shall first deal with the question of how to define a service, then suggest some interpretations of the nature of the ongoing social transformations linked to the explosion of this tertiary sector. Along the way we shall also study the concept of a service relationship and try to deduce the possible changes in wage relations.