Technology and the ‘servicelisation’ of labour: from immateriality to innovative uncertainty

Abstract

This article discusses the concepts of ‘servicelisation’ of labour and innovation incomplex organisational contexts. We consider that, at the present stage of societaldevelopment, the expansion of services itself represents the course from one industrialmodel to another, i.e. to a set of ways or methods of producing that are different.It is thus possible to speak of a ‘configuration of users’. In a ‘service economy’, theservice products are global and are not generally decomposable, so that it is thecustomer/user who assesses the satisfaction involved in consuming them, even beingable to intervene in their production. Besides, technology and immateriality are nowfundamental to the service logic. This article also proposes some alternative ways foranalysing the organisational structures dealing with such new phenomena.