The Encyclopedia of Services is a ground-breaking resource that offers a unique overview of what constitutes the main source of wealth and employment in our contemporary economies, namely services. Divided into five thematic parts, the Encyclopedia thoroughly examines services from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. It provides a pedagogical state of the art review of 283 topics falling within the scope of the major streams of service studies, such as services in economic thought, services management and services innovation. Each entry describes, synthesizes and discusses the main dimensions of the given topic, highlighting key research areas and literature. This Encyclopedia will be particularly invaluable for researchers and students in the economics, sociology, political science and management fields as well as practitioners in the private and public sector. Key Features: First encyclopedia of service studies covering the key topics in the field Entries written by 241 leading scholars and practitioners from 39 different countries Fully supported by The European Association for Research on Services (RESER) Multi-disciplinary approach across the fields of economics, management, sociology, geography, but also political science and history.