Literature Review of the Field of the Service Economy

Abstract: After the Second World War, the service sector in many countries, including the highly developed and the developing countries, started growing and making up the bulk of the economies of those countries. Some of the factors for that radical change are: the changing patterns of government ownership and regulation, privatization, technological innovations, servitization, internationalization, globalization, etc. The purpose of this article is to investigate and to suggest a classification of the existing literature in the field of service economy. The results of the systematic review of the area of the service economy are presented in a thematic order. Moreover, the findings are connected with the economical schools of thought - welfare state and neoliberalism. The key findings reveal that the social, economic, and technological changes brought by the Third Industrial Revolution were essential for the dissemination and development of the service sector.