XIX. International Reser Conference: "Public And Private Services In The New Global Economy" (Reser 2009) September 23, 2009

XIX. International RESER Conference
“PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SERVICES IN THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMY”

September 24th-26th 2009, Budapest, Hungary

The RESER conference has become the annual platform and meeting place for researchers and policy makers in the field of services. RESER is a premier international association for interdisciplinary services research that connects research groups and individuals active in services research and policy formulation, mainly located in European countries. The annual RESER research conference provides a unique opportunity for the exchange of ideas concerning the cutting edge of service research and is open to all researchers interested in these topics.

It is the first time in the RESER’s 20 years history that the Conference is held in a new member state and former socialist economy where services development did not earn much attention in the past. It is our wish that this conference would stimulate the research community in transition economies to engage more actively in the research of various services issues and to provide appropriate advice to policy makers concerning the challenges faced by private and public services that account for the dominant part of economy.

The current financial crisis and economic recession leaves no country or activity unaffected due to the intensive interconnections between different economic activities in a highly globalised world underpinned by a widespread use of advanced technologies. This requires a re-examination of ways and mechanisms by which service stakeholders address the needs of businesses and citizens for sustainable development. What kind of changes would this bring to private and public services providers and their interactions? How will services accommodate to greater risks inherent in a global economy?

These and other issues linked to the research of services will be discussed at the RESER 2009 conference. The RESER conference is interested in studies ranging from the micro to the macro level. Papers that explore the following and related themes are especially welcome:

Main theme 1: Services trajectories in transition economies

Since the beginning of the 1990s the transition economies have seen intensive changes and the transformation of services sector that have helped in decreasing the gap in services development behind advanced economies. Notwithstanding the rapid quantitative changes there remain substantial deficiencies in development of services which undermine the efficiency and competitiveness of transition economies in the globalised world.

• Transformation of the service sector at the macro and micro level
• Internationalisation of services
• Knowledge intensive business services
• Technological and non-technological innovation in services
• Knowledge and skills for service economy

Main theme 2: International trade, FDI and global sourcing of services

The theoretical approach towards international trade in services has significantly changed in recent decades. By the growing heterogeneity of services with the support of the ICT, new elements of international trade in services appeared. Services now comprise the bulk of the global stock of foreign direct investment (FDI). Trade and FDI in knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) play an outstanding role in the knowledge transfer between countries.

Services are also becoming increasingly important to identify Europe’s position in the future world economy.

• Characteristic of growing tradability of services with special regard to Business Related Services.
• The changing role of different regions and countries in international trade in services;
• FDI in services and the role of FDI in the growth of international trade in services
• International outsourcing of services
• Comparative studies on manufacturing and services trade and FDI
• Regulation of international movement of services in the European Union

Main theme 3: Interactions between public and private services

Public and private services are usually presented as a discrete choice – i.e. either public or private service provision. Past research on services has been shaped by this assumption, and by the overwhelming focus on services provided by private sector organizations, e.g. the research on the impacts of services on productivity, on service innovation, and the role of business services as intermediate inputs essential for economic growth. These biases have produced a deficit in understanding in areas such as social, personal and public services, and in horizontal cross-sectors issues such as the welfare dimension of the service economy. This obscures the many and important ways in which networks of public and privates sector institutions provide a set of complementary goods that are consumed. Public-private service networks represent an alternative, very important economic form of service provision.

• Comparative studies on public and private services, and the complementarities and synergies of public-private providers.
• Theoretical and empirical approach to different forms of cooperation between private and public firms in services
• The role and impact of key agents of new knowledge, in particular knowledge intensive service organizations (KIS) in public-private service networks
• The patterns of innovation in public and private services with special regard to public-private partnership networks.
• Case studies of private and public services partnership in innovation.
• Policy papers on institutional arrangements of public and private services partnership at the national and EU level

Main theme 4: Service entrepreneurship and innovation

Entrepreneurial initiatives are essential for generating services innovation, which differ by type (technological, non-technological) and related processes. In addition to firm-level determinants of innovation the institutional environment also assumes important facilitating role, due to the dominance of services in economy, intensive linkages with other sectors and their impact on growth and efficiency throughout the economy. Some services, especially KIBS, have a specific role in enabling and diffusing service innovation.

• Dynamics of service entrepreneurship and management of innovations,
• Innovation types and innovation process in services, its impact on the productivity of services and goods producing sector
• Internal and external determinants of successful innovation in service
• Channels and mechanisms of services innovations diffusion
• New models of service innovation and role of customers, the role of Human Resource Management in Service Innovation
• Service entrepreneurship and regional development

Main theme 5: The credit crunch and the global financial crisis

The deregulation of the financial markets that occurred in the 1980s altered the architecture of national financial markets and led to the development of a new global financial system. Central to this process was the enhanced importance of new financial instruments or more correctly the extensive use of financial instruments whose origins can be traced back to the 1920s. The deregulation of national banking systems and the development of new financial instruments including securitization produced a crisis in mortgage lending that has been labelled the sub-prime crisis or the credit crunch. This process has undermined the stability of national financial systems as banks have been increasingly unwilling to lend to one another. Heavily leveraged banks or banking systems have suffered and this has led to a situation in which national governments have had to intervene to underwrite private sector banking. Papers that explore the financial crisis and its consequences are especially welcomed.

• The forms of direct public sector intervention in the private sector;
• Policy responses to market failure on national and international level;
• The national or local consequences of the financial crisis;
• The impacts of the financial crisis on different service sectors of the economies;
• The consequences of recession for private and public sector service providers.

Conference information provided by konferenciakalauz.hu

Official Website: http://www.reser2009.com/