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This paper has three objectives. First, it documents the rapid growth of the private service sector in the United States. Second, it compares and contrasts the management tasks within a service operation with those of a manufacturing operation. Third, it outlines the development of a new course, Management of Service Operations, at Harvard Business School. The course, which was designed to treat explicitly both the operating and strategic issues faced by managers of service firms, has grown from a seminar of 35 students in 1972 to a course with 300 second-year MBA students in 1974.
W. Earl Sasser (Thu,) studied this question.