Producer services employment has grown rapidly within advanced economies in recent years. The bases of demand related to this growth are not well understood by regional scientists. A common view is that this growth is largely attributable to cost‐driven factors and vertical disintegration processes on the part of producer service users. This paper demonstrates that cost‐driven externalization is not the most important force underlying growth in demand for producer services. The need for specialized knowledge is by far the most important factor behind producer services demand, combined with a variety of other cost, quasi‐cost, and non‐cost‐driven forces.

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The concept of flexibility is now widely used in describing contemporary production systems in manufacturing, but has yet to be extensively measured in the producer services. In this article we explore several aspects of flexibility in a sample of producer service businesses. We document the structure of the labour force in these businesses, and how this labour force structure is changing over time. We also focus on the degree of flexibility in the organisation of the production process, and on the dynamic nature of the service being produced. In addition to exploring why firms are changing their offerings of services over time, we also present information on their utilisation of outside specialists, and on the prevalence of collaboration with other businesses. INTRODUCTIONMuch has been written about the notion of flexible production systems within manufacturing, but there is little documentation of characteristics of flexibility exhibited within the producer services. In this article we report on selected aspects of the flexibility issue, emphasising workplace dimensions, recognising that there are many faces to the term flexibility. We start by examining changes in the structure of the labour force, and focus on evidence related to more flexible labour force characteristics. Then, we turn to the issue of flexibility -or the lack of it -in the service production process, focusing on both the internal characteristics of this organisational process, as well as the utilisation of outside expertise and collaborative tendencies. We include evidence regarding the consequences of these dimensions of flexibility for business performance. We conclude with some William B. Beyers is at the

Photo elicitation, a form of ethnographic journaling, provided insights into university music and dance student needs in library and campus spaces and services. In this case study, subjects took a photo for each of twenty prompts related to their daily lives as students and performing artists, then discussed their own photos in a one-hour individual interview. Researchers qualitatively analyzed the gathered data. This article reports findings related to: discovering and obtaining music and dance works, study spaces and sound levels, forces of habit and the implications for student library use, and library-related findings regarding practice rooms and classrooms. This is an electronic version of an article published in

In this paper we focus on how competitive advantage is constructed by producer service businesses, how it varies among establishments with different characteristics, and how it affects establishment performance. Sources of competitive advantage stem from characteristics such as quality, price, creativity and innovation, flexibility, timeliness of delivery, and scope of services offered. We present a detailed evaluation of the competitive advantage model developed by Porter (1990) and review applications of this model to the producer services. We find this model to be partially successful in distinguishing between superior and inferior performance by producer service businesses, with important differences observed across age, organizational type, and size of business. We develop an expanded model of factors related to competitive advantage and performance, which includes not only factors contained in the Porter model, but dimensions particular to the information‐oriented producer services, such as creativity, geographic proximity, R&D capabilities, and adaptability to client needs.