The Service as General Principle of Economic Activity. Productivity or Servicity?

Abstract The paper aims to point out main relevant moments in the researches concerning the service issue, containing the reserve for core developments in economics. Roots are from the literature in the last decade of the previous century, but also certain even elder and diverse more recent developments are evoked as well, by the criterion of their importance mainly for better seeing the issue of productivity, and of the interesting particular developments they got later. Apart from the service economy literature, background comes from the genuine liberalism too. The obvious realities of growing immaterial dimension of human concerns give the actual conditions that make such researches necessary, against the orthodox production and material approach. The reference value of our research is supplemented with the developments we made, including defining conceptual distinctions and suitable particularizations. Such contributions are meant to allow the relevant concerned ideas to be better seen, and to improve economics' approaches. The importance of involving such elements in economic research is conclusively underlined. Purely theoretical, the paper does not contain empirical analyses. It is useful for scholars that wish to widen the horizon of their approaches in attempts to render them topical and to improve the common/dominant economics.