2 design and development or organisational

2) Design and development or organisational engineering also occupies an important
position.
3) Because of the very nature of services, R&D projects are often hybrid or composite
affairs, combining research in a number of different disciplines corresponding to the
various components of the service in question.
4) The social sciences and humanities (SSH) seem to occupy an important place in these
various disciplinary fields.
Different disciplines, which may be the object of separate investigations
From a static point of view, every service activity is a combination, to varying degrees, of
different types of operations or functions based on specific technologies and knowledge
(Table 1). From a dynamic perspective, this concept suggests that, within any given
service, there may be a variety of disciplines likely to identify problems and to create
solutions (in other words, potential R&D and innovation activity).

10
Thus on the basis of a mechanical interpretation of the functional representation advanced
in Table 1, the existence of activities that might aspire to the status of autonomous R&D
can be envisaged in the following spheres:
1) the operations and sciences and technologies used to process material objects (M(Y));
2) the operations and sciences and technologies used to process codified information
(I(Y));
3) knowledge-processing operations and sciences and technologies (K(Y));
4) ‘pure’ service operations (C(Y)) and the corresponding scientific disciplines;
5) the operations and sciences and technologies used to process individuals and relations
(R(Y) (in reality MR(Y), IR(Y), KR (Y) or CR(Y), depending on the particular
relationship between the ‘relational’ function and the various technologies), as well as
6) the operations through which these various types of operations are combined or
brought together (combinatory or architectural knowledge, engineering).
Thus each of these groups of operations or functions can be a locus for the development
of new knowledge and thereby constitute, in a way, a separate type of R&D.
The first two groups of operations (M(Y)) and I(Y)) involve the usual scientific and
technological knowledge (scientific and technological R&D, which are divided here into
what might be called, to misuse the language somewhat, a ‘material’ form of R&D given
over to material- processing technologies and an ‘informational’ form of R&D focused on
information- processing technologies). ‘Informational’ R&D (computer systems, software
development), it should be noted, occupies a relatively important position in services. It is
to this category that a large share of the R&D expenditure recorded in current surveys
belongs.
The following two groups (K(Y)) and C(Y)) are the locus for what might be called a
‘methodological’ form of R&D (focused on the intangible knowledge -processing
technologies, that is methods) and a “service -orient ed” R&D (focused on the expression
of new functionalities or service characteristics or significant improvements to existing
functionalities or characteristics). These two types of R&D fall wholly within the
province of the social sciences and humanities, particularly the organisational and
behavioural sciences. They generate new knowledge about methods or new service
characteristics; in this latter case, the knowledge produced is not the same as that