THE MEANING OF THE SERVICE IN THE MODERN ECONOMIC THOUGHT

In many countries services constitute a dominant area of economic activity and growth of their production is an economic feature. In the economic literature there is a lack of unquestionable definition of services. Attempts to define the nature of services which have been made since the beginning of development of the economic thought have failed. The purpose of this article is to show from a critical perspective selected modern definitions of services which exist both in the Polish and in foreign literature and offer own working concept how to capture the nature of services.The main argument presented in this paper is that it seems very unlikely that whenever one will manage to find simple and unquestionable definition of service. Therefore it is more reasonable to show pragmatic approach to this problem instead of seeking the ideal definition of service. In particular one must permanently verify accepted working solutions in view to adjust to the best possible extent theoretical debates to expectations from practical life.