Facilitating the Digital Transformation of Service Companies

As a country’s industry develops and advances, the service industry typically comes to account for an ever-larger proportion of the economy. In advanced economies, the service industry is thus a significant source of employment, but one that is highly susceptible to economic fluctuations. And so managing this critical sector is a major point of interest among policymakers. Recently, the digital transformation (DX) of the service industry has garnered much attention in the policy literature, as scholars study the ways in which DX can enhance productivity and create new jobs in the service industry. DX refers to the phenomenon by which technology, economics, and cultural paradigms developed and discussed in relation to the Fourth Industrial Revolution are combined with actual service sector business models. In this paper, I examine individual cases of leading service industry firms that have embraced DX and government DX policies. Through this analysis I propose effective policy alternatives that the Korean government could implement to promote DX within the service industry