A group of large technology companies, universities and professional associations are creating a new organization to support and promote research into ways that technology can increase productivity and innovation in the economy 's service sector, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

The creation of the organization, the Service Research and Innovation Initiative, will be officially announced Wednesday.

It represents the latest step by technology companies and some universities to promote an emerging field that is being called " service science," said the report. The early academic programs are a blend of computing, social sciences, engineering and management.

The aim of service science is to try to improve productivity and accelerate the development of new offerings in services, which account for about 80 percent of the United States economy and similarly large shares of other Western economies, the report said.

In the last couple of years, more than three dozen universities in several countries have added service science courses, and the National Science Foundation in the United States has begun financing a few service research projects, according to the report.

The new organization will provide a forum for collaboration to help set research priorities, pool corporate funds to support academic programs, and advise the government on preferred targets of basic research, Thomas W. Pridham, executive director of the new organization, was quoted as saying.

I.B.M. and Oracle are founding corporate members of the new organization. Other company members of the organization's advisory board include Accenture, Cisco, Computer Sciences, EMC, Hewlett- Packard, Microsoft and Xerox, the report said.