This study examines the moderating effect of buyer-supplier trust on the relationship between outsourced formal contracts and supplier delivery performance in the domain of public sector procurement. In so doing, we extend the paradigm that formal contracts and relational governance mechanism function as complements rather than substitutes. Using a cross sectional data from a survey of 612 staf...

We examine the interacting effect of formal contracts and relational governance on vendor profitability in the software outsourcing industry. We argue that the presence of relational governance is driven by perceptions of exchange hazards. In a departure from extant literature, we propose that its benefits depend on the manner in which exchange risks are shared. Specifically, we hypothesize tha...

Work and trade relationships are often governed by relational contracts, in which incentives for cooperative action today stem from the prospective future benefits of the relationship. In this paper, we study how reductions in clarity about the financial consequences of actions, induced by incomplete information about the costs of providing quality, affect relational contracts in buyer-seller r...

The study examines two dimensions of IT outsourcing contract structure: contract specificity and flexibility. We posit that the contract structures are influenced by (a) relational elements such as prior interactions, current nature of relationship between the contracting parties, and future interactions; and by (b) the attributes of transactions such as investment specificity and task and tech...

In this paper, a principal’s decision between delegating two tasks or handling one of the two tasks herself is analyzed. We assume that the principal uses both, formal contracts and informal agreements sustained by the value of future relationships (relational contracts) as incentive device. It is found that the principal is less likely to delegate both tasks in a dynamic setting than in a stat...

We consider a model in which a principal must both repay a loan and motivate an agent to work hard. Output is non-contractible, so the principal faces a commitment problem with both her creditor and her agent. In a profit-maximizing equilibrium, the agent’s productivity is initially low and increases over time. Productivity continues increasing even after the debt has been repaid, eventually co...

Empirical studies of commercial relationships between firms reveal that (i) suppliers encounter situations in which they can gain in the short run by acting opportunistically—for example, delivering a lower quality than promised after being paid; and (ii) good conduct is sustained not exclusively by formal contracts but through informal relationships and the expectation of future business. In s...

This paper shows that the efficiency of relational contracting can be increased by reducing the public information through a novel intertemporalgarbling process of signals. A distinctive and essential feature of our intertemporalgarbling process is that past outputs have enduring effects on future signals. This process reduces the principal’s maximal reneging temptation by linking together the ...