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What is contractual governance in a scenario of performance management? When approached from a static viewpoint, contracting is largely connected with the securing of resources, thus acquiring a capacity focus. In this article, we focus on contractual governance as a part of performance management for a stakeholder network in a specific, government‐controlled context: Public Transport. In order to contribute to more dynamic and sustainable public service, a more process‐oriented approach to contractual governance is necessary. Public Transportation in Sweden has undergone an initial wave of development, the production paradigm, and is now undergoing what is more a second wave of service, the service paradigm. A third wave of development is approaching: sustainability. We argue that contractual governance creates a more dynamic contractual relationship as a key element of performance management leading to more sustainable public service. We also argue that a proactive approach during the mission will positively affect all the stakeholders involved.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the applicability of care quality concepts as contract award criteria for public procurement of health and social care, using the case of Sweden.

Based on a literature review, European and Swedish legal texts, government regulations as well as 26 Swedish court review cases concerning care procurement have been analysed.

Methods used for assessing care quality are seldom useful for predicting the quality to be delivered by a potential contractor. Legal principles of transparency and equal treatment of tenderers make it necessary to apply strict requirements for verification.

Results refer primarily to a Swedish context but could be applicable throughout the EU. Further studies of relations between award criteria and public/private collaborative practices for improving care quality during contractual periods are desirable.

Local and regional procurement officials should benefit from a better understanding of how quality criteria should be designed and applied to the award procedures for care contracts. Care providers in the private sector would also be able to develop their quality strategies and present their abilities more efficiently when tendering for public contracts.

Issues of quality of health and social care are of obvious importance for social sustainability. Public awareness of care quality problems is evident and often a cause of media concern.

This investigation pinpoints the difference between traditional care quality thinking and the legal principles underlying contract award in public procurement of care services.

The aim of this paper is to deepen the understanding of how service quality factors are stipulated in advance within contracts, in order to ensure the providing of a high‐quality service to the user, when the service is contracted out to an external partner. It aims to identify, describe, and analyse the service quality descriptions included in contracts.

The paper is based on case studies and focuses on a comparison of service quality factors in contracts. The empirical base is the public transport sector – a context in which the contracts are widely used, and where the service is standardised, continuous, capital intensive, and provided by external operators, but where contract solutions differ. The contracts analysed are those entered into between 21 public transport companies and their contracted external operators in Sweden.

The study highlights that service quality factors in formal procurement contracts can be related to three interdependent management levels: the rhetorical level, the strategic level, and the operational level, in each of which the factors are described differently.

The findings provide insight into how service quality is described and used in contracts at three different levels, when the service is provided in a complex business setting, where contractors aim to control the service by contractual means, since they are ultimately responsible for providing the service to the end‐users. The research also contrasts with previous research claiming that contractors fail to incorporate service quality from a user perspective, which is not the case in the studied contracts. The paper also makes an important contribution by empirically investigating physical contracts used in a public tendering context, which focus on service quality descriptions, as it has been acknowledged that there is a lack of empirical investigation of the nature and form of contractual arrangements.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how contracts are used to build and develop long‐term relationships in contexts where trust cannot be expected in advance – i.e. there is a lack of initial trust.

This paper is based on a qualitative approach, while the present study used a documentary study focusing on 21 formal contractual dyads between contractors and fulfillers within the public transport sector.

The analysis of contracts in the public sector reveals the importance of formal contracts in relationship building, as a result of a number of factors that characterize this setting, including: the highly detailed specification of terms, legislation having an effect on the design of the contract, the bidding process, in situations where there is no negotiation process, no scope for further discussion after signing contracts, no learning processes, and contracts being used to conduct day‐to‐day business.

This research acknowledges the fact that there is a lack of empirical investigation into the nature and form of contractual arrangements, while the study contributes to this area by using formal contracts in a public context.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the significance of contracts in long‐term relationship building comparing public and private contexts. In order to investigate this, the paper addresses literature about relationship building, negotiation process and the role of contracts.

This paper takes a qualitative approach and is based on comparative studies between the private and public sectors with the main focus on four companies within the public transport and paper industry. The unit of analysis is the enterprise's use of contracts in relationships. The analysis is based on the empirical material received from interviews and contextual analysis of the actual contracts. Internal and external documents have also been used in the analysis. The paper has categorized the material into different areas in relation to the relationship building.

In this paper the authors highlight the importance of contracts in the interaction between companies in different business situations. The findings in this study show that contracts function as cornerstones in relationship building. The conclusions also indicate that the type of contract used is depending of the uncertainty in the business relationship due to the relationship lifecycle. A main contribution from the study is that contracts affect the relationship building. In the private sector the relationship forms the contract while in the public sector the contract forms the relationships.

Previous research has mainly focused on how to manage long‐term relationships where the relationship is the result of a gradual development process between the parties and where there are few or next to no regulations regarding the interactions between the parties, for example who are involved or how the counterparty should be selected. Consequently, the results of this study adds to the literature the importance of contracts in long‐term relationship building comparing private and public contexts. Further, previous research has acknowledged that there is a need for more empirical research concerning the nature and form of contractual arrangements.

The aim of this paper is to explore the links between contractual governance and performance measurement in a value network for public service business, in the context of public transport, by positing service‐dominant logic (S‐D logic) as an alternative paradigm to the conventional goods‐dominant logic (G‐D logic). The paper addresses the following research questions: how does S‐D logic influence contractual governance and performance measurement? How do these influences of S‐D logic on contractual governance and performance measurement affect the governance of public service businesses in a value network?

The study adopts a qualitative approach, using case studies to undertake an analysis of the role of contractual governance and performance management in the Swedish public transport system.

The paper demonstrates that the current model of contractual governance and performance measurement is focused on operand resources, and driven by G‐D logic, rather than focused on operant resources, with S‐D logic. The effect of this dichotomy is an effective negation of the professed desire for a customer‐oriented public service system. The paper also develops and proposes a viable model of how a redefined arrangement, based on S‐D logic, could be achieved. The challenge is to govern a loosely coupled value network based on values rather than rules. Another challenge is how to create more sustainable public service based on value‐in‐use for all stakeholders in the value network. When developing a service business based on S‐D logic, it is important to invest resources in accordance with a balanced set of social, environmental and economic perspectives. The current study also contributes to the ongoing discussion of S‐D logic as an open source.

In service research, little attention has been devoted to the links between contractual governance and performance measurement. The paper proposes and develops a novel model of contractual governance and performance measurement based on S‐D logic.

The purpose of this paper is to create knowledge about what factors explain the design of control systems for contracted public services.

Questionnaire data analyzed with structural equation models.

Legitimacy-seeking is the most important driver in explaining intensity in control of contracted public services. Competition increases the intensity of control which is opposite to standard transaction cost reasoning. Coordination requirements do not affect the design of control systems for contracted public services.

The study suffers from limitations in the form of the use of perception and questionnaire data and imposes restrictions on empirical generalization.

Supplier competition may add control costs rather than lower them. The strong focus on stakeholder alignment may induce more intensive control than necessary for supplier alignment.

The authors add important knowledge on the determinants of control system design for contracted public sector services. The authors conceptualize and measure the control system in use in a more compelling manner than previous research.

This chapter will discuss the extent to which existing models on expatriate functions within the international business literature, still effectively capture the roles currently performed by expatriate managers. It analyse the Edstrom and Galbraith (1977) typology and present a conceptual framework on the roles currently performed by expatriate managers within MNCs. To do this, it will draw inspiration from the resource-based view (Barney, 1991; Peng, M. W. (2001). The resource-based view and international business. Journal of Management, 27, 803–829. Wernerfelt, 1984), and the organisation capability view (Grant, 1996). Following several propositions about managers’ key functions within MNCs, challenges of creating an all-encompassing framework on expatriate functions, and suggestions for future research and theoretical development will be identified.

This chapter will present a conceptual framework on expatriate functions.

Four decades since Edstrom and Galbraith’s seminal work, international developments have continued to impress upon the way MNCs organise and manage their worldwide activities. Yet, as the business environment progresses, theoretical models examining how international development impact the functions undertaken by expatriate managers within MNCs individuals are still relatively scarce. Hence, this chapter aims to contribute to the theoretical advancement in the area of expatriate functions by highlighting possible changes and expansion of expatriate managers within the current global business context.

Adopting a positive organizational scholarship perspective, this paper aims to examine dynamic effects of ecological transcendence on ecological behavior.

Based on 176 responses of employees from 46 organizations, the author found that both quadratic and cubic terms in the hierarchical regression equation were significant, evidence that ecological transcendence has an S-curve relationship with ecological behavior which suggests deficiency, goading and lulling effects.

The author finds a significant cubic term indicative of a signoidal relationship between ecological transcendence and ecological behavior.

Implications for theory and practice are discussed. Given the growing interest in environmental sustainability, this study provides initial evidence of the dynamics of ecological behavior.

The study has implications for managing sustainability in organizations. Managers have empirical evidence of the dynamics which can serve as a basis for establishing mechanisms to goad growth and constraints to limit downturns.

The study is original in that it has not been published elsewhere except for presentation at a conference.