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This article examines contracting‐out in practice in public health and water services in Ghana. Drawing on in‐depth interviews and discussions with knowledgeable officials, complemented by documentary analysis and secondary sources, the article provides insights into some of the institutional constraints and capacity issues that policy‐makers and implementers need to be aware of in seeking to introduce and implement contracting‐out policies in a developing country context. Though contracting‐out in Ghana’s health and water sectors has so far been used in the provision of support services, attempts to broaden its application to include the direct provision of core services raise a number of capacity questions related to regulatory frameworks, enforcement and monitoring mechanisms, development of management information systems and skills for contract management. The capacity and willingness of the private sector to take on direct provision of public services are also crucial.

Proactive planning strategies for “slow-onset” disruptions that affect humanitarian supply chains (SC) developed to address chronic pressing societal problems, can have a significant impact on boosting the operational and financial performance of these chains. The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology that quantifies the impact of a risk mitigation strategy widely employed in commercial SCs, namely emergency sourcing (ES), on the performance of humanitarian SCs taking into account backorders’ clearance time, unsatisfied demand, and cost.

Discrete event simulation is employed in order to evaluate alternative ES strategies based on a total cost criterion, which incorporates inventory-related costs, as well as premium contract costs paid for emergency replenishment. Backorders’ clearance time and time-to-recovery are also employed as a design parameters.

The results document the significant impact of disruptions on expected total cost, and the beneficial role of ES in hedging against disruptions. To that end, the proposed methodology determines the optimal emergency contracted capacity for a given premium, or alternatively the maximum premium cost value that ensures the feasibility of the implemented ES strategy in the long-run, along with the associated cost and time savings, and reduction of the unsatisfied demand.

The fundamental objective is to provide a decision-making support methodology for deciding on whether to implement an ES strategy or not in humanitarian SCs, and the level of the optimal contracted reserved capacity. The results could be of great value to aid providers, policy-makers, and regulators.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate contracts of the intermodal transport market and the incentives they create for a modal shift and thus the financial and environmental efficiency of freight transport.

The research used a mixed-methods approach where qualitative case interviews and quantitative modeling was combined. Two cases of contractual relationships between a service provider and its intermodal train operator on a specific lane were investigated. The case findings were then consolidated and used as input for a model of the contractual relation. Findings were sought through an extensive numerical study.

The cases reported that intermodal rail operators had a strong production focus, transferring the capacity risk (i.e. the risk of unused capacity) to the service provider, which the service providers argued limited the shift from truck to intermodal transportation. The paper shows that, due to the market structure, it is rational for the operator to transfer the capacity risk but not the profit. Consequently, a modal shift is only likely to occur when there is strong shipper pressure or low capacity risk. We present a risk-sharing contract that could release this dead lock.

The conclusions are modeling outcomes subject to assumptions based on the cases. For further validation, large-scale quantitative studies are necessary.

The paper shows that a three-part tariff in which the capacity risk is shared may lead to increased modal shift and hence assumed improved environmental performance.

Instead of arguing for operators to be more customer-focussed, policy makers and other stakeholders may have more to gain by having both actors being more cooperation focussed.

The paper is the first attempt to quantify how the contractual relations on the freight transport market affect the modal mix and thus the financial and environmental efficiency of freight transport.

Public agencies contract out to pursue a variety of goals. But, these goals cannot be realized if the performance of contractors is not assessed and monitored. This study examines the state of performance measurement and contract monitoring in the U.S. transit agencies. We focus on three research questions: (1) What monitoring capacity exists within transit agencies? (2) What monitoring methods are used by transit agencies? (3) What performance measures are tracked by transit agencies? We find monitoring units are common in a third of agencies in the study. Service and customer complaints are the most common performance measures, while penalties and liquidated damages are the most frequent form of penalties. Finally, we find that transit agencies utilize a variety of output and outcome measures to monitor contractors.

To investigate the extent to which the contracting mechanisms instituted by the 2004 reform, in particular power auctions, have solved the investment hurdles created by the first reform.

The paper analyses the characteristics of Brazilian contracting and the experience so far with power auctions, concerning investments in generation and electricity prices.

Auctions have been moderately successful, in the sense that they have attracted a fair number of bidders and electric companies have increased their value in the stock exchange, while keeping prices moderate. However, a number of other hurdles to investment – in particular clear and feasible criteria for environmental licensing – have to be solved in order to achieve the reform goals.

The format of power auctions is still going through a learning process; also, the experience has been limited so far, which severely hinders the use of quantitative tools. This could be the object of future research, after more data are available. Of particular interest will be the follow‐up of free bilateral contracting, which has grown significantly.

This could be a useful reference for scholars interested in the recent developments in the Brazilian Electricity Supply Industry.

As far as is known, this is the first paper to systematically analyse the performance of power auctions in the Brazilian market. Its value lies in that it allows an objective evaluation of one central point of the 2004 reform.

In this paper we assess the management costs of delivering services under alternative institutional arrangements. We develop an analytic framework based on transaction cost and public sector network theories to identify management costs public managers face in delivering services directly and via contract. Results from a survey of refuse collection managers in Ohio indicate that direct service provision carries higher management costs, though when combined with vendors’ activities, contracting carries more monitoring costs. These results suggest two important contributions to knowledge and contract management practice. First, we develop an innovative approach to assessing management costs. Second, we use our framework to determine whether there are differences in management costs under alternative institutional arrangements that managers should take into account as they approach the “make or buy” decision.

In recent years, there is a steady increase of studies documenting the emergence of “contracting back-in” in many countries around the world, that is, governments bringing previously contracted services back in-house and once again relying on public employees to deliver these services. Through a survey of the academic discourse on contracting back-in, this manuscript describes the phenomenon of contracting back-in and discusses its implications for “bringing the state back in”.

The manuscript conducts a systematic review of existing literature on contracting back-in with a focus on the scope and rationale of contracting back-in.

The existing literature demonstrates that contracting back-in is often as common as contracting out and can be found in a variety of countries and across different service areas. Existing studies also suggest that contracting back-in is driven by a mix of managerial, political, and environmental factors. The rise of contracting back-in could imply a revival of the administrative state in public governance and a more dynamic, potentially more complicated, system of public service delivery.

The manuscript contributes to the special issue on “bringing the state back in” through the lens of government contracting. It adds a number of implications to the discussion on the emergence of the “new” administrative state and strategies to reinvent it.

The dynamic vehicle scheduling problem for a shipper involves managing transport of freight originating at various locations to minimise transport costs. The job involves dynamic assignment of vehicles contracted from carriers to loads available at multiple locations on a real time basis. A framework for building a PC‐based expert system to be used as a decision support system is provided. An example expert scheduling system (EXLOAD) built on VP EXPERT, a PC‐based expert system shell is also shown.

Adani Power Limited (A) is the first case in a series of cases on the attempts by the firm to wriggle out of negative consequences of long-term fixed price power purchase agreements it had entered into. The firm wanted to terminate the agreement on the ground that its bid was based on coal allocation by another Government owned entity. This case describes as to how the firm was unable to get the contract terminated due to regulatory interventions. The case also raises public policy issues including the robustness of guidelines for procurement of power.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the transaction costs involved in managing procurement contracts in the public sector, particularly at the lower and higher level of local governments from the clients’ perspective.

The paper uses new institutional economics, specifically the transaction cost approach. A multiple case study design was used, in which five local government authorities (LGAs) were selected from the Kigoma and Tanga regions of Tanzania. Interviews with heads of procurement management units, focus groups and secondary sources were used to collect information for lower level LGAs.

Very high information, negotiation and monitoring transaction costs were revealed at the post-contractual stage for higher levels of local government in all cases. Transaction costs were associated with institutional problems, lack of financial resources and attitudes towards accountability, transparency and competition. It was also found that lower levels of local government are faced with very high transaction costs for all procurement stages due to a lack of procurement contract management capacity among ward and village procurement project committees, low levels of support from higher level LGAs, a lack of simple Swahili-standardised documents and guidelines for lower level procurement contract management which reflect current legal issues and the lack of a legal framework for procurement at the lower level of local government. These costs are associated with poor accountability and a lack of competition, transparency and efficiency throughout public procurement chains.

There is no estimate for quantitative approaches, because it is was difficult to measure transaction costs associated with accountability, transparency and efficiency.

The paper contributes knowledge on qualitative levels of transaction costs for procurement contract management for both higher and lower levels of LGAs from the clients’ viewpoint.