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The Staff Assistance Visit Program (SAV) is an important tool used by the Department of State’s Procurement Executive since 1995 to support the Department’s overseas contracting operations. The program is structured much differently from a formal contract compliance review. The SAV’s purpose is to improve relationships between the field and headquarters. Also, the program provides hands-on expertise to improve operations. During the visit, the SAV team works to reinforce existing training, solve real problems, and improve communications with the contracting office and its clients. The program consistently demonstrates its value of assisting geographically dispersed contracting officers overcome the numerous contracting challenges that they encounter around the world.

The touted benefits of inter-governmental contracting are cost savings and simplicity when compared to shared service agreements. Some managers and public officials resist contracting given the assumption that there may be a drop-off in service quality. However, inter-governmental contracting introduces market forces which theoretically would improve performance while keeping costs per unit of output low (Boyne, 1998). This paperexamines municipal police contracting in the State of New Jersey, the purpose of which is to determine if there are statistically significant differences in non-violent crime rates among municipalities that maintain their own police force versus those that contract with neighboring municipalities for police services. Contracting costs are also explored. While summary statistics indicate lower non-violent crime rates among municipalities that maintain their own police force compared to those that contract for police services, multiple regression results indicate that contracting does not predict higher non-violent crime rates at the .05 level. Therefore, contracting for police services should be explored as an alternative municipal policing model.

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.

In the construction industry, an under researched area of study is how main contractor (MC) sub-contract design responsibilities to sub-contractor (SC). This lack of knowledge is particularly serious in the context of delivery methods such as design and construct where design responsibilities are pushed down the supply chain. In this study, it is aimed to explore which level of design responsibility MCs sub-contract to SCs, for what reasons, and what the impact of sub-contracting decisions is on projects.

A qualitative in-depth multiple case study was conducted. Six sub-contracting cases were examined in two civil engineering projects. In each project, the MCs sub-contracted pre-fabricated beams, reinforcement and railing to SCs. Data collection included document analysis and interviews. A within-case and cross-case analysis was conducted to examine emerging empirical patterns. These patterns were used to elaborate theory and develop propositions.

MCs sub-contracted design responsibilities to SCs as suggested by literature. However, despite that sub-contracting was in keeping with literature, several problems were reported in the cases where MCs involved SCs no earlier than in the construction stage. This is not to be expected according to theory.

This study adds value to the sub-contracting field as it provides new insights in relationships between the level of design responsibilities sub-contracted and the impact of that on projects. The study also revealed new factors such as building information modelling (BIM) interoperability that should get more attention in sub-contracting.

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.

Alpha contracting is a collaborative effort between a buyer and supplier during contract formation to maximize efficiency and effectiveness. Collaborative efforts between the United States Department of Defense and its suppliers have recently been scrutinized. Although several benefits of Alpha contracting are identified within the literature, the phenomenon is not ubiquitous nor is it well understood. Using the case study methodology, this research explores Alpha Contracting to define success and to identify its contributing factors. Additionally, this research identifies antecedents for and consequences of use, variations of the processes employed, and some misuse. The study culminates in the development of a conceptual model of collaborative pricing, and provides five recommendations for enhanced use.

Hong Kong has experienced an average annual growth in final energy consumption of 4.7 per cent over the last ten years. An initiative being undertaken by a small number of government and commercial organisations is to limit their own consumption of electricity through performance contracting. Performance contracting is essentially a partnering process, where a client organisation partners with an energy management firm to identify and achieve energy savings for the client organisation. The research undertaken for this project has identified a number of factors that are considered to affect the success of performance contracting in Hong Kong. In a survey of practitioners, who have experience of performance contracting, some of the key benefits of this approach identified include the fact that there are substantial energy cost savings to be made. These savings are guaranteed by the partnering energy saving company and there are overall improved operational and plant efficiency gains. Key requirements for the success of such schemes include the setting‐up of an agreed energy baseline against which to measure results and human factors such as commitment to the enterprise at all levels of the organisation and trust between the co‐operating organisations. The paper expands the discussion on the benefits, obstacles and necessary ingredients for performance contracting that are likely to be applicable not just to Hong Kong but to the successful implementation of any such scheme.

This paper analyzes the perceptions of Bangladeshi civil servants towards public procurement and contracting practices in Bangladesh. The interview method was used in the study to analyze the perceptions of the Bangladeshi civil servants towards public procurement and contract-related issues in Bangladesh. The study reveals that civil servants of Bangladesh have diverse and varying perceptions towards public procurement and contracting practices in Bangladesh, even though they share some commonalities. The results of the survey demonstrate that a majority of the civil servants are in general familiar with public purchasing in Bangladesh. While earlier research depicted that almost all the civil servants in the US public agencies were found quite familiar with contracting and outsourcing, this study shows that less than a moderate percentage of the civil servants of Bangladesh is quite or pretty familiar with contracting and/or outsourcing.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the remedies available under Iranian investment treaties for settlement of investment disputes. This includes the obligation of the Iranian Government to provide foreign investors access to international arbitration. The sensitivity of the controversial Iranian nuclear program and the imposition of economic and financial sanctions on Iran will lead to the termination of many contracts between companies from Europe and the West and Iran, therefore, a viable solution must exist to address the rights and remedies of foreign investors. This article aims to provide an insight into Iranian treaties.

The main method was a survey of different treaties signed by Iran.

The discussion revealed that there are currently more than 50 treaties signed and ratified by Iran which provide arbitration as a dispute resolution forum. There are many treaties between the member countries of the European Union which make it important for the research. Iranian treaties guarantee international law remedies to foreign companies with investment in Iran by allowing them to seek redress in an international forum.

Iran has not signed the ICS1D Convention, meaning that the arbitration proceedings will be subject to ad hoc arbitration rules of UNCITRAL. Furthermore, ICSID rules on enforcement of the award do not apply. Therefore, the winning party must go through the Iranian courts to enforce its awards.

The value of the paper is to government organization, international institutions and multinational companies with substantial economic interest in Iranian energy and natural resources. For the first time, the topic has been covered in a research paper. There are no articles in Iranian bilateral investment treaties (BITs) addressing dispute resolution through arbitration. This is the first piece of work that actually conducted a thorough analysis of Iranian BITs.

This paper aims to dissect cross-border contracting practices among exporting businesses. The under-representation of exporter-importer dynamics and the superficial understanding of contracts are the motivation for this exploratory study.

The qualitative multiple case study design focuses on 18 small to medium size enterprise (SMEs) exporting from New Zealand. The analysis encompasses coding, pattern matching and explanation building. This paper uses coding to uncover themes and pattern matching/cross-case comparison to facilitate explanation building.

The paper underlines the scant use of formal international sales/distribution contracts, the lack of knowledge concerning contracting, barriers to contract formation, misgivings about the court system and litigation and the adoption of proxy contracts. This paper depicts varieties of contracting practices, namely, no formal contract, improvisational, normative, and formal contractual arrangements and underlines the context in which each approach applies.

Similar to most studies in this area, the dissection of contracting practices derives from the exporter side of the dyad. This robs the research of a holistic view of the exchange. Nonetheless, this paper contributes to a better understanding of contract formation and formalization and to the role of context in shaping the activities of exporting SMEs.

Although formal contracts are vital, they are not obligatory in all exchanges. Contracts matter more for high intensity exporters with comparatively short relationship histories, selling knowledge-intensive products in predominantly non-relational cultures. Policymakers should highlight the importance of contracts in such contexts and direct SMEs to several freely available resources on cross-border contracting.

The research casts fairness/equity and access to justice as pertinent structural disadvantages impacting the contracting practices of exporting SMEs.

According to the authors’ knowledge, this paper is among the first studies to provide an in-depth portrayal of the contracting practices of exporting SMEs, to detail the pervasiveness of non-contractual contracting practices and to depict contracting as nuanced and context-dependent.