With firms concentrating on core competencies, more emphasis has been placed on outsourcing and dealing with external sourcing agents. This has led to a stronger academic focus on buyer-seller exchanges and the corresponding mechanisms for governing these exchanges. This paper gives an overview of previous research investigating the exchange governance phenomenon based on transaction cost theory or co-operative interorganizational relationships. The results reveal that few research studies have investigated the overall picture of exchange governance, including both contractual and relational governance and taking into account antecedents as well as performance outcomes of the governance mechanisms involved. Moreover, despite the service-dominant logic shift, limited attention is given to specific service characteristics and their impact on exchange governance. This paper attempts to meld economic and social related antecedents into a model with regard to exchange governance in business services settings. Contractual and relational governance issues and their impact on performance outcomes are also considered. The resulting model indicates that to govern business services exchanges efficiently, more emphasis should be placed on behavioral uncertainty, human and process asset specificity and contractual governance. The paper concludes by discussing several directions for future research.

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Purpose -Supply chain management and business networks have gained increased attention in services settings. The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of external purchased services by a service provider on the satisfaction of downstream supply chain members, i.e. end-users. The focus is on transaction-specific satisfaction as it provides in-depth information on specific satisfaction elements. Design/methodology/approach -To test the propositions, one business service provider purchasing a service from an external supplier is selected. Data are collected by sending a web survey to the business service provider's customers. partial least squares (PLS) is used to analyze the data as transaction-specific satisfaction is considered as a formative construct. Findings -PLS analyses indicate that the elements determining satisfaction with the external supplier and those determining satisfaction with the business service provider differ. Moreover, transaction-specific satisfaction of end-users with the external supplier's service is positively related to transaction-specific satisfaction of end-users with the service provider's service. Furthermore, the strength of that relationship is influenced by the importance attached to the external supplier's service by the end-users. Research limitations/implications -First, the position of the customer in the supply chain influences how the service delivery is evaluated. Second, the relevance of service supply chains and business networks are confirmed. The relationship between supplier and provider and between provider and end-user are interconnected. The strength of that relationship interconnectedness is influenced by importance attached to the purchased service. Future research is needed to extend the findings of this study to other services settings. Originality/value -The results of the paper indicate that service providers should pay more attention to services purchased from external suppliers and to those suppliers' selection and evaluation, even when these services are considered less strategically valuable.

As far as known, no other studies have yet evaluated the effectiveness of SLAs in the healthcare sector. While a fairly-substantial amount of scientific literature deals with SLAs in the world of ICT, this literature is often very specific and cannot always be applied to other service sectors.

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