This paper studies outsourcing decisions for a two-level service process in which the first level serves as a gatekeeper for a second level of experts. The objective of the system operator (the client) is to minimize the sum of staffing costs, customer waiting costs, and mistreatment costs due...

Problem definition: The premise of this paper is that labor malpractice is not solely a corporate social responsibility and human resources issue; rather, its incidence is critically driven by operational decisions. We thus develop and test hypotheses to identify key operational drivers of labor...