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...

This study compares the efficacy of some commonly observed vendor selection and contracting mechanisms with respect to two key challenges in service outsourcing: vendor selection and contract efficiency. We show that competitive bidding yields good selection but contract inefficiency (positive...