Contemporary business society shows many examples of industrial customers that manage their smaller, dependent suppliers by using bureaucratic mechanisms. The restrictions these control processes put on the suppliers' freedom to act have not been recognized in most studies within the field. The...

The aim of this article is to develop theory and contribute to empirical studies about how the effectiveness of bureaucratic controls in public sector outsourcing is contingent upon supplier competition, and why and how this interaction plays out differently for hard and soft types of outsourced...