Inter-organizational governance: a review, conceptualisation and extension

Although the concepts of relational and contractual governance in inter-organisational relationships have attracted academic and practitioner interest over the last decades, to date there have been limited systematic efforts to review, analyse, and synthesise extant literature. We review and analyse 1,415 publications identified from a wide range of management disciplines and journals from 1990 to 2018. We deploy bibliographic and content analysis to offer a comprehensive literature analysis and synthesis, and subsequently develop and position a multidimensional framework of exchange governance. The proposed framework covers existing conceptualisations of exchange governance and its diverse mechanisms, environmental dimensions influencing the use of exchange governance mechanisms, and performance implications. We uncover areas that are currently under-studied and draw out fruitful future research avenues.