“…Governance, therefore, becomes pivotal in buyer-supplier relationship development (Liu et al, 2017a;Luo et al, 2015). Prior inter-firm governance literature suggests that, in order to achieve joint objectives, firms need to erect appropriate governance factors, namely; economic and sociological mechanisms (e.g., Bai et al, 2016;Yang et al, 2017;Liu et al, 2009), rooted in transaction cost economics (TCE) and social exchange theory (SET). Economic mechanisms, in line with TCE, include certain governance factors, firms emplaced to avoid transactional uncertainties through adequate structural implications.…”