Inter-organisational Relationships (IORs) governance literature is by now quite extensive and has been studied in different contexts (e.g. economics, strategy, organisation, and management). Due to the complex nature of IORs in construction projects in terms of inter-firm exchanges (e.g. engineering, procurement, finance, construction, and operation), many academics and practitioners have studied possible outcomes of applying different governance mechanisms in these projects to control the behavior of different project parties. One of the identified governance mechanisms is the social mechanism that has been broadly examined through conducting empirical studies. However, its definition and indicators are highly dispersed that may lead to contradictory results or misinterpretation of outcomes. This paper aims at making contribution to the IORs governance literature through explaining and clarifying the meaning of social governance and identifying, synthesising, and categorising different instruments that have been used for measuring the existence of different modes of social governance mechanism in previous studies. As a result, we will provide a useful framework to have a better understanding of social governance mechanism and its application in construction projects.

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