Strategic alliances are fraught with risks, such as the uncontrolled disclosure of core knowledge via opportunistic learning. The usefulness of monitoring in policing opportunism notwithstanding, a contrasting view is that monitoring mechanisms can themselves manifest the dark side of strategic alliances. The present study argues that a novel dark personality trait-the focal firm's desire for control-may influence key decisions pertaining to how to monitor strategic alliances, which in turn can negatively impact performance outcomes. Our conceptual model was developed and tested, based on a survey of 404 strategic alliances. The results demonstrate that a focal firm's desire for control is positively associated with process monitoring as well as output monitoring. The firm's use of process monitoring to oversee the counterpart drives its performance outcomes only if there is a low level of information exchange between the alliance partners; as such, information exchange norms substitute for process monitoring. By contrast, the focal firm's use of outcome monitoring is negatively linked to performance unless complemented by a high level of information exchange. Key implications for alliance management and future research are derived from the findings.

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Individual actions designed to address issues of public concern is a common theme in the discourse on how to mobilize resources and target efforts toward sustainable practices. We contribute to this area by (1) developing and empirically validating a multi-dimensional scale for civic engagement; (2) synthesizing and testing the adequacy of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the value-belief-norm (VBN) theory in explaining civic engagement; and (3) considering how an individual's orientation, identity, and beliefs motivate moral thinking and action. The focus is on the important social issues of global warming and climate change, income inequality, and world poverty and hunger. We follow both correlational and configurational approaches to examine symmetric and asymmetric causal relationships, respectively. The findings from a sample of 819 US citizens reveal that the TPB and VBN theory can adequately explain civic engagement, after we control for the influence of past experience. In addition, while belief in a just world inhibits the occurrence of adverse consequences and the formation of positive attitudes, social value orientation and moral identity facilitate them. Notably, at least two causal conditions need to be present for adverse consequences to emerge, while moral identity is almost a necessary condition for the development of positive attitudes. We conclude with a discussion of important implications for researchers and practitioners.

Against a backdrop of limited research focusing on dark-side characteristics in alliances, the authors argue that Machiavellianism in an alliance influences strategies pertaining to gaining new knowledge and using power to achieve better performance effectiveness. They develop a model using theories-in-use procedures and drawing from both Machiavellian intelligence and achievement goal perspectives, which they test in a quasi-longitudinal study of 199 marketing alliances. The results suggest that Machiavellianism relates negatively to collaborative learning and positively to learning anxiety and use of power. The findings also indicate that collaborative learning enhances performance, whereas learning anxiety and use of power result in underperformance. Collaborative learning, learning anxiety, and use of power fully mediate Machiavellianism's impact on performance. Finally, Machiavellianism's relationships with collaborative learning and learning anxiety are moderated positively and negatively, respectively, by partners’ collaborative history. This evidence provides managers with a more in-depth understanding about the nature, functioning, and performance relevance of Machiavellianism in alliance partnerships.

The aim of this study is to examine how and when narcissism and faith in humanity simultaneously influence product reuse. Despite its critical role in promoting sustainability, scholars have paid scant attention to product reuse as a reliable aspect of sustainable consumer behavior. Moreover, research on personality traits as drivers of sustainable consumption has mostly focused on the Big Five personality traits. We posit that the effects of consumers' narcissism and faith in humanity on product reuse are explained by social exclusion and are conditional on subjective norms. We test our hypotheses using two experiments and three cross-sectional surveys. We find that while narcissism has a negative effect on product reuse, faith in humanity has a positive effect on product reuse. We also observe that social exclusion mediates the effects of narcissism and faith in humanity, and that subjective norms positively moderate the relationships between narcissism and product reuse. This study highlights the importance of product reuse as a key indicator of sustainable consumption and offers novel insights into the how and when consumers engage in product reuse.