Entrepreneurial Motivation, Psychological Capital, and Business Success of Young Entrepreneurs in the DRC

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article sets a significant objective of increasing entrepreneurial activity. The authors highlighted the entrepreneurial dichotomy and the specifics of motivating entrepreneurs.

The authors state: There was evidence of a positive effect of motivation, based on the opportunity and the psychological capital, but the results do not confirm any direct influence of entrepreneurial motivation on business success. On the contrary, the psychological capital positively and significantly mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial motivation and business success. I assume this controversial: if the first variable has an effect on the second, and the second on the third, then the first variable must influence the third.

When we use statistics tools, we need to think about the objectivity of data. In these studies, the authors use the Likert scale, which provides subjective data. This can reduce the reliability of the study. But the authors calculated some test metrics to improve reliability. However, the authors could have increased the value of the study by applying financial and production indicators: profitability, labor productivity, and others.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

 

Thank you so much for the compliments and the good work done in revising the manuscript.

Comment 1. There was evidence of a positive effect of motivation, based on the opportunity and the psychological capital, but the results do not confirm any direct influence of entrepreneurial motivation on business success. On the contrary, the psychological capital positively and significantly mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial motivation and business success. I assume this controversial: if the first variable has an effect on the second, and the second on the third, then the first variable must influence the third.

Response.1.  We have found in this paper that the first variable (Entrepreneurial motivation) has a direct effect on the second variable (psychological capital) but it has no significant direct effect on the third variable (business success).  The second variable (psychological capital) has a significant direct effect on the third variable (business success). The first variable does influence the third not directly but indirectly through its effect on the second or mediating variable. We concluded that there was full mediation. If the first variable did influence the dependent variable directly, then the mediation effect could be partial if any.  So, in our opinion, there is no controversy when the direct and indirect effect issues are considered.

Comment 2. When we use statistics tools, we need to think about the objectivity of data. In these studies, the authors use the Likert scale, which provides subjective data. This can reduce the reliability of the study. But the authors calculated some test metrics to improve reliability. However, the authors could have increased the value of the study by applying financial and production indicators: profitability, labor productivity, and others.

Response 2. We thank the reviewer for this nice comment. At page 2 of the paper, we have explained the difference between objective and subjective measures of Business success (BS). Then, we justify why we relied on subjective measures only. Reference is made to the following paragraph: “This study opted for the subjective measures as most youths entering the entrepreneurship space in developing and emerging African economies predominantly start-up out of necessity. As such, most of them would own informal and semi-formal small businesses that lack appropriate management systems that could provide reliable financial statements and employment compliance records to assess objectively their success. Interestingly, research has established a strong and positive correlation between subjective and objective measures of BS”. In addition, we have highlighted this limitation towards the end of the paper in section “Limitations and future research directions”. Reference is made to the following paragraph: “In the context of Bukavu, given the broad unavailability of financial information from youth start-ups, this study successfully applied subjective indicators of business success. Although the measures were effective, objective measures could add a cumulative effect in reflecting the broad-based BS. Future research should rely on more objective indicators of BS, such as business continuity, market share, and profitability”.

Best regards

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to improving your manuscript. I enjoyed reading your work and learning about your research results. I have only small recommendations to make:

• Consider reducing the length of Introduction to enhance clarity and keep the reader focused on the main arguments for your research and the merits of your work. A good part of Introduction can be moved on to Literature review.
• Use (bold) subtitles to enhance flow of discussion in the Literature review part.
• Figure 1 should also display the hypotheses tested and their interactions.
• Discussion can be further improved by adding more recent evidence from the literature.

Good luck with publication of your work!

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer 

Thank you so much for the compliments and the good work done in revising the manuscript.

Comment1. Consider reducing the length of Introduction to enhance clarity and keep the reader focused on the main arguments for your research and the merits of your work. A good part of Introduction can be moved on to Literature review. (NOT ADDRESSED. We are failing to find what to remove without deteriorating the quality of the communication. In our opinion, the introduction is short)

Comment2.  Use (bold) subtitles to enhance flow of discussion in the Literature review part.

Response2. The review of literature has been reorganized into 4 subtitles.

Comment 3. Figure 1 should also display the hypotheses tested and their interactions.

Response 3. The hypotheses tested have been added to the conceptual model in figure 2.

Comment 4. Discussion can be further improved by adding more recent evidence from the literature.

Response 4. We have checked the recent literature and have got 3 papers published in 2020. The findings in these papers did not diverge from those in the papers already cited. However, we have added the 3 papers in the references, and they have been cited. They are listed below.

Hasan, M., Musa, C. I., Arismunandar, Azis, M., & Tahir, T. (2020). Positive psychological capital, market orientation, and business performance of family business in the culinary sector: A research study. Economics and Sociology, 13(3), 97–112. https://doi.org/10.14254/2071-789X.2020/13-3/7

Murnieks, C. Y., Klotz, A. C., & Shepherd, D. A. (2020). Entrepreneurial motivation: A review of the literature and an agenda for future research. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 41(2), 115–143. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2374

Udin, U., & Yuniawan, A. (2020). Psychological capital, personality traits of big-five, organizational citizenship behavior, and task performance: Testing their relationships. Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business, 7(9), 781–790. https://doi.org/10.13106/JAFEB.2020.VOL7.NO9.781

 

Best regards

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for submitting this interesting work to sustainability. This is an interesting and timely study and I hope we can publish this soon. Below are a few comments that could further improve the quality of this work:

General:
-make sure you use the right MDPI template
-include full address and country, just check the template it is alll there

Abstract:
-this sounds really interesting, I like the idea that you investigate: "entrepreneurial motivation vs necessity driven entrpreneurship"
-since you did this in DR Congo, mention this in the title, results may be different for a different region
-psychological capital? not sure if capital is the best word here, I leave that up to you - same with dichotomy - I don"t think this is necessarily helpful, we understand all this without using this term
-what would be helpful is more quantitative data of your results in the abstract - what are your conclusions build on that motivation outperforms necessity? give me some numbers here

Introduction:
-this is pretty good - you could include a figure with the different entrpreneurship activity in which DR Congo is unfortunately not doing too well - just as an extra it is good though

Ch. 2
-excellent

Ch.3 Methodology
-what consitutes and entrpreneur can you give me more information here? do they run a conglomerate, a ice cream shop? these are all entrepreneurs to me...do we know annual revenue for instance and the markets they are operating in?

Results:
-male female ratio also provide some input about DR congo - I dont think just pointing to the global ratio is enough
- did some study abroad? this could be another interesting characteristic
-this is good stuff - well done

Discussion and conclusion
OK, I would be careful with saying that this is globally significant - this is a great study, I really like it, but you have not shown to me why what is true for this relatively small sample in DR Congo is applicable to the rest of the world
Provide more input about your specific location here and it will be a great study

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you so much for the compliments and the good work done in revising the manuscript. Below are your comments and our feedback.

General: -make sure you use the right MDPI template

 -include full address and country, just check the template it is all there

Response.  The template used is the right one. The full address and country of authors have been checked and corrected.

Abstract:

Comments

-since you did this in DR Congo, mention this in the title, results may be different for a different region -psychological capital? not sure if capital is the best word here, I leave that up to you - same with dichotomy - I don’t think this is necessarily helpful, we understand all this without using this term  -what would be helpful is more quantitative data of your results in the abstract - what are your conclusions build on  that motivation outperforms necessity? give me some numbers here

Response.  DRC has been added in the title. Yes, capital is the best word in the context examined. It is not our invention. The concept of psychological capital is well documented in positive psychology and positive organizational behaviour literature since the publications of Fred Luthans in 2002: Positive organizational behaviour: developing and managing psychological strengths. Academy of Management and in 2008: Psychological capital (C.P.Li,Trans.). Beijing: China Light industry Press (Original work published in 2007). Figures have been added in abstract to support the paper findings. Reference is made to “To this end, we have found out that opportunity entrepreneurs have 3% more chance of succeeding in businesses compared to necessity entrepreneurs, because the former outperform the latter by 4% in the dimensions of psychological capital”.

Introduction:

-this is pretty good - you could include a figure with the different entrepreneurship activity in which DR Congo is unfortunately not doing too well - just as an extra it is good though

Response: we have provided some figures about DRC World Bank Ranking on the easiness of doing business. Reference is made to the second paragraph of the second page in the introduction. The sentence is as follows: “In the easiness of doing business report for the year 2020, the DRC scored 36.2% and was   ranked −183 position out of 190 countries surveyed− among the least entrepreneurial countries in the world”.

Chap2. Thank you for the compliment.

Ch.3 Methodology comments -what constitutes an entrepreneur can you give me more information here? do they run a conglomerate, a ice cream shop? these are all entrepreneurs to me...do we know annual revenue for instance and the markets they are operating in?

Response: thank you so much for the nice comments and questions. There is still a hot debate on what makes or defines an entrepreneur in the literature, however, there seems to be an agreement that an entrepreneur is someone who identifies and exploits uncommon business opportunities by bringing innovation to the market and finding an effective strategy to sell it off. This definition was hard to strictly implement in our context, as most young people doing businesses are not innovative at all.  In the methodology section, population, and sampling subsection, we clearly stated that youths were selected for the survey regardless of the kind and size of their business. For as long as youth was selling off something, he was considered as an entrepreneur. Some youths doing businesses might certainly innovate but their innovation level is incremental and very low.  Annual revenue is not known since most of these youths do not have strong financial records. Their information management system is weak. And even when this information could be available, they could not disclose it as a matter of secret and tax issues. At the end of subsection “population and sampling’, we have made it clear that most of the youths surveyed were shop holders and a few were involved either in agribusiness activities or in Information Technology (IT) services.

Results:

Comment. -male female ratio also provide some input about DR congo - I don’t think just pointing to the global ratio is enough - did some study abroad? this could be another interesting characteristic -this is good stuff - well done

Response. Thank you for the compliment. The male to female ratio is provided since we have found out that about 73 percent of young entrepreneurs are male. So, the male to female entrepreneur ratio is 73/27=2.7. We have just added the ratio to make the story clearer. Unfortunately, we did not collect any information about whether the youth studied abroad.

Discussion and conclusion

Comment.  OK, I would be careful with saying that this is globally significant - this is a great study, I really like it, but you have not shown to me why what is true for this relatively small sample in DR Congo is applicable to the rest of the world. Provide more input about your specific location here and it will be a great study.

Response. Thank you so much for the comment. Throughout the whole discussion section, we have compared our findings to existing ones. The convergences and divergences are shown. In most of the cases, the finding concurred with prior research, except in the originality aspects of the research. In limitations and future lines of research section, we called upon future studies to re-examine the mediating role of PsyCap in the EM−BS link on a broader sample so that the external validity of this study can be tested.

Best regards

 

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Excellent - I can see you put a lot of work into this, and I feel you addressed all my comments. This is fine with me now and encourage to be published.