Examining Social Sustainability in Organizations

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

Dear Authors,

Thank you very much for submitting the paper.

The purpose of present study is to examine social sustainability in organizations.

Comments on this paper will be sent to you as follows;

1.  The problem statement is not clear.

2.  In abstract section: the research abstract should be expressed in a way that cover things such as research gap, research method, data collection tool, validity and reliability of tool, results and provide a complete view of the research. So, the research method, validity and reliability of the research questionnaire, the number of respondents (statistical sample), rating scale (e.g. Likert) should be mentioned. Also, the number of models presented in the text is 34, but 41 models have been mentioned in the abstract!

3.   The research questions should be presented at the end of the introduction section.

4.     How many indicators are there for each of the research constructs? Each of the research constructs should be clearly stated along with the number of items and their references.

5.  In results section; what is the acceptable range for the path coefficients obtained from the analysis of the models? In other words, how does the reader know which relationship is strong, medium or weak? The values should be explained by mentioning the reference.

6.     Model fit indices and acceptable range should be provided.

7.  Please check the text carefully for grammatical errors to improve the readability.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1

 

We greatly appreciate the comments and suggestions of the reviewer. Below, we address each of the comments/suggestions.

 

Reviewer’s Question/Comment.

1. The problem statement is not clear.

 

 

Response.

 

We re-configured, re-wrote, and edited the introduction. We used the services of an experienced professional editor. As a result, we expect that the problem- the lack of studies examining organizational social sustainability by looking at gradients of constructs’ ordering- to be now clearer to the reader. The logic of the introduction is as follows: first, we briefly make the case for further studying social sustainability in organizations, sketch some of the main shortcomings of extant research, describe the research opportunity/gap, state the research purpose, and end with the paper contributions.

 

Reviewer’s Question/Comment.

 

 

2. In abstract section: the research abstract should be expressed in a way that cover things such as research gap, research method, data collection tool, validity and reliability of tool, results and provide a complete view of the research.So, the research method, validity and reliability of the research questionnaire, the number of respondents (statistical sample), rating scale (e.g. Likert) should be mentioned. Also, the number of models presented in the text is 34, but 41 models have been mentioned in the abstract!.

Response.

In writing the abstract, we did follow the guidelines stipulated by the journal regarding its contents. Please note that all items mentioned are explicitly and fully developed in the paper.

The number of models is 41 not 34. They are as follows: Figure 1 includes 4 models; Figure 2 includes 8 models, Figure 3 shows only 7 models, but we added text explaining that another set of 7 models, not shown, were considered and that their results are shown in Table 6, and Figure 4 includes 15 models [4+8+14+15=41].

 

Reviewer’s Question/Comment.

3. The research questions should be presented at the end of the introduction section.

Response.

There are different styles in writing research. Although, most published papers do not explicitly state research questions, there are some that do. The research questions may be inferred from the purpose of the paper, please see lines 88 to 90. The purpose of our research is further explained in lines 90 to 112.

 

Reviewer’s Question/Comment.

4. How many indicators are there for each of the research constructs? Each of the research constructs should be clearly stated along with the number of items and their references.

Response.

All such information appears in Subsection “3.7. Measures”, lines 472 to 532.

 

Reviewer’s Question/Comment.

5. In results section, what is the acceptable range for the path coefficients obtained from the analysis of the models? In other words, how does the reader know which relationship is strong, medium or weak? The values should be explained by mentioning the reference.

Response.

In the Section”4. Results and Discussion”, we refer to some path coefficients as strong, moderate, and weak. In addition, Tables 4, 5, and 6 provide exact p values. Providing exact p values is better practice than giving the reader pointers (e.g., 5 %, 10% significance level) because the reader must be able by her/himself, and the circumstances, to know what meaning to assign to a given p value. To further help with such type of assessment, we provide betas, p values, total effects, and 95% bias corrected confidence intervals. Furthermore, alluded tables refer to 1%, 5%, and .1% significance levels.

 

Reviewer’s Question/Comment.

6. Model fit indices and acceptable range should be provided.

Response.

Since the analysis uses SEM-PLS, which is variance based, fit indices are not appropriate. In our case, the appropriate indicator of model fit is percentage of variance explained. Thus, we use adjusted coefficients of determination which are provided in Subsection ”3.5. Model Assessment”, lines 426 to 459.

Reviewer’s Question/Comment.

7. Please check the text carefully for grammatical errors to improve the readability.

 

 

Response.

We edited the manuscript several times. In addition, the paper has been reviewed twice by an experienced professional editor, who indicated that the manuscript is correctly written.

 

 

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

I have reviewed the revised paper and think that it is much better. Thus, I support this paper to be accepted.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2

 

We greatly appreciate your comments and suggestions which undoubtedly were extremely helpful to improve the manuscript. Similarly, we express our deep gratitude for supporting the acceptance of our paper.

 

 

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

 

 

The reviewer believes that the topic of the article is worthy of investigation. However, the following needs to be addressed.However, the manuscript was very normally written; the results are plausible. The manuscript lacks many vital findings and references. I strongly recommend addressing the entire shortcoming mentioned below without fail for further progress.

 

-Line 29,It is not clear.for example. Social sustainability, or the ability to……

 in the introuction, clearly highlights what does mean by social sustainability.for clearly understanding the social sustainabiliyty.The following mansucript has clarified.

Buyer-supplier relationship on social Sustainability: Moderation analysis of cultural intelligence. Cogent Business & Management Vol.4(1), pp.1429-346. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2018.1429346

 

Literatur review

-There is no flow in the text. It partly depends on the lack of proofreading but also on the fact that many statements and claims are made without being followed up by a clear and logical discussion. It is especially problematic in the Introduction that brings up a number of findings from different areas without linking them together. -More importantly, the choice of the variables should be explained in light of the theory and the prior literature on the topic.

The arguments are simply relationships and causes very close to the replication of many studies

dealing with the same thing.

 

The setting for this study is very interesting and unique, and the authors seem to have done a lot in getting ample responses. Smart PLS has been used; however, there seems to be a good sample size which could be favorable to other analysis tools. It would be interesting and of value for the authors to further include a table that gives more information on the companies/industries/characteristics/size/respondents etc.

- The author(s) should explain more in details , how they validate the survey (e.g., internal consistency with Cronbach Alpha) and minimized response bias. Also, they should present the characterization of the survey respondents.

 

The use of adapted measures and construct is obviously advantaged. However, it also risks the oversimplification of validating the results. There is rich scientific literature about adapted and adopted constructs and operationalization measures. The author touch upon this discussion, but further elaboration and justification for their choice of measures would be helpful.

-The methodology is another issue that should be addressed. The chapter is generally very short in comparison and raises several questions that should be proactively argued to increase the reader's confidence in the sample. Please consider addressing the following questions: What does the questionnaire look like? What are the exact items?

 

-The discussion needs to reflect on all the hypotheses and support them with recent literature. Please  also discuss what the proposed directionality implies for the findings. It would also be beneficial to show the hypotheses in the figure and add a figure to show the structural model with path significance and beta values. This could be a good paper but it needs to be rewritten with more emphasis placed on clearly explaining the purpose of the research, the methodology, and the results obtained.  The Conclusion needs to be much more critical of both the issue and the research.  Grammar and English need to be significantly improved.

 

-The authors should offer implications for theory and practice separately as discussed above.  See suggested articles to revise the implications and offer actionable points for implementing the offered implications.

 

 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3.

We want to express our gratitude to the reviewer because her/his comments and suggestions have helped to improve our paper. Next, we address the reviewer’ comments and suggestions.

 

Reviewer’s Question/Comment.

-Line 29,It is not clear.for example. Social sustainability, or the ability to……

in the introuction, clearly highlights what does mean by social sustainability.for clearly understanding the social sustainabiliyty

Response.

Thank you for suggesting adding a definition for organizational social sustainability. We put forward our definition of the term in lines 34 to 36.

Thank you for the suggested reading.  As a result, we added cites 24 and 25 in line 61.

 

Reviewer’s Question/Comment.

-There is no flow in the text. It partly depends on the lack of proofreading but also on the fact that many statements and claims are made without being followed up by a clear and logical discussion. It is especially problematic in the Introduction that brings up a number of findings from different areas without linking them together.

Response.

We re-wrote and reconfigured the introduction as well as other parts of the manuscript, more on this below. The logic of the introduction is as follows: briefly make the case for further studying social sustainability in organizations, sketch some of the main shortcomings of extant research, describe the research opportunity/gap, state the research purpose, and end with the paper contributions. We have edited the paper several times and used the services of an experienced professional editor twice. The professional editor assessment is that the paper is correctly written albeit, at times it is “heavy”.  Regarding the latter, we see it as a characteristic of deep thinking and of good quality journals.

 

Reviewer’s Question/Comment.

More importantly, the choice of the variables should be explained in light of the theory and the prior literature on the topic.

Response.

Our models, and their constituting constructs, were formulated based on the purpose of the research. We added the theoretical basis of the research in Section 2. Literature Review and Hypotheses, lines 137 to 154. These theories support, in different degrees and with some overlaps, our hypotheses. Likewise, our paper is well-documented because we use 234 references some of which have been recently published and others are “classical” publications.

 

Reviewer’s Question/Comment.

The arguments are simply relationships and causes very close to the replication of many studies

dealing with the same thing.

Response.

One of the contributions of our paper, not explicitly mentioned in the manuscript, is that it examines “higher order hypotheses” not merely single relationships. We pointed that out to the reader on lines 156 to 157. Since our research is original in that sense, there are no prior studies of its type. Therefore, we had to rely in the literature review on single relationship studies. Thus, based on a large number of studies, we pose our “higher order” hypotheses. Our research is similar to a simulation, exploring “what if”, by adding context in the form of a multiplicity of relationships.

 

Reviewer’s Question/Comment.

It would be interesting and of value for the authors to further include a table that gives more information on the companies/industries/characteristics/size/respondents etc.

Response.

Based on respondents’ coordinates, that is, their geographical location, we added lines 402 to 405 in Subsection 3.3. Data Collection Procedure. Respondents were from 34 out of 50 states in the United States. The geographical distribution of respondents was diverse. Our paper provides information about respondents’ industries, lines 465 to 468, in Subsection 3.6. Demographics. Since the survey was anonymous and online, we have no specific information about organizations. This is the reason why we refer to the sample, in the manuscript as resembling “the US organization”. It, no doubt, reflects, a higher degree of country representativeness than most studies which tend to be based on one or few organizations usually located in a fairly restricted geographical area.

 

Reviewer’s Question/Comment.

 

- The author(s) should explain more in details , how they validate the survey (e.g., internal consistency with Cronbach Alpha) and minimized response bias. Also, they should present the characterization of the survey respondents.

Response.

The paper shows in Table 2, page 15, Cronbach’s alpha, Dijkstra/Henseler rho A, and composite reliability values. As stated in lines 428 to 430, all such values are acceptable. In other words, the psychometric properties of our constructs are strong.

The characterization of the survey respondents is given in Subsection 3.6. demographics, lines 461 to 470.

Concerning minimizing response bias, we used procedural controls to prevent it. They included randomization of items, varied wording of items, insertion of three “check questions” to verify the respondents was aware while reading the items, using a relatively short questionnaire to minimize respondents’ tiredness, and including respondents from a variety of states, organizations, industries, and regions of the United States. In addition, we use statistical control during the data analysis stage, namely controlling for a theoretically unrelated marker variable, carrying out Harman’s one factor test, and adjusting for social desirability and control variables in all analyses. See Subsection 3.4. Common Method Variance.

 

Reviewer’s Question/Comment.

The use of adapted measures and construct is obviously advantaged. However, it also risks the oversimplification of validating the results. There is rich scientific literature about adapted and adopted constructs and operationalization measures. The author touch upon this discussion, but further elaboration and justification for their choice of measures would be helpful.

Response.

As stated above the selection of the constructs is based on the purpose of the research. In selecting the construct measures we rely, as is customary, on scales with good psychometric properties that have been successfully used in extant research. We indicate that on lines 473 to 474. Given the diverse reliability indicators shown in Table 2, our scale selection is reaffirmed.

 

Reviewer’s Question/Comment.

-The methodology is another issue that should be addressed. The chapter is generally very short in comparison and raises several questions that should be proactively argued to increase the reader's confidence in the sample. Please consider addressing the following questions: What does the questionnaire look like? What are the exact items?

Response.

When studies do not deal with developing or testing a scale, it is customary, to define the constructs, indicate the scales used, and to provide an example item per construct. We did just that in Subsection 3.7. Measures, lines 472 to 532.  We provide, for the consideration of the editor and the reviewer, the full set of items, the questionnaire. In addition, we state, lines 475 to 476, that the questionnaire may be provided by the first author upon request.

 

Reviewer’s Question/Comment.

 

The discussion needs to reflect on all the hypotheses and support them with recent literature. Please also discuss what the proposed directionality implies for the findings.

 

Response.

We inserted eleven new references pertaining to the discussion of the hypotheses in addition to the prior references. Since our hypotheses are of a “higher order” there are no prior studies that are similar to ours. Thus, the references we use both in the literature review and the discussion refer to single relationships. As our findings show relationships’ results may be contingent on both the strength and number of direct and indirect paths.  Such is the reason why we qualify our results’ similarities with   terms such as “seem to be in line”, “appear to agree”, and the like.

We explain that hypotheses H1, H2, H3, and H4 seem to be supported by the data whereas H5 was not. Hypotheses H1 to H4 directionality was as expected.  We also refer to the implicit expectation related to the varying degree of constructs’ ordering, which we believe is one of the key contributions of the paper.

We expanded Section 5. Theoretical and Practical Implications to strengthen our argumentation about the meanings of our findings.

We did not find articles that have studied the second order factor relationships that we examined neither did we find publications investigating the quasi and random construct model configurations that we examined.

 

Reviewer’s Question/Comment.

It would also be beneficial to show the hypotheses in the figure and add a figure to show the structural model with path significance and beta values.

Response.

We know that in simple models it is customary to add a figure showing the Hypotheses and the betas. However, in our study, we run 41 different models, many of which included many paths. As a result, it is not practical to add to the figures appearing in the paper the betas and their p values because the numbers will get crowded and overlap. Nonetheless, Tables 4, 5, and 6, in the Appendix, provide a multiplicity of path coefficients, p values, total effects, and 95% corrected confidence intervals.

 

Reviewer’s Question/Comment.

 The Conclusion needs to be much more critical of both the issue and the research.  

Response.

We expanded the Conclusion. However, our criticism appears mainly in the discussion of the results, in the theoretical and practical implications, and in the limitations and future research sections.

 

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

Dear Authors,

Many thanks for resubmitting the revised file.

This version of the paper can be accepted.

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

The topic is very interesting, and I like the topic and appreciate your efforts to present your revised research work nicely. I am satisfied with the efforts you employed in the revision, and I found all my suggested comments have been incorporated or addressed ideally. The methodology is especially appreciated. As for the paper's content, its structure is correct; it is easy to read; it contains all the relevant and necessary information for the reader. Therefore, I strongly recommend this article for acceptance for further publication in this reputed Journal without any more changes.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. Most of the references are outdated. The authors need to review within 3 years research articles. 

2. Abstract: Research contribution is not clear explained. 

3. The authors has included some long tables. The authors can rearrange the table and some tables can be included in the appendix section.

4. Research methodology: It is not clear explained, such as sampling technique and data collection process. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

First of all, many thanks for submitting the paper to this journal and taking time to collect data and write the paper.

The purpose of present study is to examine social sustainability in organizations. There are some comments that will help you improve your research;

1. The paper is too long and needs to be shortened. Also, the text of the paper is not written fluently.

2. In the abstract section; The research method and the software used for data analysis should be added. Also, the questionnaire has been created by the researcher or derived from a model?? It should be mentioned briefly. The number of models presented in the text is 34, but 41 models have been mentioned in the abstract!!

3. The statement of the problem is not well done.

4. All the references inside and at the end of the text should be numbered (according to the journal format).

5. All figures and their notes (Figs.1,2,3 and 4) are of poor quality and should be improved. Also, the caption font of figures and tables should be modified.

6. It is better to present the abbreviations of all constructs separately and regularly in a table at the end of section 2, so that the models are understandable for the readers. Also, it is not necessary to add them again at the end of the tables.

7. How many indicators are there for each of the research constructs?

8. The explanations presented in lines 332 to 335 are different from those presented in the note of Figure (2) and need to be corrected (for example; SOC3).

9. The font of the research hypotheses is different from each other and needs to be edited. Please check lines 181, 234 and 257.

10. In section 3-3 (Model Assessment), it is much better to present the relevant data such as Cronbach's alpha and their acceptable range in an organized table.

11. Lines 323 and 345 have been written with a different font. If you have considered them as subsections, they need to be numbered.

12. Tables 3 and 5 have been incompletely presented.