Factors Influencing Entrepreneurship Educators’ Pedagogical Choices—A Configurational Approach
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
Thank you for your interesting paper: Factors Influencing Entrepreneurship Educators’ Pedagogical 2 Choices — A Configurational Approach. For me, as a professor of entrepreneurship I have a great pleasure to read it. You deal with an interesting topic, and I agree with you that this topic is not very explored in literature.
However I have some doubts and also some minor suggestions. Please in the introduction clarify the a little more the purpose of the study. You define the problem, the research questions, but you can clarify in my opinion the purpose of it.
In the literature review I would like to see a link with innovation. Innovation is an ingredient of entrepreneurship, I I think that you can introduce the concept here and explain why it is important.
In relation to the methodology I don´t understand how do you selected your sample? Please clarify if your sample integrate only entrepreneurship educators and professors, or other type of professors (for instance professors of engineering or informatics). Also what type of questions did you ask (you put these question in appendix, but I don´t understand how they are asked. For instance you use likert scales? Can you add the final survey?
In relation to the Conclusion section, please add the theoretical and practical implications of the study, as well lines for future research.
Good work in the next steps!
Author Response
We are pleased to submit our revised manuscript “Factors Influencing Entrepreneurship Educators’ Pedagogical Choices — A Configurational Approach” to the Journal of Sustainability.
We would like to thank the editor and the reviewer for their constructive comments. We appreciate the promise that you see in our paper. We also appreciate the opportunity to revise and resubmit the paper.
The manuscript has been revised according to the suggestions and comments. We carefully reviewed and applied the comments raised by the reviewer. In the following, we discus and explain (point-by-point) the changes made in the paper.
With kind regards,
Comment: Thank you for your interesting paper: Factors Influencing Entrepreneurship Educators’ Pedagogical 2 Choices — A Configurational Approach. For me, as a professor of entrepreneurship I have a great pleasure to read it. You deal with an interesting topic, and I agree with you that this topic is not very explored in literature.
Answer: Thank you for your kind words and encouragement.
However, I have some doubts and also some minor suggestions. Please in the introduction clarify a little more the purpose of the study. You define the problem, the research questions, but you can clarify in my opinion the purpose of it.
Answer: Thank you for the comment, we appreciate it. In the revised version, we have carefully stated the purpose of the study by indicating the research gap and how we aim to address it.
In the literature review I would like to see a link with innovation. Innovation is an ingredient of entrepreneurship; I think that you can introduce the concept here and explain why it is important.
Answer: Thank you for the comment, we appreciate it. We fully agree with this important observation, and also believe innovation is an important issue in the entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial activities. However, as the core focus of the paper is on educators’ role and how they perceive their role, we think bringing the innovation concept into the paper introduces a new dimension to the paper, which is not fully consistent with the main focus of the paper. As it can be noted, we have identified factors (based on the literature) that are assumed to have influence on entrepreneurship educators’ pedagogical choices, and that innovation was not part of constructs in this research. Therefore, we would like to skip this observation, but we acknowledge the importance of comment and its relevance to another context.
In relation to the methodology, I don´t understand how do you selected your sample? Please clarify if your sample integrate only entrepreneurship educators and professors, or other type of professors (for instance professors of engineering or informatics). Also, what type of questions did you ask (you put these question in appendix, but I don´t understand how they are asked. For instance, you use Likert scales? Can you add the final survey?
Answer: Thank you for the comment, we appreciate it. We agree with you that more information was needed in this section. Therefore, we have added new information about the items, their sources, how we collected data and the sampling strategy. We have you find the new text sufficient and informative.
In relation to the Conclusion section, please add the theoretical and practical implications of the study, as well lines for future research.
Answer: Thank you for the comment, we appreciate it. Indeed, this important issue was not indicated in the initial submission. As such, we have added new text, stating the theoretical contribution and how the findings may provide practical implications. In addition, we have stated few suggestions for further research.
Overall, we hope you find the changes and revision made to the paper sufficient, and according to your comments and remarks.
Kind regards,
On behalf of the co-authors
Shahrokh Nikou
Reviewer 2 Report
Comment: Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript entitled “Factors Influencing Entrepreneurship Educators’ Pedagogical Choices – A Configurational Approach”, submitted for publication to Sustainability. The manuscript is interesting under the managerial perspective, and the authors discuss the main factors influencing entrepreneurship educators’ pedagogical choices, such as the “teacher-centric” and the “student-centric” model. One of the main concerns is related to the “aims and scope” of the research, which are somehow far from those of the Journal. I cannot see any reference to the sustainability issue, and no mention is done to possible solutions to environmental pollution, climate chance, sustainability challenges, environmental entrepreneurship, etc. I have in-depth read and reviewer the manuscript, and I can highlight its originality and novelty, but I cannot find any reference to the sustainability issues. Therefore, the research is not suitable to be published in Sustainability.
Perhaps, the authors should find another more suitable journal, more interested in pedagogical choices. I suggest a major review, since the research is interesting, original and complete, so it is quite impossible to reject it. However, the authors must consider another Journal, more oriented to the aims and scope of the present research.
Affiliations: Affiliations should be revised according to the Instruction for Authors provided by MDPI.
Overall, the section “Introduction” and the section “Literature Review and Propositions” are clear and comprehensive. I suggest the authors adding a Figure (perhaps, a flow chart), which summarizes the research framework and the different proposals, as to help readers understanding the logical flow of the research.
Data and Methodology: “Data and Methodology” are sufficient, but some more efforts are required to better describe the online survey. The authors are invited to illustrate the main characteristics of the survey, for instance: How many questions have been asked to participants to the survey? Which variables have been investigated? How much questions per variable? Has the questionnaire been developed on the basis of previous literature? If possible, refer to Appendix A also here. Further, how the questionnaire has been “distributed through the authors’ professional and personal networks targeting entrepreneurship educators and professor” (lines 191-192)? Please, describe the sampling strategy and its related biases/strengths.
Lines 198-208. I expected such lines at the beginning of the section “Results”, since they describe the sociodemographic characteristics of the sample and are part of the results. Moreover, such data should relate to previous research. Are in line with previous research conducted on the topic, or are different? Are representative of the sample, or not? Please, provide the sociodemographic characteristics with more interesting insights. If possible, try to contextualize them.
Results: Results are clear and in line with the methods proposed.
Discussion: Discussion are scarce. The authors should provide more theoretical, managerial and public authorities implications. However, as already discussed in the general comment, the research does not provide any reference to sustainability challenges and does not match with the aims and goals of the Journal.
Author Response
We are pleased to submit our revised manuscript “Factors Influencing Entrepreneurship Educators’ Pedagogical Choices — A Configurational Approach” to the Journal of Sustainability.
We would like to thank the editor and the reviewer for their constructive comments. We appreciate the promise that you see in our paper. We also appreciate the opportunity to revise and resubmit the paper.
The manuscript has been revised according to the suggestions and comments. We carefully reviewed and applied the comments raised by the reviewer. In the following, we discus and explain (point-by-point) the changes made in the paper.
With kind regards,
Comment: Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript entitled “Factors Influencing Entrepreneurship Educators’ Pedagogical Choices – A Configurational Approach”, submitted for publication to Sustainability. The manuscript is interesting under the managerial perspective, and the authors discuss the main factors influencing entrepreneurship educators’ pedagogical choices, such as the “teacher-centric” and the “student-centric” model. One of the main concerns is related to the “aims and scope” of the research, which are somehow far from those of the Journal. I cannot see any reference to the sustainability issue, and no mention is done to possible solutions to environmental pollution, climate chance, sustainability challenges, environmental entrepreneurship, etc. I have in-depth read and reviewer the manuscript, and I can highlight its originality and novelty, but I cannot find any reference to the sustainability issues. Therefore, the research is not suitable to be published in Sustainability.
Perhaps, the authors should find another more suitable journal, more interested in pedagogical choices. I suggest a major review, since the research is interesting, original and complete, so it is quite impossible to reject it. However, the authors must consider another Journal, more oriented to the aims and scope of the present research.
Answer: Thank you for the excellent remark and observation. We fully agree with your observation and concerns. We acknowledge in our initial submission; the sustainability issue was not addressed in any form. However, upon the revision of the manuscript, we have carefully addressed this important issue and provided sufficient information to show the relevance of the findings and how they could be used to address the sustainability issues. In particular, we mentioned that entrepreneurship is a means to solve global and “wicked” problems- including climate change, healthcare, food insecurity and environmental issues. New ventures founded on innovations can make a difference by providing solutions to global challenges. In addition, teaching students to think more “entrepreneurially” can also foster innovative thinking inside existing companies that can likewise make a difference in solving these problems. Hence, the ways we teach entrepreneurship is very important. Moreover, we indicated that entrepreneurship educators should aim to educate and train students to become entrepreneurs who have a strong desire to create innovative business practices characterised by innovation as well as the right sensitivity and a mindset oriented towards long-term sustainability.
We hope you find the new text regarding the sustainability suitable and convincing, and we also hope with this revision we could satisfy your expectation.
Affiliations: Affiliations should be revised according to the Instruction for Authors provided by MDPI.
Answer: Thank you for the correction. We have revised the affiliation and provided information in accordance with the MDPI style.
Overall, the section “Introduction” and the section “Literature Review and Propositions” are clear and comprehensive. I suggest the authors adding a Figure (perhaps, a flow chart), which summarizes the research framework and the different proposals, as to help readers understanding the logical flow of the research.
Answer: Thank you for the suggestion. We have added a research model figure, illustrating the constructs and their relationships with the outcome variables, i.e. teacher-centric model and student-centric model.
Data and Methodology: “Data and Methodology” are sufficient, but some more efforts are required to better describe the online survey. The authors are invited to illustrate the main characteristics of the survey, for instance: How many questions have been asked to participants to the survey? Which variables have been investigated? How much questions per variable? Has the questionnaire been developed on the basis of previous literature? If possible, refer to Appendix A also here. Further, how the questionnaire has been “distributed through the authors’ professional and personal networks targeting entrepreneurship educators and professor” (lines 191-192)? Please, describe the sampling strategy and its related biases/strengths.
Lines 198-208. I expected such lines at the beginning of the section “Results”, since they describe the sociodemographic characteristics of the sample and are part of the results. Moreover, such data should relate to previous research. Are in line with previous research conducted on the topic, or are different? Are representative of the sample, or not? Please, provide the sociodemographic characteristics with more interesting insights. If possible, try to contextualize them.
Answer: Thank you for the comment and suggestion. We have carefully addressed these remarks by adding additional information regarding the data collection, sampling strategy, as well as survey items used in the research. Moreover, we agree that the texts in lines 198-208 are more suitable to be placed in the beginning of the results section. As such, we moved that section and placed it in the beginning of the result section.
Results: Results are clear and in line with the methods proposed.
Answer: Thank you for the observation, we appreciate it.
Discussion: Discussion are scarce. The authors should provide more theoretical, managerial, and public authorities implications. However, as already discussed in the general comment, the research does not provide any reference to sustainability challenges and does not match with the aims and goals of the Journal.
Answer: Thank you for the comment. We fully agree that we needed to add more information about the theoretical contribution and practical implication. Therefore, in the revised version of the paper these two issues were addressed, and new texts are added to highlight the main theoretical and practical findings.
Overall, we hope you find the changes and revision made to the paper sufficient, and according to your comments and remarks.
Kind regards,
On behalf of the co-authors
Shahrokh Nikou
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comment: Thank you for the opportunity to review the revised version of the manuscript entitled "Factors Influencing Entrepreneurship Educators' Pedagogical Choices - A Configurational Approach". The authors have in-depth addressed my concerns related to the manuscript, especially those which required the enhancement of the "sustainability aspects" of the research. The authors have substantially revised the section "Introduction" by adding interesting insights under the sustainability perspective (lines 59-71), and have also highlighted the main research question (line 75), which make the purpose of the research even clearer. Figure 1 has been added to summarize the research framework and help readers understand the logical flow behind the research. In the section "Data and Methodology" the authors have clarified the sampling strategy and the main questions asked to participants in the research. Last, the authors have enhanced the "Discussion" section, by identifying in the innovation one of the main keys to achieve sustainability goals and make entrepreneurship even more sustainable. I can confidentially suggest the acceptance of the manuscript to be published in Sustainability in its current form.
