Intrapreneurial Capabilities: Multidimensional Construction and Measurement Index Validation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is timely and interesting. The authors should update the references and follow the suggestions below:

Summary of the paper:

The purpose of the paper is to investigate and quantify the dimensions of intrapreneurial capabilities in established manufacturing firms. It constructs a measurement scale and tests its validity and reliability using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods. Five dimensions are identified in the study: innovativeness, risk-taking, proactiveness, resource management, and network construction. The findings suggest that, in order to effectively adapt to a changing external environment, intrapreneurial capabilities should be guided by innovativeness as the core, supported by other dimensions. The paper describes the theoretical and practical implications of a robust measurement standard for evaluating enterprise intrapreneurship.

Following my comments:

[1]   Longitudinal analysis could be introduced or at least could be an improvement for future research and therefore stated in the conclusions: Conducting a longitudinal analysis by examining the changes in intrapreneurial capabilities over time would provide insights into the dynamic nature of these capabilities and their impact on firm performance. This could involve collecting data at multiple time points and analyzing the longitudinal trends and relationships between intrapreneurial capabilities and organizational outcomes.

Multiple future research have been stated but none are being analyzed or taken into account. Looks like a list of improvements that could have been done but have not been done.

[2]   Use recent and relevant sources: Make certain that the literature review includes the most recent and relevant sources available! In order to capture the most recent developments in the field of intrapreneurship, including recent studies and publications. Additionally, prioritize sources from reputable journals and academic conferences to ensure the information's reliability and validity.

 

[3]   Explain the current study's ratio: Explain how the current study expands on and contributes to the existing literature. Highlight the study's unique aspects or research questions and explain how it fills identified gaps or extends previous findings. This will aid in establishing the study's significance and relevance within the larger scholarly discourse.

A proof reading is recommended

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

Point 1: Longitudinal analysis could be introduced or at least could be an improvement for future research and therefore stated in the conclusions: Conducting a longitudinal analysis by examining the changes in intrapreneurial capabilities over time would provide insights into the dynamic nature of these capabilities and their impact on firm performance. This could involve collecting data at multiple time points and analyzing the longitudinal trends and relationships between intrapreneurial capabilities and organizational outcomes. Multiple future research have been stated but none are being analyzed or taken into account. Looks like a list of improvements that could have been done but have not been done. 
Response 1: Thank you very much for reviewing our paper. We also appreciate your insightful comments. We rewrite the conclusion and add your suggestion to our paper “At last, longitudinal analysis could be introduced. The longitudinal case requirement emphasizes the dynamic influence of timeliness, where elements in society are in a constant process of change. From the perspective of process research, the longitudinal single-case study approach can be used to dynamically analyze how intrapreneurial behavior emerges, evolves, and produces results in order to better dissect intrapreneurial capabilities.” (Page 21, Lines 606-611). All changes are marked in red. 

 

Point 2: Use recent and relevant sources: Make certain that the literature review includes the most recent and relevant sources available! In order to capture the most recent developments in the field of intrapreneurship, including recent studies and publications. Additionally, prioritize sources
from reputable journals and academic conferences to ensure the information's reliability and validity.
Response 2: Thanks for pointing out the problem. We remove some of old literatures and replaced them with new literatures from the last three years. New added literatuers were published from reputable journals to ensure the reliability and validity. (Page 21-23, References). All changes are marked in red.

 

Point 3: Explain the current study's ratio: Explain how the current study expands on and contributes to the existing literature. Highlight the study's unique aspects or research questions and explain how it fills identified gaps or extends previous findings. This will aid in establishing the study's significance and relevance within the larger scholarly discourse.
Response 3: Thanks for your helpful comments. We add statements about the contributions of this paper “Different from the existing studies focus on three dimensions of intrapreneurship [6,7], this study further expands the intrapreneurial capabilities into five measurement dimensions. The research on intrapreneurship preceded the research on value networks and innovation networks, so the existing research on intrapreneurship still focuses on the individual intrapreneurial behavior of head enterprises, and lacks of extend of intrapreneurial behavior to social net-works, value networks, innovation networks and other network systems, which makes the theoretical conception and measurement dimensions of intrapreneurial capability difficult to adapt to the requirements of the increasingly networked development of the times. This study finds that the reason why the case companies can survive and grow in the ever-changing internal and external environment and fierce market competition is because they insist on " innovativeness ", "risk-taking" and " proactiveness " as key factors in building their intrapreneurial capabilities. In addition to " innovativeness ", "risk-taking" and " proactiveness " as the orientation of intrapreneurship, we should also incorporate "resource management" and "network construction" into intrapreneurship, and carry out innovative entrepreneurial activities with innovation as the strategic orientation. In the process of intrapreneurship, in addition to strengthening the ability to innovate, make decisions before others and take risks, it is necessary to dynamically manage all kinds of re-sources and improve the efficiency of resource management and utilization, so as to better provide resources to support the production and operation of the enterprise.” (Page17, Lines 453-472) All changes are marked in red. 

To conclude, thank you very much again for your feedback. We gratefully acknowledge your detailed and insightful comments and appreciate your suggestions on making the manuscript stronger. If you think additional clarification of any of the points above would strengthen the manuscript further, please let us know. We would be very pleased to incorporate your suggestions into a new version of the manuscript if given another opportunity to make revisions.

Reviewer 2 Report

Title: Intrapreneurial Capabilities: Multi-dimensional Construction and Measurement Index Validation.

 

The authors have developed their manuscript clearly and systematically. Additionally, they have justified the purpose of their study and proposed a set of five categories for measuring intrapreneurial capabilities in companies. To validate the instrument, the authors have theoretically and statistically tested the variables.

 

Below are some minor comments that I hope will contribute to the improvent of the manuscript:

 

Lines 89-105 lack references.

 

Lines 127-146 lack references.

 

Lines 148-151: It gives the impression that this idea was not fully developed or not properly articulated.

 

Subheading 2.4: It is uncommon to read "conclusion," perhaps consider changing the subheading title.

 

Lines 175-177: Rephrase this section. It can be misinterpreted as suggesting that analyzing five companies is a robust analysis when it is not. The current wording may lead to misunderstandings.

 

Line 203: com-pany should be company.

 

Line 206: en-terprise should be enterprise.

 

Lines 250-264: Add references to support this.

 

Figure 1: Can be improved. Need to be attractive.

 

Line 269: Re-search should be research.

 

Line 270: Why that specific timeframe?

 

Figure 2: Can be improved. Also, consider changing the figure title; typically, these maps are known as Keyword maps.

 

Line 271: Why WOS? Why not SCOPUS? Or why not both SCOPUS and WOS?

 

Section 4: No comments, well explained. Good work.

 

Conclusions: What were the limitations of the study?

 

References: I counted 14 out of 56 references from 2020 onwards. This represents around 25% of the citations. I highly recommend increasing or changing the citations so that at least one-third are from 2020 onwards.

 

 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

Point 1: Lines 89-105 lack references.

Response 1: Thank you very much for reviewing our manuscript and sharing insightful feedback. We add references in this paragraph.(Page 3, Lines 92-104) All changes are marked in red.

 

Point 2: Lines 127-146 lack references

Response 2: We appreciate your suggestion. We add references in this paragraph. (Pages 3-4, Lines 132-144) All changes are marked in red.

 

Point 3: Lines 148-151: It gives the impression that this idea was not fully developed or not properly articulated.

Response 3: Thanks for your helpful comments. We add discussions about the gap of existing studies to explain the important of our paper “First, the theoretical literature on intrapreneurship continues to use entrepreneur-ship-oriented research and lacks of in-depth and focused exploration of intrapreneurship concepts, components and measurement indicators. Second, after the concept of intrapreneurship was introduced, the existing intrapreneurship studies failed to further expand the research perspective to the scope of firm capabilities, and how to assess a firm's intrapreneurship, what institutional elements lead to the success of intrapreneurial activities and intrapreneurship, what impact intrapreneurship has on firm performance, what policies are needed to guide firms to build intrapreneurship.” (Page 4, Lines 157-164) All changes are marked in red.

 

Point 4: Subheading 2.4: It is uncommon to read "conclusion," perhaps consider changing the subheading title.

Responses: Thank you pointing this problem. We changing the subheading title to “Overview”. (Page 4, Line 148)

 

Point 5: Lines 175-177：Rephrase this section. It can be misinterpreted as suggesting that analyzing five companies is a robust analysis when it is not. The current wording may lead to misunderstandings.

Response 5: Thanks for your helpful comments. We select 5 companies as case studies in this study met the criteria for the optimal number of cases for multiple case studies, i.e., 3-7 (Lune & Berg, 2017). But in order not to lead to misunderstanding, we rewrite this part “3-7 sample companies meet best case number criteria for multiple case studies [37]. Therefore, this paper selects five high-tech manufacturing enterprises of different sizes and ownership for case studies to make the conclusions more concrete and practical” (Page 4, Lines 184-187) All changes are marked in red.

 

Point 6: Line 203: com-pany should be company.

Response 6: Thanks for pointing out this problem. We correct this word. (Page 5, Line 213) All changes are marked in red.

 

Point 7: Line 206: en-terprise should be enterprise

Response 7: Thanks for pointing out this problem. We correct this word. (Page 5, Line 216) All changes are marked in red.

 

Point 8: Lines 250-264: Add references to support this.

Response 8: Thanks for your helpful comments. This part of the discussion focuses on the actual situation of the case company and does not refer to the literature of others. There should be no need to include references. (Page 8, Lines 260-274)

 

Point 9: Figure 1: Can be improved. Need to be attractive.

Response 9: Thanks for your helpful suggestion. We redrew Figure 1. (Page 9) All changes are marked in red.

 

Point 10: Line 269: Re-search should be research.

Response 10: Thanks for pointing out this problem. We correct this word. (Page 9, Line 279) All changes are marked in red.

 

Point 11: Line 270: Why that specific timeframe?

Response 11: Thanks for your question. Before 1999, most research on corporate entrepreneurship focused on the individual level.Covin & Miles (1999) formally introduced entrepreneurship research to the corporate strategy level, so this study starts in 1998 for the sake of rigor.

 

Point 12: Figure 2: Can be improved. Also, consider changing the figure title; typically, these maps are known as Keyword maps

Response 12: Thanks for your helpful suggestion. Figure 2 is generated by the software and too much modification may result in loss of data. In addition, we changed the figure title to “Keyword maps” (Page 9.Line 292) All changes are marked in red.

 

Point 13: Line 271: Why WOS? Why not SCOPUS? Or why not both SCOPUS and WOS?

Response 13: Thanks for your question. First, authoritative journals are the objects of our research, so we mainly focus on SCI/SSCI journals in WOS. Second, using data from WOS, Cite-Space Ⅲ is more efficient in analyzing its results, meanwhile data from SCOPUS is difficult to be used for analysis.

 

Point 14: Conclusions: What were the limitations of the study?

Response 14:Thanks for pointing out this problem.We add the limitions of this paper “For the study of intrapreneurial capabilities component dimensions and indicator measurement, the research on intrapreneurial capabilities is conducted through case studies on primary and secondary data obtained using a rooted theoretical approach, and the process of data collection, organization and coding, and the conclusions obtained are inevitably subject to a variety of subjective factors such as the researcher's academic background and theoretical mastery.” (Page 20, Lines 593-599) All changes are marked in red.

 

Point 15: References: I counted 14 out of 56 references from 2020 onwards. This represents around 25% of the citations. I highly recommend increasing or changing the citations so that at least one-third are from 2020 onwards.

Response 15: Thanks for your helpful suggestion. We remove 10 older literatures and replaced it with literatures from the last three years (Page 21-23, References). All changes are marked in red.

 

To conclude, thank you very much again for your feedback. We gratefully acknowledge your detailed and insightful comments and appreciate your suggestions on making the manuscript stronger. If you think additional clarification of any of the points above would strengthen the manuscript further, please let us know. We would be very pleased to incorporate your suggestions into a new version of the manuscript if given another opportunity to make revisions.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

thank you very much for the interesting manuscript titled "Intrapreneurial Capabilities：Multi-dimensional Construction and Measurement Index Validation". This was a good read and it is great what insights you bring to intrapreneurship research. 

I have some minor suggestions below, which might help to improve your manuscript even further: 

1. Your introduction section is very strong. However, I would suggest rewording some sentences to make them less extreme. For example, in line 24 you argue that intrapreneurship is needed for companies "to survive". Surely this is not true, but rather intrapreneurship can be highly beneficial.

2. I would suggest including brief definitions of the trait constructs you include, in particular of "innovativeness" and "risk-taking". This will help the reader a lot. For example, on risk taking, you might want to look at Salmony & Kanbach (2022) https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218495822500017

3. Please be uniform in the use of terms, e.g., you vary between "pro-activeness" and proactiveness"

4. I am not sure if I see a lot of value in Figure 2. Consider removing if you agree.

Good luck in further developing your paper!

The quality of language was fine.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

Point 1: Your introduction section is very strong. However, I would suggest rewording some sentences to make them less extreme. For example, in line 24 you argue that intrapreneurship is needed for companies "to survive". Surely this is not true, but rather intrapreneurship can be highly beneficial.

Response 1: Thank you very much for reviewing our manuscript and sharing insightful feedback. We add “adapt” and “profits” in this paper. (Page 1, Line 24) All changes are marked in red.

 

Point 2: I would suggest including brief definitions of the trait constructs you include, in particular of "innovativeness" and "risk-taking". This will help the reader a lot. For example, on risk taking, you might want to look at Salmony & Kanbach (2022) https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218495822500017

Response 2: We appreciate your invaluable suggestion. We add this literature and statement of  “Innovative” and “risk-taking” to our paper.(Page 18, Lines 477-480, Lines 500-503) All changes are marked in red. 

 

Point 3: Please be uniform in the use of terms, e.g., you vary between "pro-activeness" and proactiveness"

Response 3:Thanks for pointing out this problem. We reedit and use “proactiveness”in this paper.

 

Point 4: I am not sure if I see a lot of value in Figure 2. Consider removing if you agree.

Response 4: Thanks for your helpful suggestion. Figure 2 shows the results of the literature analysis generated by the software, which allows a more objective representation of our findings. So we think it is better to keep Figure 2. And we add more statament about Figure 2. (Page 9, Lines 284-289)

 

To conclude, thank you very much again for your feedback. We gratefully acknowledge your detailed and insightful comments and appreciate your suggestions on making the manuscript stronger. If you think additional clarification of any of the points above would strengthen the manuscript further, please let us know. We would be very pleased to incorporate your suggestions into a new version of the manuscript if given another opportunity to make revisions.

Reviewer 4 Report

- An attractive topic for the interest of this journal

- Modern and up-to-date main research ideas, appropriate to the current issues of business performance

- Clear and practical approach

- The abstract is clear, but it is recommended to add here the obtained results

- Too many keywords

- At 2.1. paragraph (lines 88-105): to mention the literature used

- Idem for 2.3 paragraph (lines 127-146)

- What are the criteria for the chosen companies

- Figure 2. (line 275): make it clearer and needs an interpretation (of authors)

- Table 5 is not necessary for the text (the only reference to the invalid answers)

-         -  Table 8 can be moved to the annex

- - The paragraph from lines 380-393: is better highlighted, because it presents conclusive results       

- Figure 3: must be explained

-          - The text of the conclusions is too large, it must be rearranged in accordance with the discussions and results of the papers

-          - The limits of the paper are not presented

-          - The usefulness of the research results?

-          - Some proposals can be helpful in the conclusions of the paper

-          - Enriches the bibliography and references

Author Response

Response to the Reviewer 4 Comments

Point 1: The abstract is clear, but it is recommended to add here the obtained results.

Response 1: Thank you very much for reviewing our paper. We also appreciate your insightful comment. We add the obtained results in abstract “The results indicate that intrapreneurial capabilities is a concept model consisting of five categories: innovation, risk-taking, proactivity, resource management, and network construction.” (Page 1, Lines 12-14) All changes are marked in red.

 

Point 2: Too many keywords

Response 2: Thanks for pointing out this problem.we delete 2 keywords. (Page 1, Lines 17-18) All changes are marked in red.

 

Point 3: At 2.1. paragraph (lines 88-105): to mention the literature used Idem for 2.3 paragraph (lines 127-146)

Response 3: Thanks for pointing out this problem. We add the literatures at 2.1(Page 3, Lines 92-103) and 2.3(Pages 3-4, Lines 132-144)All changes are marked in red.

 

Point 4: What are the criteria for the chosen companies

Response 4: Thanks for your question. We selected 5 manufacturing industries of different sizes and ownership. The reasons for this are: firstly, innovation and entrepreneurship in manufacturing can bring greater value to social development; secondly, to make the study more generalizable, we chose large companies and SMEs (see Table 1).

 

Point 5: Figure 2. (line 275): make it clearer and needs an interpretation (of authors)

Response 5: Thanks for your helpful suggestions. By using CiteSpace to create a keyword co-occurrence map (Figure 2) to visualize the co-occurrence of keywords, the core content and research hotspots of a specific research area can be discovered. This software cannot output graphics directly at the moment, but relies on screenshots. And, we add an interpretation about Figure 2 “The frequency of the nodes is shown in Figure 2, and each node corresponds to the corresponding keyword, and the size of the node represents the frequency of keyword co-occurrence. The thickness of the line between the keywords represents the frequency of co-occurrence; the lighter the color of the line, the closer the co-occurrence time is to the present. Then, there is not new data with regards to ‘Intrapreneurship’”(Page 9, Lines 284-289). All changes are marked in red.

 

Point 6: Table 5 is not necessary for the text (the only reference to the invalid answers)

Response 6: Thank you very much for this comment. We delete Table 5.

 
Point 7: Table 8 can be moved to the annex
Response 7: We appreciate your suggestions. As an important analytical step within Exploratory Factor Analysis, we think that Table 8 should be included in the main text.

 

Point 8: The paragraph from lines 380-393: is better highlighted, because it presents conclusive results

Response 8: Thanks for your helpful suggestions. This paragraph is one of Confirmatory Factor Analysis, we think maybe it is not necessary to be highlighted.

Point 9: Figure 3: must be explained

Response 9: We appreciate your invaluable suggestion and we totally agree. We add more discussion about Figure 3 “Different from the existing three dimensions of intrapreneurship [6,7], this study further expands the intrapreneurial capabilities into five measurement dimensions. The research on intrapreneurship preceded the research on value networks and innovation networks, so the existing research on intrapreneurship still focuses on the individual intrapreneurial behavior of head enterprises, and lacks to extend intrapreneurial behavior to social net-works, value networks, innovation networks and other network systems, which makes the theoretical conception and measurement dimensions of intrapreneurial capability difficult to adapt to the requirements of the increasingly networked development of the times. This study finds that the reason why the case companies can survive and grow in the ever-changing internal and external environment and fierce market competition is because they insist on " innovativeness ", "risk-taking" and " proactiveness " as key factors in building their intrapreneurial capabilities. In addition to " innovativeness ", "risk-taking" and " proactiveness " as the orientation of intrapreneurship, we should also incorporate "resource management" and "network construction" into intrapreneurship, and carry out innovative entrepreneurial activities with innovation as the strategic orientation. In the process of intrapreneurship, in addition to strengthening the ability to innovate, make decisions before others and take risks, it is necessary to dynamically manage all kinds of re-sources and improve the efficiency of resource management and utilization, so as to better provide resources to support the production and operation of the enterprise.” (Page 17, Lines 453-472). All changes are marked in red.

 

Point 10:

• The text of the conclusions is too large, it must be rearranged in accordance with the discussions and results of the papers
• The limits of the paper are not presented
• The usefulness of the research results?
• Some proposals can be helpful in the conclusions of the paper.

Response 10: Thanks for pointing out above problems. First, we further optimize the conclusion by adding subheadings, such as “6.1. Theoretical implications”, “6.2. Practical implications” and “6.3. Limitations and future research”. Second, we point the main contribution of this paper as “This paper expands the scope of the corporate entrepreneurship domain and develops a conceptualization and measurement scale for intrapreneurial capabilities, which offers several important theoretical implications.” (Page 19, Lines 529-531). Third, we point practical implication “By enriching intrapreneurial capabilities composition dimensions and measurement sys-tem, companies can improve resource management and network construction capabilities, and promote the level of corporate innovation and entrepreneurship development” (Page 20, Lines 558-561). At last, we add limitions of this paper “For the study of intrapreneurial capabilities component dimensions and indicator meas-urement, the research on intrapreneurial capabilities is conducted through case studies on primary and secondary data obtained using a rooted theoretical approach, and the pro-cess of data collection, organization and coding, and the conclusions obtained are inevi-tably subject to a variety of subjective factors such as the researcher's academic back-ground and theoretical mastery.” and add more future research “At last, longitudinal analysis could be introduced. Conducting a longitudinal analysis by examining the changes in intrapreneurial capabilities over time would provide insights into the dynamic nature of these capabilities and their impact on firm performance. This could involve collecting data at multiple time points and analyzing the longitudinal trends and relationships between intrapreneurial capabilities and organizational out-comes.” (Pages 20-21, Lines 593-599, Lines 606-611) All changes are marked in red.

 

Point 11: Enriches the bibliography and references

Response 11: Thanks for your helpful suggestion. We remove older literatures, and replace/add with new literatures from the last three years (Page 21-23, References). All changes are marked in red.

 

To conclude, thank you very much again for your feedback. We gratefully acknowledge your detailed and insightful comments and appreciate your suggestions on making the manuscript stronger. If you think additional clarification of any of the points above would strengthen the manuscript further, please let us know. We would be very pleased to incorporate your suggestions into a new version of the manuscript if given another opportunity to make revisions.