Knowledge Management Maturity Contributes to Project-Based Companies in an Open Innovation Era

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please add key results into the abstract.

Please provide a distinct results section.

Please include many references in the discussion.

Please suggest future research ideas.

Please address how alarming it is that organizations are currently only half-way through the implementation of a resourceful KM system including what is means for broader goals such as sustainable development, sustainability, climate change and circular economy ect.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, thank you very much for your comments. You can check below ower answers and the improvements in the attachment.

Please add key results into the abstract.

A: Thank you for your review, we have changed the abstract in order to emphasize the key results.

Please provide a distinct results section.

A: Thank you for your comment, we have altered the structure of the paper in order to separate the results from data analysis. The results and the findings are presented together to make it easier to understand their relationship.

Please include many references in the discussion.

A: Thank you for pointing this out, we have included more references in the discussion of the findings in order to solve this issue.

Please suggest future research ideas.

A: Thank you for raising this issue, however the conclusion (the structure was slightly altered to accommodate the comments of reviewer 2) has already some suggestions for future research ideas.

Please address how alarming it is that organizations are currently only half-way through the implementation of a resourceful KM system including what is means for broader goals such as sustainable development, sustainability, climate change and circular economy ect.

A: Thank you for your comment, we agree that these are very important points and have included them in the findings discussion.

Reviewer 2 Report

I appreciate the opportunity to review this interesting manuscript for this journal.
I think the manuscript has significant opportunities for improvement, which I will detail below:
The Likert scale used with 4 items seems imprecise to me. In my opinion, the Likert scale should have an odd number of options. If you cannot redo the experiment, I advise you to explain and defend the choice of an even number of elements.
Central tendency should be applied at the item level, that is, I assume that the responses will show a normal or quasi-normal distribution. They will have to guarantee the validity of those measures. You must apply the tests your study needs: Wilcoxon signed rank test, parametric statistical tests such as analysis of variance, or other tests.
Regarding the data analysis, a comparison of means is made. I think I should apply (or explain the non-use) the T-Student.
In Table 3 the authors should better explain why they say "significant difference". Are all the differences significant?
Table 4 and what the authors write in the 'Discussion' section should appear in the literature review and in the 'Discussion' section they should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted by comparing them with the different studies discussed in the section on the literature. review (including Table 4).
The following subsections should appear in the Conclusions section: Theoretical implications; Practical implications; Limitations and future lines of research.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, thank you very much for your comments. You can check below ower answers and the improvements in the attachment.

I appreciate the opportunity to review this interesting manuscript for this journal. I think the manuscript has significant opportunities for improvement, which I will detail below:

The Likert scale used with 4 items seems imprecise to me. In my opinion, the Likert scale should have an odd number of options. If you cannot redo the experiment, I advise you to explain and defend the choice of an even number of elements.

A: Thank you for raising this issue, we agree that it may not be consensual; however, odd number of options allow respondents to select middle options without having to actually take a position which is what we tried to avoid.

Central tendency should be applied at the item level, that is, I assume that the responses will show a normal or quasi-normal distribution.

A: Thank you for your comment, we agree that the Data analysis was missing this point. Therefore, we added a paragraph with the information of D’Agostino’s K-squared test performed that validated the normality of the all items and aggregated concepts used.

They will have to guarantee the validity of those measures. You must apply the tests your study needs: Wilcoxon signed rank test, parametric statistical tests such as analysis of variance, or other tests.

A: Thank you for your review. We opted for using multiple t-tests instead of ANOVA since at the end of ANOVA it would still be necessary to analyze which individual differences are significant. Regarding the Wilcoxon signed rank test, we did not used it since the data met all the assumptions of the t-test and the later are believed to have greater statistical power.

Regarding the data analysis, a comparison of means is made. I think I should apply (or explain the non-use) the T-Student.

A: Thank you for your comment, we did perform t-tests as stated in line 137 “The first step of the analysis was to compare the averages of each phase and test (one-side T-test) the significance of the differences between them”.

In Table 3 the authors should better explain why they say "significant difference". Are all the differences significant?

A: Thank you for raising this point, all the differences included in table 3 are significant at 0.05 (“Table 3 shows the relationships that are significant at 0.05 level and the respective difference for each phase”).

Table 4 and what the authors write in the 'Discussion' section should appear in the literature review and in the 'Discussion' section they should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted by comparing them with the different studies discussed in the section on the literature review (including Table 4).

A: Thank you for pointing this out, we have moved table 4 to the literature review and new section presenting results and findings discusses how the results can be compared to the different studies identified in the literature review.

The following subsections should appear in the Conclusions section: Theoretical implications; Practical implications; Limitations and future lines of research.

A: Thank you for your comment, we have changed the structure so that the conclusion has five paragraphs, the first summarizing the results and then one for each of the sections enumerated above.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have responded promptly and accurately to all my points. I think the manuscript has improved substantially and should be published in its current form.

Author Response

Thank you very much. All the best.