PONE-D-20-36985

Sustainable Innovation in the context of organizational Cultural Diversity: The role of Cultural Intelligence and knowledge sharing

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Jinlong,

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Nadja Damij, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Authors,

Kindly review your manuscript based on the reviews below.

Best regards,

Dr. Nadja Damij

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'This study was supported by grants from the National Social Science Foundation of China (Project No. 15BGL036), the Innovation Program of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law(Project No. 201911049).'

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'This paper was written by Li Jinlong . in collaboration with all co-authors. The formal were analyzed by Li Jinlong and Wu Na.and Xiong Shengxu.The funding was acquisited by Xiong Shengxu. Data was calculated by Li Jinlong and Wu Na.'

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Very well written, sound theoretical background and appropriate methodological approach. You can expand on sampling strategy used, period of data collection, but also how exactly were the respondents approached due to COVID-19 restrictions and working from home rules. Please also add a definition of the term grass-root employee. I believe there is high heterogeneity between different sectors which can be added as a limitation.

Reviewer #2: 1. Overall, the paper is well-written with good readability and organisation. A few minor changes are suggested below, which could improve the work further.

2. The paper has frequently used the term ‘sustainable innovation behavior’. Sustainable innovation introduces the concept of sustainability in the innovation process in which typically the environment, social and financial considerations are paid due attention. Presumably, in this paper, the authors have used the term to indicate the ‘continuous (or sustained) innovation behavior’ (line 113) of the employees. If that’s the case, to avoid confusion, it is suggested that the term ‘sustained’ be either omitted or be replaced by something more specific (for example: continuous or sustained).

3. It will be useful to include the survey questions in the paper as supporting information.

4. The study involves survey participants from 31 organisations across several industry sectors. Future research to investigate cultural diversity/intelligence variations among the industries and/or geographies would be exciting.

Reviewer #3: Jinlong Li et al. manuscript “Sustainable innovation in the context of organizational cultural diversity: the role of cultural intelligence and knowledge sharing” focuses on issues that are current and significant from a theoretical and practical point of view, namely the impact of employees’ cultural intelligence on sustainable innovative behavior in the context of organizational cultural diversity as a dominant phenomenon in the modern global economy.

The article is written in accordance with established academic standards for this type of study. According to the authors, with whom I agree, the following key results have been obtained on the basis of theoretical assumptions and their own empirical study, of which I will mention the most important ones: employee cultural intelligence has a significant positive impact on their sustainable innovative behavior and has a positive impact on employee knowledge sharing. Knowledge sharing, in turn, plays a partial mediating role in establishing a positive relationship between employees' cultural intelligence and sustainable innovative behavior. At the same time, organizational cultural differences have been shown to negatively regulate the relationship between employee cultural intelligence and knowledge sharing. It was also shown, contrary to the authors' expectation, that organizational cultural differences do not have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between employees' cultural intelligence and their sustainable innovative behavior.

Based on the aforementioned results, the manuscript has both theoretical and practical significance. Namely, the study expands our understanding of antecedent variables and mechanisms of sustainably innovative employee behavior, which in the modern economy brings an important comparative advantage to companies competing in the global markets. The study also enriches the existing research field of cultural intelligence theory by integrating it with self-determination theory, social exchange theory and organizational climate diversity theory in order to capture innovative behavior in a common analytical and theoretical framework.

The achievements of this study may also have practical relevance, especially in raising the level of knowledge sharing among employees, by improving the cultural intelligence of employees in order to achieve higher performance and in raising awareness of the importance of managing intercultural differences in the organization. Uncontrolled cultural differences can lead to disputes, conflicts, discrimination and thus become a cultural barrier to sustainable development of the company. Finally, the authors argue one important point of view in discussions on this topic: it makes more sense to discuss how to do a good job in managing cultural differences than to engage in empty debates pro et contra cultural differences.

The study has some limitations. The authors are aware of at least three of them: sample limitations, measurement scales, and content. I would add another to this, namely the problem of overgeneralization in the formulation of hypotheses. Let us examine one example. "H1: Employee' CQ has a positive influence on knowledge sharing." What, how much, in what way, etc.? A hypothesis that is adequately logically formulated should be more specific. A commonplace in scientific methodology is that a hypothesis is verified based on successful predictions. Therefore, its specific/concrete formulation is important, which is not the case with all 6 hypotheses stated by the authors. If a hypothesis does not explicitly or implicitly demarcate what it is specifying, then it cannot be taken as adequate. Most importantly, there must be a way to reject the hypothesis. For this reason, I would advise the authors to make an additional effort before the manuscript goes to publication to reframe their basically good hypotheses to be more precisely worded.

Finally, despite these limitations, I would argue that the manuscript offers valuable insights and that due to its intellectual interest will influence future research on topics such as management of intercultural differences, organizational climate of knowledge sharing, cultural intelligence and sustainable innovative behavior of employees.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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Attachments

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Submitted filename: PONE-D-20-36985_reviewer.pdf

Sustainable Innovation in the context of organizational Cultural Diversity: The role of Cultural Intelligence and knowledge sharing

PONE-D-20-36985R1

Dear Dr. Jinlong,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Nadja Damij, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

Reviewer #3: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Thank you for providing further clarifications regarding the comments I have previously raised. This meets my expectations and I my opinion adds well to the overall structure of the paper. Wish you good luck with the publication and hope the readers will enjoy the paper.

Reviewer #2: Thanks for addressing the comments raised by the reviewer. The survey questionnaire has been provided as supporting information with the revised manuscript. Given that the entire survey was conducted online (via direct email or using a survey tool), the questionnaire content, in which survey participants were asked to respond to the questions with numeric choices (1 through 7), looks a bit ambiguous. There is no instruction in the questionnaire to suggest what a numeric value (across the range of 1 to 7), actually means to the survey respondent and, accordingly, is subject to an individual's interpretation.

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No