Recruiting strategic human capital from MNCs—Does hiring MNC managers enable exporting in domestic firms?

Pedro de Faria; Torben Schubert; Wolfgang Sofka

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0257922

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJune 16, 2021
22 Jul 2021 Decision Letter - Yuriy Bilan, Editor PONE-D-21-19610 RECRUITING STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL FROM MNCS – DOES HIRING MNC MANAGERS ENABLE EXPORTING IN DOMESTIC FIRMS? PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Schubert, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 05 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. 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Please do not edit.] 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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 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). 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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: The choice of this time period requires justification (72-73) It is necessary to dwell in more detail on the definition of "young, domestic firm" (222) It is necessary to add other actions to work with information, "use" for example (291-293) More comments see in the text. Reviewer #2: The paper is scientifically sound and well-structured, main findings are justified using essential dataset and appropriate statistical tools of analysis. However, the study has some drawbacks. The most essential from them is usage of the data of 2007-2015 as well as out-dated scientific literature to justify Authors' position and hypotheses to be checked. Combining not recent data and theoretical background for own research, Authors cannot prove that their results correspond to the current situation in HRM. If Authors could justify the unavailability of more recent data, this case can be appropriate to illustrate the methodology of links analysis in the field of HRM, particularly, hiring managers from MNCs, and their influence on economic activity of the firms, including export. In any case, the explanation of the 2007-2015 data use should be provided. The Literature review in this thriving field of research should be updated without any doubts. In the given form this research (despite its importance, scientific interest and carefully fulfilled analysis) looks like study been prepared earlier and not published. More comments see in the text. ****** 6. 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 [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-19610.docx Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-19610 Rev.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257922.r001
Revision 1
30 Aug 2021 Author Response Dear reviewers, thank you very much for your insightful comments, which have considerably improved the paper. We have dealt with them thoroughly and hope that we were able to deal with them satisfactorily. We reproduce your detailed comments below and provide our responses in italics directly after each comment. With best regards, The authors Reviewer #1: The choice of this time period requires justification (72-73) We currently have access only to the years until 2015. Data before 2007 could not be used because the internationalization data is only available from this year onwards. We have explained these data limitations in the text in Section 3.1. It is necessary to dwell in more detail on the definition of "young, domestic firm" (222) We extended the literature work here following your suggestions. Following Extant research on life-cycle patterns of firms is not unambiguous about when firms are no longer considered as “young”, but prior studies have established that between 4-7 years is typically what would be considered as young. Domestic, for our purpose, are all firms, which either do not have foreign subsidiaries or are not owned by a foreign firm. This conservative definition of “domestic” is a useful choice for our research question which specifically investigates labour mobility from MNCs and benefits from an unambiguous definition of hiring firms which are not MNCs. These are also aligned with the definitions we adopted later on in our empirical analysis. Thus, we believe that the definitions of “young” and “domestic” are theoretically justified, firmly grounded in the literature and consistent with the empirical study. Following your guidance, we have expanded and clarified these considerations in the revised version of the manuscript. It is necessary to add other actions to work with information, "use" for example (291-293) Thank you very much for this comment. We realized that we were a little narrow here. We have discussed other types of functions or management tasks that are performed through hierarchical differentiation including the use of joint resources, collaboration and coordination in general. It [The reference list] should be updated in accordance with modern scientific research, some literature sources are outdated (1948, 1962, 1988, 1992…) We followed your advice and updated the literature list with many very recent works. Indeed, some papers were quite old. Yet, we decided against dropping them, because several of them are quite fundamental and lay the foundations of research done today. We hope that this was in your interest. Reviewer #2: The paper is scientifically sound and well-structured, main findings are justified using essential dataset and appropriate statistical tools of analysis. However, the study has some drawbacks. The most essential from them is usage of the data of 2007-2015 as well as out-dated scientific literature to justify Authors' position and hypotheses to be checked. Combining not recent data and theoretical background for own research, Authors cannot prove that their results correspond to the current situation in HRM. If Authors could justify the unavailability of more recent data, this case can be appropriate to illustrate the methodology of links analysis in the field of HRM, particularly, hiring managers from MNCs, and their influence on economic activity of the firms, including export. In any case, the explanation of the 2007-2015 data use should be provided. The Literature review in this thriving field of research should be updated without any doubts. Thank you for this comment. Indeed, the period until 2015 is chosen because of limitations to data availability. No more recent data exists in the authors databases as of now. This is explained in Section 3.1. We also made an effort and explain this limitation explicitly as a well as the conceptual problems to infer to more recent periods in the limitations section. We agree that changing HRM practices can affect our results and therefore it is not a priori clear how far into the future our results will extend. At the same time, our structural theory describes aspects of organizing social life that are quite robust over time. To strengthen this claim, we followed your suggestion and updated our literature work substantially. We hope that this dual approach accommodates your concerns. In the given form this research (despite its importance, scientific interest and carefully fulfilled analysis) looks like study been prepared earlier and not published. The research was conducted between 2019 and 2020. We presented earlier versions of the study in relevant seminars and conferences. Afterwards, we improved and revised the manuscript iteratively. Naturally, this process takes time but has hopefully elevated the quality of the manuscript that we could ultimately submit to the journal. More comments see in the text. We have incorporated all of your additional comments and literature recommendations in the text when they were immediately instructive and did not require a detailed reply. ________________________________________ Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: replies - 20210830.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257922.r002
14 Sep 2021 Decision Letter - Yuriy Bilan, Editor RECRUITING STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL FROM MNCS – DOES HIRING MNC MANAGERS ENABLE EXPORTING IN DOMESTIC FIRMS? PONE-D-21-19610R1 Dear Author 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. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Yuriy Bilan Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257922.r003
Formally Accepted
17 Sep 2021 Acceptance Letter - Yuriy Bilan, Editor PONE-D-21-19610R1 Recruiting Strategic Human Capital from MNCs – Does Hiring MNC Managers Enable Exporting in Domestic Firms? Dear Dr. Schubert: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Professor Yuriy Bilan Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257922.r004

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