When the going gets tough, the entrepreneurs get less entrepreneurial?

Joeri van Hugten; Johanna Vanderstraeten; Arjen van Witteloostuijn; Wim Coreynen

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0290253

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJanuary 31, 2023
13 Apr 2023 Decision Letter - Besnik Krasniqi, Editor PONE-D-23-02387When the going gets tough, the entrepreneurs get less entrepreneurial?PLOS ONE Dear Dr. van Hugten, 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 expand the originality and significance of contribution in introduction section by adding more arguments about the contribution to existing knowledge.IN the methods section there are some technical details that could improve readability of the paper. In conclusions you need to expand implications of your study and also add limitations which basically are missing. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by May 28 2023 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Besnik Krasniqi, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability. Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized. Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access. We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter. 3. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments: Dear Author(s) We have received reviewers for you paper. The reviewers has recommended some minor revisions to your manuscript. Therefore, I invite you to respond to the reviewer(s)' comments and revise your manuscript. Once again, thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS One [Note: HTML markup is below. 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). 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 ****** 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: No Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 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: METHOD Table 1. Variables and measures show that rich data sources are used. This can be considered a strength of the research. In line 274, we see that 5 companies in the sample have more than 50 employees. In the sample, you said that most of them are less than 5 employees. How many, please specify. Sample. As part of an ongoing consulting project involving entrepreneurs and their SMEs, we asked 532 entrepreneurs in great detail about their venture, as an enterprise, and about themselves as an individual, a couple of weeks later. In the venture questionnaire, we measured EO and satisfaction with performance. In the individual survey, we measured our pair of mediators: ESE and SJS. Thus, measures of concepts directly linked in our conceptual model are never sourced from the same survey. This time lag substantially reduces the threat of common-method variance, probably to (close to) zero [49]. The sample contains entrepreneurs and their ventures from Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium), from 55 three-digit industries. All but five ventures have less than 50 employees, and many even have less than five employees. In line 388, we see that 1 company in the sample has more than 50 employees. Sixth, larger ventures should be more buffered against hard times, so post-crisis recovery is less likely to be very dissatisfactory, and (sense of) job security should be greater. Very large ventures are often more inert, and thus less entrepreneurially oriented. However, all but one ventures in our sample have fewer than 50 employees. With that range, it may be that this covariate is not impactful. Structural equation models estimated with the lavaan 396 packages in R were used in the research. Therefore, giving the script in Appendix H is essential for the reproducibility of the study. RESULTS Giving scatter diagrams as an attachment is healthier for reading the text. Otherwise, there are too many shapes. This can make the text difficult to read. DISCUSSION 1-Main results are compatible with the crisis imprinting theory, 2- The behavioral theory of the firm is included in H5alt. 3- Another theory that may be related is the 'trial by fire' model 4- The second aspect is a causal 557 mechanism, which is more developed under the banner of "the red queen effect." Including the first two theories in the introduction and literature and the third and fourth theories in the discussion creates confusion. However, when the discussion section is thoroughly read, it is seen that the justification is well done. CONCLUSION Please give abbreviations where they are first used: for example: "sense of job security (SJS)" on line 603. Please check all abbreviations in the article. The indirect effects of hard times on EO via ESE and SJS are weak. The reasons for that weakness differs between them. The indirect effect via ESE is weak due to the weak effect of some types of hard times on ESE. Hard times during crisis have a weaker effect on ESE than hard times after the crisis, which suggests that our persistence premise may be weak for ESE. The indirect effect via sense of job security (SJS) is weak because, although hard times do reduce SJS, SJS is only weakly related to EO. A possible explanation for this is that the evidence from employee samples that SJS influences EO only partially applies to the entrepreneur context. Please proofreading the entire article. Reviewer #2: Thank you for providing to me the opportunity to review the article. I think that there are few studies that examine entrepreneurship during the crisis, thereby, this article makes contribution to the literature. There is no limitations and future suggestions section, I recommend to authors to write as sub-section within the discussion section. ****** 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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290253.r001
Revision 1
28 May 2023 Author Response Response to reviewers PONE-D-23-02387 When the going gets tough, the entrepreneurs get less entrepreneurial? Thank you for the opportunity to revise and resubmit our paper. Please find our responses to your suggestions indented and in italics (in the word document version). Editor’s comments: Please expand the originality and significance of contribution in introduction section by adding more arguments about the contribution to existing knowledge. We added an explicit mention of the rich data we show an analysis of. IN the methods section there are some technical details that could improve readability of the paper. We have clarified the technical details where the reviewers noticed unclarity. In conclusions you need to expand implications of your study and also add limitations which basically are missing. We have clarified the implications in the conclusions by moving the more nuanced and involved discussion to the new limitations subsection in the discussion section. Now the conclusion really drives home the main message. Furthermore, the discussion section is now reorganized into an implications subsection, where expanded implications are mentioned. 5. Review Comments to the Author Reviewer #1: METHOD Table 1. Variables and measures show that rich data sources are used. This can be considered a strength of the research. Thank you for appreciating the valuable and unique richness of our data. This comment inspired us to sell this richness explicitly in the introduction. In line 274, we see that 5 companies in the sample have more than 50 employees. In the sample, you said that most of them are less than 5 employees. How many, please specify. Sample. As part of an ongoing consulting project involving entrepreneurs and their SMEs, we asked 532 entrepreneurs in great detail about their venture, as an enterprise, and about themselves as an individual, a couple of weeks later. In the venture questionnaire, we measured EO and satisfaction with performance. In the individual survey, we measured our pair of mediators: ESE and SJS. Thus, measures of concepts directly linked in our conceptual model are never sourced from the same survey. This time lag substantially reduces the threat of common-method variance, probably to (close to) zero [49]. The sample contains entrepreneurs and their ventures from Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium), from 55 three-digit industries. All but five ventures have less than 50 employees, and many even have less than five employees. In line 388, we see that 1 company in the sample has more than 50 employees. Sixth, larger ventures should be more buffered against hard times, so post-crisis recovery is less likely to be very dissatisfactory, and (sense of) job security should be greater. Very large ventures are often more inert, and thus less entrepreneurially oriented. However, all but one ventures in our sample have fewer than 50 employees. With that range, it may be that this covariate is not impactful. We have corrected this inconsistency (also in line 578). There are 5 companies with between 50 and 100 employees, and one company with 100-200 employees. We now also specify the number of companies with less than 5 employees (104). Structural equation models estimated with the lavaan 396 packages in R were used in the research. Therefore, giving the script in Appendix H is essential for the reproducibility of the study. Thank you for appreciating our efforts to make the study as reproducible as we can. RESULTS Giving scatter diagrams as an attachment is healthier for reading the text. Otherwise, there are too many shapes. This can make the text difficult to read. We agree with this concern but propose a different solution. Our plan is to ensure readability at the copyedit stage by indicating that the scatter diagrams should be published at half the size of regular figures. But we are open to other suggestions. DISCUSSION 1-Main results are compatible with the crisis imprinting theory, 2- The behavioral theory of the firm is included in H5alt. 3- Another theory that may be related is the 'trial by fire' model 4- The second aspect is a causal mechanism, which is more developed under the banner of "the red queen effect." Including the first two theories in the introduction and literature and the third and fourth theories in the discussion creates confusion. However, when the discussion section is thoroughly read, it is seen that the justification is well done. Thank you for appreciating the justification, and thank you for reading thoroughly. We reorganized the discussion to reduce confusion. CONCLUSION Please give abbreviations where they are first used: for example: "sense of job security (SJS)" on line 603. Please check all abbreviations in the article. The indirect effects of hard times on EO via ESE and SJS are weak. The reasons for that weakness differs between them. The indirect effect via ESE is weak due to the weak effect of some types of hard times on ESE. Hard times during crisis have a weaker effect on ESE than hard times after the crisis, which suggests that our persistence premise may be weak for ESE. The indirect effect via sense of job security (SJS) is weak because, although hard times do reduce SJS, SJS is only weakly related to EO. A possible explanation for this is that the evidence from employee samples that SJS influences EO only partially applies to the entrepreneur context. Thank you for pointing this out. We have corrected this and also doublechecked all other abbreviations. Please proofreading the entire article. We carefully doublechecked the article for any spelling or grammar issues. Reviewer #2: Thank you for providing to me the opportunity to review the article. I think that there are few studies that examine entrepreneurship during the crisis, thereby, this article makes contribution to the literature. There is no limitations and future suggestions section, I recommend to authors to write as sub-section within the discussion section. Thank you for recognizing our contribution to the literature. We have added a limitations and future research subsection as recommended. This comment pushed us to reorganize our discussion and conclusion into a more focused format, improving the paper. ________________________________________ 2. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability. Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized. Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access. We have paid extra attention to being as specific as possible about our data availability. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290253.r002
4 Aug 2023 Decision Letter - Abdullah Al Mamun, Editor When the going gets tough, the entrepreneurs get less entrepreneurial? PONE-D-23-02387R1 Dear Dr. Joeri van Hugten, 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, Abdullah Al Mamun, PhD 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 ******** 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 ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 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 ****** 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 ****** 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: (No Response) ****** 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 ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290253.r003
Formally Accepted
14 Aug 2023 Acceptance Letter - Abdullah Al Mamun, Editor PONE-D-23-02387R1 When the going gets tough, the entrepreneurs get less entrepreneurial? Dear Dr. van Hugten: 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 Assoc. Prof. Dr. Abdullah Al Mamun Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290253.r004

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .