Does management support drive sustained agile usage? a serial mediation model and cIPMA perspective

Uthpala Wijesinghe; Vidara Mapitiyage; Chathurya Wickramarathne; Chamoda Wickramage; Krishantha Wisenthige; Chathuni Aluthwala

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0316538

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionSeptember 23, 2024
28 Oct 2024 Decision Letter - Farhan Sarwar, Editor PONE-D-24-42301Does management support drive sustained agile usage? A serial mediation model and cIPMA perspectivePLOS ONE Dear Dr. Wisenthige, 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. Overall the topic is unique and provides significance contribution to the curren literature. However one of the reviewer has raised some major concerns however the concerns regarding introduction, liteature review and methdology needs to be addressed at priority. The second reviewer have raised minor concerns which should be addressed as well. Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 12 2024 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. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Dr. Farhan Sarwar 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 the ethics statement in the Methods, you have specified that verbal consent was obtained. Please provide additional details regarding how this consent was documented and witnessed, and state whether this was approved by the IRB 3. Please include your full ethics statement in the ‘Methods’ section of your manuscript file. In your statement, please include the full name of the IRB or ethics committee who approved or waived your study, as well as whether or not you obtained informed written or verbal consent. If consent was waived for your study, please include this information in your statement as well. 4. Please ensure that you refer to Figure 1 in your text as, if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the figure. Additional Editor Comments: Dear Authors The review of the manuscript is complete. You are requested to address the issues raised by the reviewers. [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: Partly 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: Yes 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: Dear Authors I hope this message finds you well. I would like to express my gratitude for the opportunity to review your insightful manuscript. Engaging with your research has been a rewarding experience, and I appreciate the effort and thoughtfulness that went into your work. I look forward to sharing my feedback. Reviewer #2: This feedback concerns the manuscript “Does management support drive sustained agile usage? A serial mediation model and cIPMA perspective.” The paper was attractive and well-managed. I appreciate the authors' efforts to conduct empirical research in an area with a considerable gap. Below are a few suggestions to improve the quality of the work. 1) Avoid using abbreviations in research questions. 2) Minor changes are also recommended in the document. 3) Do not use abbreviations in headings. 4) Do not use abbreviations in hypotheses. 5) H2, H3, and H4 are required to be rewritten or hypothesized again. 6) A stratified multi-stage cluster sampling approach was used and described. However, a description of cluster sampling is missing. 7) An explanation should follow each table. Moreover, Table 3 is described along with Table 2, and the remaining description of Table 2 is given after Table 3. ****** 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: Yes: Dr. Muhammad Adnan Sial ******** [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: Comments.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0316538.r001
Revision 1
18 Nov 2024 Author Response We have attached the point to point response to the comments and suggestions as a separate file. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0316538.r002
1 Dec 2024 Decision Letter - Farhan Sarwar, Editor PONE-D-24-42301R1Does management support drive sustained agile usage? A serial mediation model and cIPMA perspectivePLOS ONE Dear Dr. Wisenthige, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript with minor revisions. The manuscript has immensely improved, and the suggestions from the reviewers are suitably incroporated. There are few minor observations which should be incorporated Table 6: R2 and F2 are mentioned; the 2 should be in superscript. Table 7 and Table 9, and their supporting discussion, do not add substantial value to the IPMA (Importance-Performance Map Analysis) section. They do not provide new insights or actionable data beyond what is already discussed. The manuscript is already too detailed. Only IPMA with table 8 is enough, which shows construct-level results. Kindly omit these two tables and reduce the discussion of their result. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 15 2025 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, Dr. Farhan Sarwar Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: 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: The manuscript has immensely improved, and the suggestions from the reviewers are suitably incroporated. There are few minor observations which should be incorporated Table 6: R2 and F2 is mentioned; the 2 should be in superscript. Table 7 and Table 9, and their supporting discussion do not add substantial value to the IPMA (Importance-Performance Map Analysis) section. If they do not provide new insights or actionable data beyond what is already discussed. The manuscript is already too detailed and it is my suggestion that only IPMA with table 8 is enough, which shows construct-level results. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] [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.0316538.r003
Revision 2
5 Dec 2024 Author Response Reviewer Comments 01 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. Response to the Comment 01 We sincerely thank you for bringing this to our attention. To address this concern, the reference list was completely reorganised. First, the following citation (line 1260-1261 of the originally revised manuscript) was removed, and the subsequent references were numbered accordingly. 5. Rathor S, Batra D, Xia W, Zhang M. What Constitutes Software Development Agility? 2016. Next, the reference list was adjusted to reflect the cited order. Thus, the reference below, previously cited under citation number 126 (line 1591-1593 of the originally revised manuscript), was numbered as 93 (line 1516-1518 in the newly revised manuscript). 93. Wisenthige K. Research Design. In: Saliya CA, editor. Social Research Methodology and Publishing Results: A Guide to Non-Native English Speakers. IGI Global Scientific Publishing; 2023. p. 74–93. doi:10.4018/978-1-6684-6859-3.ch006 Then, each reference was individually updated and made consistent to include complete reference details in the correct formats. For example, issue numbers and page numbers were included where available. The full forms of the journal names were included for clarity. The newly reviewed and adjusted reference list can be found on line 1236-1620 in the newly revised manuscript. Reviewer Comment 02 Table 6: R2 and F2 is mentioned; the 2 should be in superscript. Response to the Comment 02 We are grateful for your keen attention to detail. We have adjusted the formatting as requested in both the caption and in the table content (line 911 in the newly revised manuscript). Reviewer Comment 03 Table 7 and Table 9, and their supporting discussion do not add substantial value to the IPMA (Importance-Performance Map Analysis) section. If they do not provide new insights or actionable data beyond what is already discussed. The manuscript is already too detailed and it is my suggestion that only IPMA with table 8 is enough, which shows construct-level results. Response to the Comment 03 Your insightful comment is greatly appreciated. We acknowledge that Table 7 and Table 9 do not offer substantial additional value. In response, the tables 7 and 9 were removed for a more concise yet comprehensive discussion. The subsequent table numbers were adjusted accordingly. The subheadings ‘Importance-performance map analysis at construct level’ (line 931 of the originally revised manuscript) and ‘Importance-performance map analysis at indicator level’ (line 950 of the originally revised manuscript) were removed. Their contents were merged for better conciseness (line 929-950 in the newly revised manuscript). To improve the flow of the newly merged section, the discussion of MS on the construct level was moved from line 937-939 of the originally revised manuscript, to line 939-942 in the newly revised manuscript. This ensures a better continuation of the construct’s discussion on indicator level. The fully adjusted section regarding the IPMA on the construct level, on line 929-949 in the newly revised manuscript, reads thus: “Fig 4 and Table 7 provide a comprehensive representation of the IPMA results at construct level. The analysis revealed that TR in the upper-right quadrant exhibits the highest relative importance of 0.500, indicating its pivotal role in driving SAU. However, with an above-average performance of 75.214, there is a low potential for further increase. A one-unit increase in TR from 75.214 to 76.214 (as shown in Table 7) can lead to a significant increase of 0.500 points in the performance of SAU. Relative to TR, a one-unit increase of AM in the upper-left quadrant from 79.373 to 80.373 leads to an increase of 0.391 points in SAU’s performance, which, while very slightly below average, is still substantial. On the other hand, AT in the lower-left quadrant exhibits trifling importance (0.224), and slightly below average performance in the furtherance of SAU (73.492). Thus, increasing the performance of AT does not lead to as large an increase in SAU. Relative to the other constructs, MS in the lower-right quadrant shows a considerable importance of 0.492, yet its actual performance at 69.963 falls short of the average performance of constructs. This reveals an area of critical concern for practitioners.” The previous detailed description of the IPMA at the indicator level has been omitted. To still emphasize the importance of scrutinizing the construct MS (as its of low performance yet high importance), the following has been included (line 947-949 in the newly revised manuscript): “The IPMA of MS at the indicator level (Fig 5) corroborates the findings at the construct level. The underperformance of MS is attributable to and reflected in deficiencies across all five of its indicators. This further underpins the vital need for attention to this construct.” Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0316538.r004
13 Dec 2024 Decision Letter - Farhan Sarwar, Editor Does management support drive sustained agile usage? A serial mediation model and cIPMA perspective PONE-D-24-42301R2 Dear Dr. Wisenthige, 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 will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, 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, Farhan Sarwar Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0316538.r005
Formally Accepted
19 Dec 2024 Acceptance Letter - Farhan Sarwar, Editor PONE-D-24-42301R2 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Wisenthige, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, 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 customercare@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 Dr. Farhan Sarwar Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0316538.r006

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