A Comparative Study of the Relationship among Antecedents and Job Satisfaction in Taiwan and Mainland China: Employability as Mediator

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a well-designed and a well-done research, the results are convinced. I have the following suggestions:

1.      In the section of conclusion, not in each case (response to the previous hypotheses) Taiwan and Mainland China are both mentioned, for instance, for the hypothesis "job security is negatively related to employability" only Taiwan has been mentioned, not Mainland China. I suggest applying a tabular display to show the results on all hypotheses, including both Taiwan and Mainland. It will then help to present the results clearer.

2.      I suggest using the interregional comparison instead of cross-country or cross-culture comparison between Taiwan and Mainland China. However, that is only my own interpretation.

3.      In the section on method the author/s shall explain the comparability between Taiwan and Mainland China, why not consider undertaking a comparison between Taiwan and other Chinese provinces, why are Mainland China and Taiwan comparable at all?   

Author Response

Reviewer’s Comment 1:

1.      In the section of conclusion, not in each case (response to the previous hypotheses) Taiwan and Mainland China are both mentioned, for instance, for the hypothesis "job security is negatively related to employability" only Taiwan has been mentioned, not Mainland China. I suggest applying a tabular display to show the results on all hypotheses, including both Taiwan and Mainland. It will then help to present the results clearer.

Author’s response:

Many thanks for the reviewer’s comment. We have added a tabular display to show the results on all hypotheses in Table 6, including both Taiwan and Mainland China.

Table 6. Results of Hypotheses Testing

Note: * p < .05, *** p < .001

[line 446-447]

Reviewer’s Comment:

2.      I suggest using the interregional comparison instead of cross-country or cross-culture comparison between Taiwan and Mainland China. However, that is only my own interpretation.

Author’s response:

Many thanks for the reviewer’s comment. We have used the interregional comparison instead of cross-country or cross-culture comparison between Taiwan and Mainland China.

[On the other hand, scholars believe that the interregional comparison results can provide significant insights, so that most scholars adopted interregional ways to compare the different research results in different contexts] (line 63-65)

Reviewer’s Comment:

3.      In the section on method the author/s shall explain the comparability between Taiwan and Mainland China, why not consider undertaking a comparison between Taiwan and other Chinese provinces, why are Mainland China and Taiwan comparable at all?   

Author’s response:

Many thanks for the reviewer’s comment. This study uses the purposive sampling to compare Taiwan and mainland China due to the initial research background and motivations. But we agree with the opinions of the reviewer, because provinces in mainland China develop at different levels and have differences in GDP, which may have a certain effect on this study. Most samples of this study were collected from Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, which are two coastal provinces in mainland China. Therefore, this study will add the source of these samples in 3.1 Sampling, and suggests future studies to expand the sampling scope and enhance the degree of generalization in the research limitations.

[and most questionnaires were collected from Fujian and Zhejiang provinces.] (line 284-285)

[The purposive sampling, instead of the random sampling, was utilised in this study. Although the samples of mainland China were collected from many provinces, only enterprises in Zhejiang and Fujian provinces were subject to the questionnaire survey due to the limitations in time and funds. The difference in GDP of each province of mainland China may result in the diversity of research results. Thus, future researchers are suggested to expand the scope of investigation, find the distinction between provinces before the statistical analysis, and then improve the degree of generalization of research results.] (line 568-574)

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I have appreciated very much your work and the effort in conducting the empirical study.

I have not substantial revisions to require, but only some suggestions to improve the quality of the manuscript.

The authors stated that: "Although job satisfaction can be regarded as the predictor of job performance, few empirical researches have been made to explore the relationship between employees’ employability and job satisfaction (De Vos et al., 2011; Ng, Eby, Sorensen, and Feldman, 2005)". However a very recent  research related employability with life satisfaction and quality of life; it could be cited:

Magnano, P., Santisi, G., Zammitti, A., Zarbo, R., & Di Nuovo, S. (2019). Self-Perceived Employability and Meaningful Work: The Mediating Role of Courage on Quality of Life. Sustainability (Switzerland), 11(3), 764–778. https://doi.org/10.3390/SU11030764

p. 7, line 280-281: the authors wrote: "557 copies of questionnaires have been collected and 548 copies are invalid": maybe they want to say that 548 were valid, considering the subsequent table presenting the sample

It is not clear if the scale selected to measure the variables have been used in the original form or they have been modified by the authors (in this second case, it should be clarified why and how they have been modified). In my opinion, the measures should be presented in a more clear way. 

Author Response

Reviewer’s Comment 1:

The authors stated that: "Although job satisfaction can be regarded as the predictor of job performance, few empirical researches have been made to explore the relationship between employees’ employability and job satisfaction (De Vos et al., 2011; Ng, Eby, Sorensen, and Feldman, 2005)". However a very recent  research related employability with life satisfaction and quality of life; it could be cited:

 Magnano, P., Santisi, G., Zammitti, A., Zarbo, R., & Di Nuovo, S. (2019). Self-Perceived Employability and Meaningful Work: The Mediating Role of Courage on Quality of Life. Sustainability (Switzerland), 11(3), 764–778. https://doi.org/10.3390/SU11030764

Author’s response:

Many thanks for the reviewer’s comment. I added this reference into the revision and made our sentences more meaningful.

Reviewer’s Comment 2:

p. 7, line 280-281: the authors wrote: "557 copies of questionnaires have been collected and 548 copies are invalid": maybe they want to say that 548 were valid, considering the subsequent table presenting the sample

Author’s response:

Many thanks for the reviewer’s comment. This is a typo, which has been revised in this manuscript.

Reviewer’s Comment 3:

It is not clear if the scale selected to measure the variables have been used in the original form or they have been modified by the authors (in this second case, it should be clarified why and how they have been modified). In my opinion, the measures should be presented in a more clear way.

Author’s response:

Many thanks for the reviewer’s comment. We added a table to present our measure of variable more clear.

Table 2. Scales

(line 311)

Author Response File: Author Response.docx