Paradigm Shift in Business Education: A Competence-Based Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. Content remarks:

The point of departure is relevant, though the paradigm shift has been discussed since Bologna (back to 1999). In any case, the critical literature review on the concept of competence is carefully supported.

As for methodology, the description is explicit and also seems carefully supported. However, I am not familiar with the SPSS software, so I can not judge.

As for content, there seems to be a certain contradiction that must be reconsidered, if you compare the statement of the abstract with the one presented in the last section:

Lines 27-28 - "Findings coming from both students and managers 
 show a significant awareness for the need of paradigm shift in business education, from knowledge 
 transfer to business competence development. 


Lines 463 - 464 - “Findings show that students are not fully aware of the need of the 
 paradigm shift and of their increased effort and engagement as active learners. 


Line 43 – “ knowledge transfer, study cases, and a linear curriculum 
…”. I believe the research method is case study (not study case)

Lines 100 e 101 – “Section 5 presents the main conclusions and limitations of our research. The paper closes with the list of references used directly in writing it.” 


I believe this specific part of the text should be rewritten. It is very generic  (it concerns the macrostructure of any paper).

Line 155 - I do not find academic the concept of right definition. I think the author means “accurate definition” or “commonly accepted definition”

2. Style and consistency

- Both SBE and SAE are used  (favor/labour, for instance). I believe the author should choose a single variety of Standard English, as far as spelling is concerned.

- Some examples of collocations that require a grammar review (subject /verb agreement, pronoun-noun...):

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We thank you very much for the positive contribution you had in helping us improve the paper.

Kind regards,

Shahrazad

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors, a greater explanation of the definition formulated from line 212 is suggested, specifically explaining what is understood by generic task and a certain quality level.


On the other hand, in line 425 it is suggested to use more current references that support the need for an ethics of values and principles when doing business.

Finally, line 465 is requested to extend the limitations of the research study.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We thank you very much for the positive contribution you had in helping us improve the paper.

Kind regards,

Shahrazad

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Report of Referee on “Paradigm Shift in Business Education: A Competence-Based Approach”

In the following text from the paper, what comes after “and.” and where does 70% come from?

The population we targeted was mainly made of students coming from…administration faculty at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies and. We physically distributed…, after the distribution we managed to collect 368…, obtaining a response rate of 84.44% (which is a very good response rate according to who set the threshold to at least 70%).

Logit is acceptable for the outcome variables, but not really required.  Regression (discriminant analysis) would also show marginal impacts on probabilities of an outcome of 1, rather than log odds, which are mathematically correct, but not at all intuitive, and only really useful for small probability events.  Based on logit, marginal impacts should also be presented.  The estimation presented is acceptable, apart from needing the marginal impacts to be stated, but the authors tediously try to explain every single result, statistically significant or insignificant, with excessive post hoc arguments.  The authors need to remember Type I and Type II error.

I actually like this paper, but the analysis of the results includes over-analysis as if the authors were afraid not to explain absolutely everything.

Is factor analysis used at any point in this paper?  Maybe confirmatory factor analysis?  I ask because the SPSS procedure appears to create or use subsets of the Likert scales collected.

At line 263, what should “between the o questions” really be?  Tables should show concepts not “Qx” as explanatory variables or predictors

When a regression, linear, logistic, or any other, is statistically significant overall but none of the explanatory variables have statistically significant coefficients, then multicollinearity is actually possible.  Examine the multicollinearity in this case—only in this case—and perhaps the mystery will be solved.  In any case, the individual coefficient tests and the joint test of the model are different and not linked by any necessary relationship, nor is there any problem here.  Trying to explain a reasonable statistical result using student behavior is unnecessary.  Present that interpretation as possible, but note the statistical explanation also.

What is happening in all of these quotes?

“The Hosmer and Lemeshow Test is another measure of goodness of fit which should be interpreted conversely to the Omnibus Chi-square meaning it uses non-significance as a goodness of fit such that larger p values are preferred (p=0.673 in our case).”  “The Hosmer and Lemeshow indicates relative goodness of fit with p=0.431.”  “The Hosmer and Lemeshow Test does not particularly show g goodness of fit of our model with a p=0.619. The accuracy of the classification of our model is given by the percentage of correctly classified items which is 91.0%.”  If 0.431 is good, how can 0.619 be bad?  “The Hosmer and Lemeshow Test witnesses the robustness of the goodness of fit of our model with a  p=0.017.”  I thought large values were the goal?  Is there an error in reporting 0.017?

Are the results in Table 8 statistically significantly different from each other?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We thank you very much for the positive contribution you had in helping us improve the paper.

Kind regards,

Shahrazad

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The study explores whether business education universities should change from a classical transfer approach to a competence-based practice. The following comments should improve the study.

The introductory section should explicitly identify and briefly elaborate the contributions of the study.

Research question (line 230) should be mentioned and briefly elaborated in the introduction, not in the methodology section.

Line 244 states: “business administration faculty at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies and.” And what?

Line 247, who set the threshold?

Table with summary statistics (the mean and standard deviation) and variable description is missing. This table should come before regression analysis.

State the dependent variable in the title of Table 2.

State the name of independent variables in Table 2 (instead of Q1, Q7, Q13). Same should be done in each table that presents empirical results.

Different levels of statistical significance should be noted. If a coefficient is statistically significant at the 10%, it is only a marginal significance, while a 1% level is highly statistically significant.

What is the AHP (Table 9)?

Please explain the priority vectors and the consistency index in Table 9. What kind of analysis is this?

Table number is missing in line 281.

Are the students the only one who responded to the survey? If yes, what kind of projects does Q4 refer to? How many students had part-time and summer jobs (Q10)? How many students engaged in entrepreneurial activities (Q16) and in what kind of entrepreneurial activities?

How can students answer Q6, Q9, Q12 and Q17 if they never worked?

Who is Saaty (line 280)?

Section 5 should be titled “Conclusions”, please see other papers published in Sustainability or other journals.

Line 440, for addressing what?

The concluding section does not comment on the findings from six logistic models.

What is meant by “some inconsistencies in the answers of the students” (line 466)?

There are too many citations in the paper.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We thank you very much for the positive contribution you had in helping us improve the paper.

Kind regards,

Shahrazad

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

The author(s) have addressed my comments at a satisfactory level.