Management Accounting Systems, Top Management Teams, and Sustainable Knowledge Acquisition: Effects on Performance
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
- There are still multiple references for some of the statements such as the below sentence:
... has identified management accounting systems (MASs) as the key mediators to create sustainable value in the long term [10,11].
Author Response
Following your suggestion we revised the text to avoid multiple references in our manuscript. We thank the reviewer for the comments.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Overall, the paper is well written. Methodology, results are presented well. Contribution to literature needs to be clarified. The findings are not that insightful regarding the use of management accounting systems by top executives. This appears as a logical, common sense implication from the findings. Think about how this can be improved in the discussion section by concentrating more on the significant variables: knowledge acquisition on firm performance and the use of management accounting systems on knowledge acquisition. Please provide a list of indicators used for each latent variable in an appendix.
Author Response
-We rewrote our discussion section to improve the contribution of our research. Following your suggestion we concentrated on discussing the significant variables of our paper.
-We now provided an appendix with the items used for each latent research variable.
We thank the reviewer for this suggestion.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for undertaking the revision. I would suggest that in-spite of the discussion section revision, further improvement is required. It is important to clarify implications regarding sustainability knowledge and sustainability knowledge acquisition processes. Which of these is being analysed?
This confusion needs to be overcome at the start of the article and also in the Discussion section. You also need to justify why interactive management accounting systems are the most suitable to acquire sustainability knowledge.
I still did not see contribution to literature being presented at adequate level.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Firstly, we would like to thank all your comments in this revision and in the previous one, which helped us to improve our discussion section and to clarify the contribution of our paper.
Following we answer all your specific comments.
- We revised our manuscript to clarify in the text that we focused on sustainability knowledge acquisition processes. To avoid any confusion, we now mentioned in the introduction that our paper analyses sustainability knowledge acquisition process rather than knowledge creation process.
- Following your advice we have rewritten our introduction section to justify why interactive management accounting systems are the most suitable to acquire sustainability knowledge. In this sense, we compare the main characteristics of diagnostic and interactive use of MAS, to show that interactive use is the most suitable to analyse sustainability knowledge acquisition process.
- We have rewritten our discussion section to better show the contribution of our paper to management and knowledge literature. In this sense, we have separated theoretical contributions and practical implications of our paper. We thank the reviewer for this remark.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The study aimed to analyse the Management Accounting Systems usage to improve the firm’s performance and its relation with the acquisition Process of New Knowledge. The paper is well-written and the scope of the study is in line with the Sustainability journal. However, there are some issues that need to be addressed, as shown as follows:
Please provide the problem that you want to solve in the Abstract section. Please eliminate the multiple references to avoid plagiarism. After that please check the manuscript thoroughly and eliminate all the lumps in the manuscript. This should be done by characterising each reference individually. This can be done by mentioning 1 or 2 phrases per reference to show how it is different from the others and why it deserves mentioning. In the Introduction section, after the research objective, you need to add a brief explanation related to the research methodology, results, research novelty, and the importance of the study. The title of Section 4 should be Analysis and Results. The explanation related to the research analysis should be added here. It involves the interpretation of data gathered through the use of analytical and logical reasoning to determine patterns, relationships or trends. I find the explanation of the results (discussion) and conclusion sections to be limited, and the underlying message and conclusions not clearly presented or absent.
Author Response
Please provide the problem that you want to solve in the Abstract section. We have accomplish this requirement by adding in the Abstract section the sentence: “We seek TMTs to be able to identify how the Acquisition of Knowledge can increase business performance through the use of their MAS”. Please eliminate the multiple references to avoid plagiarism. Please check the manuscript thoroughly and eliminate all the lumps in the manuscript. This should be done by characterising each reference individually. This can be done by mentioning 1 or 2 phrases per reference to show how it is different from the others and why it deserves mentioning. We have accomplish this requirement by eliminating multiple references and reviewing the complete set of references individually. We have add some quotes and specific phrases to clarify the references. Finally, we have checked the entire manuscript for lumps. In the Introduction section, after the research objective, you need to add a brief explanation related to the research methodology, results, research novelty, and the importance of the study. We have accomplish this requirement by adding in the Introduction section the paragraph: “This study has been conducted through a survey among the main manufacturer firms in the Republic of Ecuador and the results have been analyzed by using Partial Least Square methodology. The results indicates the existence of a positive effect of interactive use of management accounting systems on sustainable knowledge acquisition process, as well as their influence on firm performance. These findings allow TMTs to understand the value of knowledge acquisition processes toward sustainability in organizations in a developing market where the topic is still unexplored.” The title of Section 4 should be Analysis and Results. The explanation related to the research analysis should be added here. It involves the interpretation of data gathered through the use of analytical and logical reasoning to determine patterns, relationships or trends. We have accomplish this requirement by changing the title of Sector 4 from “Results” to “Analysis and Results”. Also, we have merged the sections of “Results” and “Discussion” in a single section to include the explanation related to the research analysis. I find the explanation of the results (discussion) and conclusion sections to be limited, and the underlying message and conclusions not clearly presented or absent. We have accomplish this requirement by expanding the conclusions and including more explicit referents to the relationship between knowledge acquisition, firm’s performance and sustainability.
Reviewer 2 Report
See attached
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
We have accomplish the requirements of reviewer 2, by the following actions: We have created an Appendix in which we have included the questionnaires of the original articles and the questionnaire effectively applied in the study. The paper has been reviewed by an English native speaker We have corrected and specified the references that were wrong or inaccurate. We have developed the relationships between the constructs according to the literature on the field. It is for this reason that we have not test the relationship between TMT and performance; and between Interactive MAS and performance. In addition, our main construct, according to our hypothesis, is the acquisition of knowledge and, therefore, we were looking for its effect on performance and its role as a mediating variable with respect to MAS We have specified the limitations of the study in the conclusions section. We have done it with the following text: “However, we are aware that this work also presents some limitations. The results have been based on a study carried out at the TMT level on companies in the manufacturing sector in the Republic of Ecuador. We believe it is necessary, therefore, to extend the study in three directions: First, we could extend the study not only to Top Management Teams, but also to intermediate hierarchical teams or even to certain operative teams. Second, this study would require confirmation in another type of non-manufacturing industry and more related to trade or services. And third, we think that this study is likely to be extended to a broader sample of companies in a national an international context.”
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for presenting such a clear data analysis. My suggestions for improvement:
Please provide a more solid case for why Ecuador and why manufacturing sector? Brief, broad description on page 5 needs to be expanded.
Also, please explain sustainable knowledge acquisition as Gold measurement scales are not very clear. These scales need to be provided in an Appendix and justification for selecting these scales needs to be provided as well.
The Conclusions section needs improvement to include specific contextual implications which can be broadened.
Author Response
Please provide a more solid case for why Ecuador and why manufacturing sector? Brief, broad description on page 5 needs to be expanded. We have accomplish this requirement by including the following text: “Empirical data was obtained from the leading clusters of the private manufacturing sector in the south of the Republic of Ecuador [54]. In this case, the Republic of Ecuador is immersed in the Transformation of the Productive Matrix, which requires significant levels of innovation for the Industrialization process by import substitution [54]. Cuenca, as the main city in southern Ecuador, is the most dynamic city in industrial activity and is the only one in the country in which manufacturing activity is bigger than commercial activity [66]. This allows us to work on a sector that has dynamism, innovation and shows clear similarities with the other local economies in the emerging process, which will allow the generalization of the results obtained. We intended to cover the most important industrial area, which contains 70.77% of the large manufacturing companies of the country”. Also, please explain sustainable knowledge acquisition as Gold measurement scales are not very clear. These scales need to be provided in an Appendix and justification for selecting these scales needs to be provided as well. We have accomplish this requirement by creating an Appendix in which we have included the questionnaires of the original articles and the questionnaire effectively applied in the study. It is important to clarify that the questionnaires have been obtained from papers that are considered as seminal references. The Conclusions section needs improvement to include specific contextual implications which can be broadened. We have accomplish this requirement by expanding the conclusions and including more explicit referents to the relationship between knowledge acquisition, firm’s performance and sustainability.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Your AP (or PA?) dimensions mixes External and Internal processes. Your discussion focus on EXTERNAL-NOT acceptable
Author Response
The questionnaire gathers several processes towards knowledge acquisition, processes for the direct acquisition of knowledge from an external source and the way this acquired knowledge is integrated into the organization have been measured. Since this can be confusing in the interpretation of results, we have highlighted this fact in the limitations. We thank the reviewer for his/her comment.
Reviewer 3 Report
In-spite of the revision undertaken, the issue of expression (grammar) and language remains, also in the additions undertaken.
On page 12, please include the references rather than stating " used in the management literature...Not clear what is the meaning of " obtained from original article"?
The entire article needs a thorough edit. There are a very large number of grammatical errors throughout the article and they need to be addressed.
Author Response
The entire article was thoroughly edited, We’ve corrected the grammatical errors found and addressed them. We thank the reviewer for his/her comment.
