How Past Failure Predicts Subsequent Entrepreneurial Intention: A Comparative Study of Mainland China and Taiwan

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Referee report on “Will they or will they exit: The role of past failure

In predicting future entrepreneurial intentions”.

The paper formulates and tests some hypotheses related to the impact of past failures on entrepreneurs. Empirical support is found for most of the hypotheses.  I believe that most of the results are quite intuitive and after some improvements the paper can be published.

Comments.

1. Overall, I think the paper is technically sound and uses an appropriate econometric technique and hence the statistical part of the paper is solid.
2. My comments are mostly related to the strength of the paper’s contribution and its connection to existing literature. Many of conclusions have been reached by several other papers previously. For example, hypothesis 1 deals with a question about whether past failures have positive or negative impact on entrepreneurs. A positive effect is mostly found. However, this result was found in eg, Yamakawa Peng and Deeds (2010) among others.  Also for the most part results are not quite surprising. Secondly, the paper claims that it makes theoretical contributions (see abstract and the main text). I have serious concerns about this claim too because the paper contribution is rather empirical not theoretical.
3. To improve the paper along these comments I suggest that the authors: 1) provide deeper review of literature related to entrepreneurial failure and learning from failure. There are many interesting and important subtopics within this large area that became very important and popular in recent years eg. serial entrepreneurs; learning from entrepreneurial failures related to crowdfunding campaign failures; behavioural aspects of entrepreneurs’ decision-making and their effect on learning from failures, learning in social entreprise etc. All these topics are very popular and important in both recent theoretical and practical literature and they should help in developing the topic studied in the present paper. Special attention should be paid to the review of the theoretical articles related to these areas. Even though the paper is empirical, good papers (either theoretical or empirical) always provide a review of both types of papers related to their topic of study. The reasons for this are that different types of readers may be interested in reading the paper and more importantly it helps to better evaluate the merits of the paper’s contribution. So with regard to the areas mentioned previously note the following. Theoretical papers analyzing serial entrepreneurs include, for example, Sarasvathy Menonand Kuechle (2013, SBE) and Stam, Audretsch and Meijaard (2008), JEE). For other topics, see, eg. Greenberg and Gerber (2014), Miglo and Miglo (2019, ch. 6.1), Miglo (2018), Seanor and Meaton (2008) etc.).

2)  a better effort should be provided to explain the paper motivation and also its novelty and perhaps the elements of surprise. My previous point can help the authors with this question. Perhaps new analysis or some cases should be added related to issues from previous point. Eg comparing learning from crowdfunding campaigns failure in China and Taiwan or smth. Is it similar to other types of failure effect or is it different? That would really be interesting. Respectively most of the hypotheses should be better justified. Also as I noticed above the authors can better relate their article to theoretical literature which may perhaps help them find a new hypothesis that will be interesting from a theoretical point of view. Overall, I think most hypotheses could remain as is under the condition that their contribution is better explained. But I also think a new hypothesis should be developed that way the reader will have no questions about the degree of novelty and “surprise” of the paper.

Author Response

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thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The first suggestion is to use academic English for all the paper where the use of capital letters (e.g. for institutions, beginning of sentences), word order and subject and predicate matching in number are a must (”there have been no agreement”). Moreover, clear and concise (maybe simpler) sentences shall bring more accuracy to the text, precisely when figures and numbers are used. Authors shall also use the correct English processing of figures and numbers (”9608” shall be 9,608 whereas ”3239” shall be 3,239 in lines 211-212). Abbreviations shall be explained when used the first time. I suggest checking again the Manuscript Preparation guidelines. You shall use linking words too to highlight the flow of ideas.  

Secondly, irrespective of how interesting the contents is, the tile shall be re-phrased to attract more the reader to download the article and read it.  Also, the abstract does not emphasize the contents and is unstructured according to paper's scope, objectives, methodology and findings. It also needs a serious English check. Nonetheless, key words shall be re-defined to match more the re-phased title and improved abstract so as to gain more visibility. regarding the structure of the paper, there are no section on results and back matter as demanded within Manuscript Preparation guidelines.

Thirdly, regarding methodology, please provide arguments why the comparison between China and Taiwan was made and describe better the instrument of research. Figure 1 is unclear whereas in my opinion, Figures 2&3 and 4&5 shall show the comparison between the two countries (maybe combined are better). Sample characteristics shall be offered a separate paragraph and figure, being highlighted from the proposed model of entrepreneurial intention.

Not all references seem to have anything in common with the article and topic. For example, [20] does not state that "past failure may limit entrepreneurs efforts in entrepreneurial activities" and makes no connection to the article's topic.

Author Response

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thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The article deals with an interesting topic concerning past failure and entrepreneurial intention. It is written on the basis of a very broad review of the literature. The hypotheses have been formulated correctly and properly justified. Some slight shortcomings are visible in the theoretical part of the article.

1. It is not exactly indicated which theories are used to make the hypotheses.
2. Entrepreneurial culture is a very broad topic and although an attempt has been made to describe it and to formulate the hypothesis, the selection of variables for the EC (entrepreneurial culture) is already unclear. The selection of variables for the EC must be indicated and justified.
3. The shortcut on page 3 - TPB, which should be written for the first time as a theory of planned behaviour.

However, there is a certain difficulty in responding to the conducted empirical research. The authors indicate that ‘data results show that most variables are significantly correlated with each other' (p. 6). One of the assumptions for building logistic regression models is the lack of correlated variables. In a model consisting of many variables this correlation may have been weakened, but the authors did not present tests of reliability and validity of models. It should be indicated whether there is a problem of collinearity in the built logistic regression models.

Author Response

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Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

I think the paper is very promising and the author makes a good effort to provide an interesting contribution to the literature on the role of past failure towards future entrepreneurial intention. Although the paper overall good, I would like suggest following recommendations-

1. Remove the last paragraph of introduction about the implications of this study and join that section with the conclusion.
2. Also, in the final paragraph of your introduction, I would suggest that you indicate how your article is structured. For instance, you may say’ our article is structured as follows.
3. You can enrich your literature review with some references related to people resilience, such as, Rahman, M., & Mendy, J. (2019). Evaluating People-related Resilience and Non-Resilience Barriers of SMEs’ Internationalisation: A developing country perspective. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 27(2), 225-240.
4. I suggest that the paper is proofread to deal with minor grammatical errors before the next submission

Author Response

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Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

1. Overall significant improvements have been made compared to initial draft.
2. Minor comments:
3. There are mistakes in references. I the pdf file that I received errors are shown with regard to some references (see, eg, p3, p4 etc.)
4. Section Introduction, second paragraph. You use the concept of "Jovanovic's view". I suppose you are referring to the paper by Jovanovic (1982). Problem is that since you did not introduce this concept previously, readers may be confused. I suppose that you cited this paper previously but the way citations are published in this journal, does not let readers to see author names (only the paper number) of cited articles until very end. So readers can be confused.
5. There are confusions related to the citations of Yamakawa, Peng and Deeds paper. You have mentioned this paper several times. The problem is that in the list of references you dont have a paper by Yamakawa, Peng and Deeds. One you have in the list of references is by Yamakawa, Khavul, Peng and Deeds. So check all references carefully.
6. In their response to my comments the authors put a paragraph called "Study on crowdfunding" (by the end of their last question answer). However I have not found this paragraph in the main text.

Author Response

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Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

1. Abstract: Entrepreneurship with capital letter; present in brackets what GEM is; please add at the end 2-3 lines describing the used method of research, the econometric technique and the conclusion of the study: if correlation is positive and negative
2. I would recommend checking English with a native speaker to bring more value to the paper.
3. There are some references inserted in the text, but an error regarding them appears, not the number.
4. This second version gives great value to the topic of 'entrepreneurship' and to it being researched on Asian countries (although there is no conclusion separately presented). It was a pleasure to review your paper and see how my work positively contributed to it. Congratulations!

Author Response

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Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf