Entrepreneurs Traits/Characteristics and Innovation Performance of Waste Recycling Start-Ups in Ghana: An Application of the Upper Echelons Theory among SEED Award Winners
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for offering me the opportunity to review this manuscript.
I would like to congratulate the authors for the high quality of the paper. I think it is the first time that I happen to review a manuscript that, from the first submission, is clear, with an appropriate and rich theoretical framework, with a high logical-conceptual order, like the one I have found in this essay.
Moreover, I believe that the observed variables and the applied model can also be replicated in other contexts. Based on my experience, the authors can use the model in different countries, such as Italy, France, Spain, and on basis of the same variables investigated.
Congratulations and good luck with your work!
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors, this article is an interesting source of knowledge about entrepreneurs and their awareness of waste recycling in Ghana. The topic is undoubtedly very important and interesting to explore. I highly appreciate the content of the article, although I did not clearly identify the research hypotheses. Perhaps it would be worth placing them to make the message of the article more transparent?
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Review: Title: Entrepreneurs Traits/Characteristics and Innovation performance of Waste Recycling Start-ups in Ghana: An Application of the Upper Echelons Theory among SEED Award Winners
The authors present a full paper, which addresses the personal traits and achieved degrees of innovation in waste recycling industry. The study is well-made. However, there are some questions and issues that remain.
First, innovation is measured using a very classical operationalization. This raises the question why this is the case? In my view defining and operationalizing innovation nowadays should capture the aspects of sustainability. The authors leave open whether an innovation contributes to any SDG. So in the worst case an innovation could change markets, organization and products in parallel and being extremely unsustainable at the same time. In this way all results have to be treated with caution when putting them into the context of sustainability.
Second, the results show the usual findings, family support, experiences, curiosity and self-efficacy propel the degree of innovations. I rather would suggest to framing the study as repeated study engaging in a new setting, population and sample and not as something new. The scientific contribution is repeating earlier studies. This also makes it very necessary to formulate hypotheses next to the conceptual model since the study tests “hypotheses”.
And third, neither independent nor dependent variables have something to do with sustainability. The authors have to deal with this and frame the study in a way that it represents an sensemaking contribution to sustainability issues.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors adressed the comments and suggestions propoerly.
