“I Like It like That”: A Study on the Relationship between Psychological Capital, Work Engagement and Extra-Role Behavior

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I found this study interesting and it fulfils a gap in the literature by analysing the mediating role of work engagement in contributing to explaining the relationship between the four dimensions of psychological capital (i.e., hope, self-efficacy, resilience, and optimism) and extra-role behaviours with a sample of 1219 Italian employees. In addition, the authors used relevant and updated literature to sustain their hypotheses. The method and data analysis also seem to be adequate and the findings were deeply discussed.

Below, I leave some suggestions and comments hoping they contribute to the improvement of the paper.

•  I found small typos throughout the paper. For instance: - Line 43: “Accordingly, This…” the “T” must be in lower case. Line 64: space added between words "organizational citizenship". Line 196: “pro-motes”. 
• In the introduction section, I believe the authors could emphasize more the novelty of their study. More precisely, beyond contributing to strengthening the body of knowledge already existent on the relationship between psychological capital and extra-role behaviours, in my point of view, there is another important contribution of the current study, which is the analysis of the mediating role of work engagement. Also, the authors could also briefly address the potential practical contributions of the current study in the introduction section.
• Regarding hypothesis 1 (H1), although psychological capital consists of four dimensions, I think it will be important to add an explanation about the reason why it is not being analyzed the specific contribution of each dimension of psychological capital to work engagement. Do the previous studies analysed psychological capital globally? Also, to strengthen the option in analysing the psychological capital as a second-order construct that includes four dimensions, I think would be interesting in Table 1 to provide information regarding the relationship between hope, self-efficacy, resilience, and optimism and work engagement.
• Please, indicate the software used for the data analysis.
• Concerning the measurement model (Table 2), TLI and RMSEA were slightly below the recommended cutoff values in the literature (TLI ≥ 0.90 and RMSEA ≤ 0.08). The same regarding with the hypothesized mediation model.
• Line 396-397: «(…) it was concluded that the hypothesized three-factor model better showed a better fit.» This sentence could be improved.
• Line 404-405: «These results suggested that employees with high levels of self-efficacy, resilience, hope and optimism tend to be more engaged (…).» There are no findings reporting the strength and the signal of the relationship between each of the four dimensions of psychological capital and work engagement.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Hope my below comments/suggestions can help authors to improve the manuscript. 

INTRODUCTION

• The introduction part of this paper is well-written and the given information is seemingly significant. The research aims are well-justified.

LITERATURE REVIEW

• The way the literature is written is good which helps the reader to understand the relationships between psychological capital, work engagement, and extra-role behavior. However, the details of how the JD-R model and COR theory underpin the research framework were not clearly articulated. I hope authors can further elaborate about these underpinning theories, to clarify theoretical foundation of the hypothesized relationships.
• Page 5, line 239. The numbering of the section should be 2.2. Also, please check the less of section numbering as most of it were wrongly stated.
• Page 6, line 287. Using social exchange theory (SET) to justify the relationship between psychological capital, work engagement and extra-role behaviors seem inappropriate. Because such relationships did not involve any exchange from both parties (employer and employee). The proposed the relationships is only at one-side, the individual attitude and behaviors solely.

METHODOLOGY

• Page 7, line 325-339. Please specify in text which points of Likert-scale that used in this study.
• Page 7, line 343-344. Please correct the statement. The Harman’s single factor test is used to assess the issue of common method variance (CMV). It is not a test for the measurement model.

RESULT

• The results are well-presented and discussed.

IMPLICATIONS

Page 12. The discussion on theoretical implications too brief and limited. This should be strengthen.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for this opportunity to review your manuscript. This is a very interesting paper that addresses an important topic in HRM academia and practice and shows high potential to contribute to the field. Please see my comments below. These are intended to be constructive to help you improve the manuscript and also address a few questions that arose during my review.

1- Introduction and hypotheses development sections are very well written. Please reread to improve the flow of your text. For Example, I recommend editing the following sentence (line 104-106): “In fact, it is thanks to HR practices that management could develop… could increase…could give meaning… of workers.”

2- Materials and Methods section has even more issues, for example, check line 306: …measures as were as data collection were the result…

3- The measure section is not convincing. Explain why you chose them in more detail. There are many other options, for example why not UWES-17 or Rich, LePine, and Crawford’s (2010) scales for engagement? Use literature to support your choice of the construct. Share some reliability and validity reports from previous studies.

4- In the abstract you mentioned  “the present study was aimed to investigate the positive effect of hope, self-efficacy, resilience, and optimism, i.e. the four dimensions of PsyCap, on extra-role behaviors considering the mediating role of work engagement.”

5- Please follow your research goal and change the model to show the direct effect sub-constructs (hope, self-efficacy, resilience, and optimism) on other variables. You can also change your goal and only focus on main variables instead of sub-constructs.

6- Line 472: When you say “Many qualitative studies provided convincing evidence…” You need to cite at least three qualitative studies, not one study.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Thanks