Exploring the Mechanisms Linking Perceived Organizational Support, Autonomy, Risk Taking, Competitive Aggressiveness and Corporate Sustainability: The Mediating Role of Innovativeness
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper is an attempt to explore the driving corporate mechanisms that lay behind sustainability. It is based on a questionnaire addressed to 200 Polish companies.
The topic is not novel and the authors are invited to enhance some areas to improve the paper to the next level. Thus, I suggest the following remarks:
1- In the introduction, it was not quite obvious what is the gap in the literature. I would have preferred to see the authors rely on a good starting point. For instance, a good start would be to rely on a similar study and pinpoint its gap to convince the reader about the novelty and added value of the present work. In addition, the authors failed to contextualize the geographical framework. Why did they choose Polish Companies? What is so special about such a geographical context? are there any new regulations on sustainability?
Moreover, the authors relied on keyword co-occurence (bibliometric tools) to validate their choice of the most used mechanisms in the prior literature. It is recommended to clean and revise your CSV-Scopus file to avoid having similar keywords like ("risk-taking" and "risk taking" /" risk management" and " risk assessment"/ "Competitiveness", "organizational competitiveness", " competition"....) You should replace some keywords with the same similar ones to have a consolidated finding where you can easily choose the most used keyword based on its visual schematization. Honestly, I am not convinced that POS, AU, RT, and CA are the main drivers of CS. What about the business culture and leadership spirit? what about investigating, if there exists a sustainability department?
2- The literature review is very long and not well structured. There are many definitions of the mechanisms of corporate sustainability. It is rather recommended to start with some theories about sustainability and then provide a synthesis summary of prior empirical findings.
3- The findings of the study are not very attractive as they did not convey any novelty. I suggest adding some additional tests other than the mediating effect of innovation to come up with valuable results that might positively affect this field. It is also advisable to add the questionnaire at the end of the paper.
4- I would like to see more propositions for future research. New variables, new methodologies??? Although the topic of corporate sustainability was extensively investigated, it remains a very important field to explore.
5- There are some minor mistakes (typos). It is recommended to have a thorough reading.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
Thank you for the opportunity to review your article, which deals with a very topical and important issue. In short, how to move from the declination of sustainability to its implementation.
Your contribution is interesting but the methodology needs to be improved as also the clarity in communicating your contribution to readers.
1) In terms of methodology, it is not clear how you selected the variables in your model. Through the bibliometric analysis? But a bibliometric analysis has its own research protocol which is not mentioned in the paper.
2) The second part of your paper concerns the survey. To make it clearer I would illustrate in a table which questions you asked and which previous surveys you based on.
2.1) More information should be given on the selection of the sample. how were the 200 SMEs selected?
3) In the discussion it must be clear how your results contribute to previous studies.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I congratulate the authors for the work done and the effort put in to address all comments.
Reviewer 2 Report
I think the authors improved the quality of the paper as suggested.
