Is Heterogeneity Better? The Impact of Top Management Team Characteristics on Enterprise Innovation Performance

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Concise, explicit, and well written paper. In formal and/or technical terms, the paper is correct. It shows a potential use for social engineering and the instrumentalization of the human being, which should be questioned.

General considerations

Lines 104-107 and 276: I cannot agree that gender, race, age, nationality, career experience, educational background, industry status or tenure are considered personality variables/traits. They are indeed demographic variables. There are in literature several personality variables (temperament, convictions, attitudes, dispositions etc.) but different from those addressed by authors. The same question arises in line 287, since the authors do not address the human character as an element/variable of their investigation before.

Lines 109-111: It seems that it would be helpful for the reader if authors explained a little more the criteria that allow distinguishing between shallow and deep factors.

Specific considerations

Line 66: Unfinished sentence: “…in strategic decisions and [16].”

Line 135: Correct the sentence: “…age heterogeneity means equates to…”.

Lines 182-183: Unexplained abbreviation “ST and *ST”.

Lines 189-191 and 400-401: It seems to be an inconsistency here because the authors refer to “Liu and Qu (2017)”, while in the References they mention “38. Liu, Y; Zhai,H.”.

Line 367: It should be reviewed “2015, 2015, 16695-16695”.

Line 381: Add “l” in the word “Journa”.

It seems that authors should add doi in the References.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript again. We appreciate all your comments and suggestions! Based on the instructions provided in your letter, we uploaded the file of the revised manuscript (the revised part using the“Track Changes” function in the manuscript). Please find the itemized responses below and the revisions/corrections in the re-submitted files.

Reviewers’ comments and the explanations of improvement:

Reviewer:	Responses
Lines 104-107 and 276: I cannot agree that gender, race, age, nationality, career experience, educational background, industry status or tenure are considered personality variables/traits. They are indeed demographic variables. There are in literature several personality variables (temperament, convictions, attitudes, dispositions etc.) but different from those addressed by authors. The same question arises in line 287, since the authors do not address the human character as an element/variable of their investigation before.	Thank you so much for your approval and suggestions.   We apologize for the misuse of the term “personality variables/traits” and revise them to “background” in this turn, based on previous research e.g., Zimmerman (2010).   Zimmerman, M.A. The influence of top management team heterogeneity on the capital raised through an initial public offering. Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice 2010, 32, 391-414. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6520.2008.00233.x.
Lines 109-111: It seems that it would be helpful for the reader if authors explained a little more the criteria that allow distinguishing between shallow and deep factors.	Thanks for your advice. We add more criteria as follows: To better explain the divergent findings, top management team backgrounds have been divided into shallow factors, which include some factors that are predetermined by birth and relatively difficult to change, such as gender, race, age, nationality, etc.; and deep factors, including career experience, education background, industry status, tenure, and other variables that are more dependent on acquired experience [33]. Specifically, shallow factors in team members refer to differences based on some demographic variables, while deep factors are formed by the past learning and work experiences of team members [34].
Line 66: Unfinished sentence: “…in strategic decisions and [16].”	Thank you for pointing this out.   We complete our expression as follows: “Furthermore, researchers added to and revised the upper echelons theory, arguing that the top management team comprises the individuals that are most deeply involved in decision-making and -execution, and beginning to pay more attention to the important role of the top management team in strategic decisions and performance improvements[18-20].”
Line 135: Correct the sentence: “…age heterogeneity means equates to…”.	Thank you for pointing this out.   We revise our expression as follows: “Under such conditions, age heterogeneity means a wider range of intellectual assets, richer information sources, and a stronger ability to solve new problems compared to the case in more homogeneous teams [42].”
Lines 182-183: Unexplained abbreviation “ST and *ST”.	Thanks for your advice.   We are sorry for the confusion by our poor expression and revise it as follows: In order to ensure the feasibility and effectiveness of the study, the initial sample was screened as follows: companies that have suffered losses for more than two consecutive years or are in danger of delisting, i.e., ST and *ST listed companies, of which those with missing data were excluded.
Lines 189-191 and 400-401: It seems to be an inconsistency here because the authors refer to “Liu and Qu (2017)”, while in the References they mention “38. Liu, Y; Zhai,H.”.	Thank you for pointing this out.   Qu is a polyphonic character and should be pronounced "Zhai" when used as a surname. We apologize for our carelessness and change “Liu and Qu (2017)” to “Liu and Zhai (2017)”.
Line 367: It should be reviewed “2015, 2015, 16695-16695”.	Thank you for pointing this out.   We are sorry for our wrong reference format and revise it as follows: Gschmack, S.; Reimer, M.; Schäffer, U. TMT heterogeneity and strategic decision quality. In Academy of Management Proceedings, Publisher: Published Online 2017, Volume 2015, pp. 16695-16695.
Line 381: Add “l” in the word “Journa”.	Thank you for pointing this out and we complete our spelling.
It seems that authors should add doi in the References.	Thank you for pointing this out.   We add DOI in the References follow your advice.

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

This paper is very well written. I like the paper and thank you for the opportunity to read yours work. This article is of extremely high scholarly standards, it is original in numerous respects and certainly most timely in terms of Behavioral Sciences relevance.

Best regards!

Author Response

Thank you for your approval of our work.

Best regards!

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper considers the influence of top management team characteristics’ heterogeneity on GEM-listed enterprises’ innovation performance.  From the perspective of optimizing top management team human capital and improving enterprise innovation performance. The results show, and the authors conclude, that the effect of shallow-factor heterogeneity of the top management team on enterprise innovation performance is not significant, but deep-factor heterogeneity has a negative effect. According to the authors, these findings indicate that deep-factor heterogeneity is more important than shallow-factor heterogeneity and be subject to closer attention. According to the authors, if a GEM-listed enterprise wants to set up a strong top management team that contributes to the improvement of enterprise innovation performance, it  must examine the consistency of each member’s educational background and extend their tenure as long as possible without considering the gender ratio or age structure of the team.

The study presents a good sample for the empirical part. The study's conclusions are objective.

The work is well structured but presents outdated bibliography. More than 80% of the authors cited are publications over 12 years old. Authors should increase citation of more recent authors. Typically, 50% of the authors cited are from the last 5 years. Specifically, of the 38 authors cited, only 11 are published after 2015!

Given that the bibliography used must be more recent, the text must be improved. It is incorrect for a paper from the year 2022 to present 23.68% of the bibliography cited from the last century. This must be improved and changed.

 

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript again. We appreciate all your comments and suggestions! Based on the instructions provided in your letter, we uploaded the file of the revised manuscript (the “track changes” function was used to make revisions in the manuscript). Please find the itemized responses below and the revisions/corrections in the re-submitted files.

Reviewers’ comments and the explanations of improvement:

Reviewer:

Responses

The work is well structured but presents outdated bibliography. More than 80% of the authors cited are publications over 12 years old. Authors should increase citation of more recent authors. Typically, 50% of the authors cited are from the last 5 years. Specifically, of the 38 authors cited, only 11 are published after 2015! Given that the bibliography used must be more recent, the text must be improved. It is incorrect for a paper from the year 2022 to present 23.68% of the bibliography cited from the last century. This must be improved and changed.

Thank you so much for your approval and suggestions.   In response to your valuable comments, we replace 5 outdated papers with literature published after 2015, in addition to adding 8 more papers published after 2015. Further details can be found in the references section of the manuscript (or you can see these part as follows).

Or you can choose to view the modified version as follows:

References

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx