Leadership Styles and Their Influence on Learning Culture and Dynamic Capacity in Nonprofit Organizations

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please see attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The standard of written English and grammar leaves room for improvement. Sentence construction is sometimes inconsistent, and the general standard is not always very scholarly. At times, the meaning/ message can become obscured. Careful revisions of this aspect of the work are also therefore very important.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your comments, which helped us greatly in improving the manuscript. We appreciate the time you spent on this and we did our best to respond to all your comments.

Please be advised that, in order to better address one of Reviewer 2's recommendations, it was deemed necessary to include a table in the manuscript, and therefore the numbering had to be updated. And in response to Reviewer 1, Appendix A was added.

We hope that this revised version of the article will meet the expected standard and be worthy of publication in this journal.

A detailed list of answers to your comments and suggestions is reported below.

Many thanks for your time.

Best regards,

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

Please find my comments below:

1. The assessment of Common Method Bias should be conducted at the preliminary stages of data analysis to ensure robustness.

2.  The content of the conclusion section should be primarily concentrated on the empirical evidence that has been gathered.

3. Figure 1 should be explained in greater detail within the results section to ensure comprehensive understanding.

4. The research gaps should be meticulously delineated within the introduction section to provide a comprehensive context for the study's significance and scope.

 

Good luck!

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Moderate.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your comments, which helped us greatly in improving the manuscript. We appreciate the time you spent on this and we did our best to respond to all your comments.

Please be advised that, in order to better address one of Reviewer 2's recommendations, it was deemed necessary to include a table in the manuscript, and therefore the numbering had to be updated. And in response to Reviewer 1, Appendix A was added.

We hope that this revised version of the article will meet the expected standard and be worthy of publication in this journal.

A detailed list of answers to your comments and suggestions is reported below.

Many thanks for your time.

Best regards,

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity to review Leadership styles and their influence on the learning culture and dynamic capacity in nonprofit organizations.  The authors analyze whether leadership styles influence learning culture and dynamic capacity, finding that servant leadership and empowerment leadership have a positive relationship with an organization’s learning culture, and that shared leadership on both learning culture and dynamic capacity. 

Overall, I found the article very hard to follow.  It has a number of grammatical/technical writing errors.  The writing is also very clunky and isn’t the most logically ordered requiring me to read some aspects several times to determine meaning.  Further, the structure is something clunky and doesn’t include sequencing of ideas and transitions in between.  In this instance, it just reads as a series of standalone points.  I am also not a fan of lofty, declarative statements such as “studying the behavior of leaders has been one of the most interesting and prevalent topics…”  That’s quite an oversell.  I would suggest a fairly significant rewrite with focus on writing quality and structure. 

My most significant concern with this manuscript is the emphasis on nonprofits without any attention paid to the nonprofit workplace.  In fact, there is significant terminology that isn’t often associated with the nonprofit workplace such as “competitive and effective business world.”  As written, my guess would be that this study was conducted by someone from business that is just using nonprofits as their research context.  That may be appropriate but then I would de-emphasize nonprofits in areas such as the title and abstract. As written, there is no reference to nonprofits and what might be unique about their cultures, leadership styles, etc. and how that might differ from organizations in the governmental or business sector.  There are no references from any nonprofit journals which is a significant problem.  If being a nonprofit is important enough to put in the title, some attention should be paid to them.  Similarly, the implications mentions nonprofits in Latin America yet very little attention has been given to either of these points.  The absence of any literature on leadership, learning culture, and dynamic capacity from the nonprofit literature is highly problematic and perhaps the attention in the Latin American context as well. 

While I leave it to the discretion of the editor, I tend to prefer an interpretation of the findings in the methods or a finding section and the discussion section used to explore the implication of the finds and their meaning. 

In general, I find the discussion to be lacking in depth. 

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

No

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your comments, which helped us greatly in improving the manuscript. We appreciate the time you spent on this and we did our best to respond to all your comments.

Please be advised that, in order to better address one of Reviewer 2's recommendations, it was deemed necessary to include a table in the manuscript, and therefore the numbering had to be updated. And in response to Reviewer 1, Appendix A was added.

We hope that this revised version of the article will meet the expected standard and be worthy of publication in this journal.

A detailed list of answers to your comments and suggestions is reported below.

Many thanks for your time.

Best regards,

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

it is important to provide a direction (positive/negative) in the hypotheses. Otheriwse the value of the findings if reduced. 

 

H1: Servant leadership influences the learning culture. 228 H2: Empowering leadership influences the learning culture. 229 H3: Shared leadership influences the learning culture

Comments on the Quality of English Language

No comments

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your comments, which helped us greatly in improving the manuscript. We appreciate the time you spent on this and we did our best to respond to all your comments.

Please be advised that, in order to better address one of Reviewer 2's recommendations, it was deemed necessary to include a table in the manuscript, and therefore the numbering had to be updated. And in response to Reviewer 1, Appendix A was added.

We hope that this revised version of the article will meet the expected standard and be worthy of publication in this journal.

A detailed list of answers to your comments and suggestions is reported below.

Many thanks for your time.

Best regards,

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Many thanks indeed for your serious consideration of the peer review comments.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Thank you very much for your generous remark. We greatly appreciate your constructive comments and the opportunity to improve our work based on your valuable suggestions.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity to re-review Leadership styles and their influence on learning culture and dynamic capacity in non-profit institutions.  The manuscript has had some improvements since its original submission.  However, I find that many of the concerns I expressed in my original review have not been adequately addressed.  I still find the structure and wording to be clunky and hard to follow.  Likewise, there are still technical writing/grammatical errors especially in new sections.  And, while the authors did add some minor context around nonprofits they are drawing significant generalizations about the sector from one source (Ortiz-Gomez, et al., 2020) which only focuses on one subsector and one organization.  Being unfamiliar with this source, I accessed it to find that it does not discuss the five main constraints as the authors claim, nor does it even contain the phrase "lack of leadership" as directly quoted in this updated manuscript.  The idea of lack of leadership is not shared across the sector.  The authors need to exercise more caution when attributing sources.  A more significant concern is that authors still are not citing any literature from nonprofit specific journals: Voluntus, NVSQ, NML, etc. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The manuscript contains numerous grammatical and technical writing errors.  For example, you wouldn't capitalize Nonprofit Institutions.  Likewise, ordering is clunky at times and hard to follow.  

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your insightful comments, which greatly helped us improve the manuscript. We appreciate the time you spent on this and have tried our best to address all your comments.

We hope that this revised version of the paper meets the expected standard, making it worthy of publication in this journal.

A detailed list of answers to your comments and suggestions is reported below.

Many thanks for your time.

Best regards,

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank for the opportunity to again review your manuscript.  While I see that changes have been made, they have not adequately addressed my comments and concerns from the other two rounds.  This means that there are methodological and theoretical issues with the article that mean it does not currently merit publication.  

In particular, my concern from the beginning is and continues to be the following: 

the emphasis on nonprofits without any attention paid to the nonprofit workplace.  In fact, there is significant terminology that isn’t often associated with the nonprofit workplace such as “competitive and effective business world.”  As written, my guess would be that this study was conducted by someone from business that is just using nonprofits as their research context.  That may be appropriate but then I would de-emphasize nonprofits in areas such as the title and abstract. As written, there is no reference to nonprofits and what might be unique about their cultures, leadership styles, etc. and how that might differ from organizations in the governmental or business sector.  There are no references from any nonprofit journals which is a significant problem.  If being a nonprofit is important enough to put in the title, some attention should be paid to them.  Similarly, the implications mentions nonprofits in Latin America yet very little attention has been given to either of these points.  The absence of any literature on leadership, learning culture, and dynamic capacity from the nonprofit literature is highly problematic and perhaps the attention in the Latin American context as well. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Needs work 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your informed comments, which helped us so much in improving the manuscript. We appreciated the time you spent doing this and tried our best to address all your comments.

We hope that this revised version of the paper reaches the expected standard, worthy of publication in this journal.

A detailed list of answers to your comments and suggestions is reported below.

Many thanks for your time.

Best regards,

Reviewer 3 - Q1

Thank for the opportunity to again review your manuscript.  While I see that changes have been made, they have not adequately addressed my comments and concerns from the other two rounds.  This means that there are methodological and theoretical issues with the article that mean it does not currently merit publication.  

Author's Response 1

Dear Reviewer, We sincerely appreciate your time and dedication as a reviewer of our manuscript, as well as your comments. Regarding your assertion that the previous comments were not adequately addressed, we would like to respectfully point out that in both previous rounds (March 6, 2025, and June 9, 2025), we have responded point by point to each of your observations, providing detailed justifications, expansions, and updated references.

We recognize that there is always room for improved clarity, and therefore, we have made additional adjustments in this revised version, in the shaded sections. We trust that these modifications and explanations will better appreciate the rigor of the manuscript.

Reviewer 3 - Q2

In particular, my concern from the beginning is and continues to be the following:

the emphasis on nonprofits without any attention paid to the nonprofit workplace.  In fact, there is significant terminology that isn’t often associated with the nonprofit workplace such as “competitive and effective business world”.  As written, my guess would be that this study was conducted by someone from business that is just using nonprofits as their research context.  That may be appropriate but then I would de-emphasize nonprofits in areas such as the title and abstract. As written, there is no reference to nonprofits and what might be unique about their cultures, leadership styles, etc. and how that might differ from organizations in the governmental or business sector. 

 Author's Response 2

Dear reviewer, we thank you again for your comment. We would like to respectfully point out that this observation was addressed in the first round of revisions (response submitted through the platform dated March 6, 2025). In that response, it was explained that in the section "1. Introduction," the statement "competitive and effective business world" had been removed. Other improvements were made to the segments where it could cause confusion among readers with institutions other than NGOs. It was also mentioned that lines 5-7, 96-117, and 510-523 should be reviewed (The paragraphs corresponding to this clarification have been highlighted). The improvement included a paragraph contextualizing the main topic of study in nonprofit organizations. In addition, relevant sector references have been added.

Reviewer 3 - Q3

There are no references from any nonprofit journals which is a significant problem.  If being a nonprofit is important enough to put in the title, some attention should be paid to them.

Author's Response 3

Dear reviewer, we thank you for your valuable comment. It is worth mentioning that the previous version of the manuscript (Response submitted through the platform on June 9, 2025) included several studies published by administration or management journals that were applied to NGO settings (shaded in the references). Articles from high-impact journals specializing in NGOs were also considered, taking into account the journals you suggested in the second round (shaded in the references). The studies taken from these suggested journals are detailed below:

Voluntas

1-Aboramadan, M., & Kundi, Y. M. (2020). Does Transformational Leadership Better Predict Work-Related Outcomes Than Transactional Leadership in the NPO Context? Evidence from Italy. Voluntas, 31(6), 1254–1267. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-020-00278-7

2- Erdurmazlı, E. (2019). Satisfaction and Commitment in Voluntary Organizations: A Cultural Analysis Along with Servant Leadership. Voluntas, 30(1), 129–146. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-018-9992-z

3-Shier, M. L., & Handy, F. (2020). Leadership in Nonprofits: Social Innovations and Blurring Boundaries. Voluntas, 31(2), 333–344. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-018-00078-0

 

Nonprofit Management and Leadership (NML)

1-Lutz Allen, S., Smith, J. E., & Da Silva, N. (2013). Leadership style in relation to organizational change and organi-zational creativity: Perceptions from nonprofit organizational members. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 24(1), 23–42. https://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21078

2-Rowold, J., & Rohmann, A. (2009). Transformational and transactional leadership styles, followers’ positive and negative emotions, and performance in German nonprofit orchestras. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 20(1), 41–59. https://doi.org/10.1002/nml.240

3-Schmid, H. (2006). Leadership styles and leadership change in human and community service organizations. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 17(2), 179–194. https://doi.org/10.1002/nml.142

 

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (NVSQ)

1-Bernstein, R., & Fredette, C. (2024). Decomposing the Impact of Leadership Diversity Among Nonprofit Organizations. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 53(1), 79–106. https://doi.org/10.1177/08997640221145119

2-Ngah, N. S., Abdullah, N. L., & Mohd Suki, N. (2022). Servant Leadership, Volunteer Retention, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Nonprofit Organizations: Examining the Mediating Role of Job Satisfaction. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 51(5), 1031–1053. https://doi.org/10.1177/08997640211057409

3-Tosto, S. A., & Tcherni-Buzzeo, M. (2025). Understanding Job Satisfaction and Burnout in Nonprofits: The Critical Role of Communication and Leadership. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 08997640251329852, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/08997640251329852

 

Reviewer 3 - Q4

Similarly, the implications mentions nonprofits in Latin America yet very little attention has been given to either of these points.  The absence of any literature on leadership, learning culture, and dynamic capacity from the nonprofit literature is highly problematic and perhaps the attention in the Latin American context as well.

Author's Response 4

Dear Reviewer, we appreciate the suggestion. Taking this last suggestion into account, a paragraph has been added giving greater emphasis to the contribution of the study to NGOs in Latin America, and an improvement has been made to the last paragraph, both corresponding to the section: "5.1. Theoretical and practical implications." See lines 577-608. (The paragraphs corresponding to this clarification have been highlighted).

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf