Strategy and Human Resources Management in Non-Profit Organizations: Its Interaction with Open Innovation
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear author(s):
Congratulations for your efforts in this paper.
I think that the idea of assessing the existence of interrelationship between several management areas (i.e., strategic management, human resources management and governance) in the context of Holy Houses of Mercy, and the role that the current pandemic may have, is interesting and add value to the existing literature.
In any case, I have some concerns related to the development of the paper and I hope these comments and suggestions may be useful for improving your study. Good luck!
INTRODUCTION:
1.1.- It is necessary to justify why it is relevant to focus on the topic selected. In this sese, I recommend to follow the following structure in the introduction: (1) first, to contextualize, in a general way, the importance of non-profit organizations, emphasizing their importance in the current pandemic context; (2) second, to contextualize, in a specific way, the relevance that Holy Houses of Mercy may have; (3) third, to identify and justify the gap found in the literature and that is intended to be addressed in this article; (4) fourth, to establish the aim of this research; (5) fifth, to identify the main contributions; and (6) finally, to state the structure of the article.
1.2.- Regarding my above comment, authors should pay special attention to the two following questions in the introduction: What is the relevance of focusing on Portuguese context? What is the relevance of focusing on Holy Houses of Mercy as example of non-profit organizations?
1.3.- A greater effort is required to identify the contributions derived from this study. This is a prominent issue where authors should pay more attention to address it.
LITERATURE REVIEW:
2.1.- The hypotheses require further theoretical justification. In this sense, I would recommend, on the one hand, to identify the main theoretical approaches that have a place in this context and, after that, to link them with the evidence obtained from previous studies. In the current version, the justification of the hypotheses is quite succinct, and more effort is needed to increase the robustness of the justification.
2.2.- I think that the second and third hypotheses should be justified and formulated separately (rather than stating all them together). In this way, it is easier for the reader to understand the specific justification and argumentation related to each of the hypotheses raised.
METHODOLOGY:
3.1.- In relation to the interviews, much more information is necessary. In particular, who performs these interviews? What procedure is used? When are they done? By what means are they carried out?
3.2.- Authors might include a new table which shows the data regarding validity and reliability of their measures.
3.3.- Section 3.1: Authors stated that “only using the measurement items whose factor loadings (AVE>0,5; CR>0,7; α>0,7)” (see page 5, lines 218-219). In this sense, did all the initial items meet these requirements? Which ones were removed? This should be indicated.
3.4.- Section 3.2.: Which items were removed in order to make it statistically more robust? (see page 05, line 250) This should be indicated.
RESULTS:
4.1.- I have two main recommendations regarding the discussion of the results: (a) it is necessary to relate the results obtained in this study with the evidence obtained in previous studies (in order to highlight the value that this study assumes in relation to the existing literature); (b) in the “summary” and “conclusion”, the influence of COVID is mentioned. However, this idea is not introduced in results discussion since this could have an important impact and enrich this discussion.
CONCLUSIONS:
5.1.- Beyond the result discussion, it is necessary to enhance both the theoretical and practical contributions that this article implies to current literature. Thus, authors should pay more attention to these contributions that might improve their article and add value.
5.2.- Delve into the limitations and, based on them, into future lines of research is highly recommended. The authors dedicate a very limited space to this aspect and a greater effort must be made.
OTHER ISSUES:
6.1.- The citation standards required by this journal are not met. Please check this issue.
6.2.- Paper title may include the following notions: “Holy Houses of Mercy” and “exploratory study”.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
following the feedback to the article, I attach a set of changes that greatly contributed to a qualitative increase in the article.
I appreciate the contributions.
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Autors,
Thanks for the opportunity to review the manuscript titled: “Strategy and Human Resources Management as determinants of Governance in Non-Profit Organizations.”
The topic of the paper concerns influence of strategic management and human resources management on in light of Covid-19 . This is an interesting issue that fits into the spectrum of "Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity". This manuscript is interesting, coherent and the choices made in the research seem to be relevant. The paper has a coherent structure. The following parts result logically from the previous ones. I have no objections to the statistical analysis. The authors refer to current guidelines and describe the analysis process transparently and present the results clearly. The statistical analysis is very well done. The process of analysis is transparently described and the results are clearly presented.
However, in my opinion, there are some minor shortcomings that needs to be addressed:
- In my opinion it is less worthwhile to improve the literature sources. As many as 30 items in the bibliography are older than 2010. I therefore recommend adding new, up-to-date references.
- It seems to me that it is worth reviewing the paper for minor editorial corrections - e.g. reference 26 needs supplementing with bibliographical information.
- The paper should meet the editorial requirements (especially in-text citations)
The paper fits well into the current stream of research related to how organisations cope with the crisis caused by the covid-19 pandemic. In my opinion, minor changes are needed.
Kind Regards
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
following the feedback to the article, I attach a set of changes that greatly contributed to a qualitative increase in the article.
I appreciate the contributions.
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for submitting your paper to JoOI,
I think that on the methodological and theoretical level your paper is sound and well prepared.
You feed on relevant literature and use appropriate research methods.
I only have a couple of major comments of how your work could be improved:
- You need to work on a more extensive presentation and development of the hypotheses introduced. These appear at the end of Section 2 without particular discussion of how each of them has been introduced and developed.
- I would strongly encourage you to introduce Houses of Mercy more to the reader. The context of your study should be clear here.
- You claim that "the paper attempts to verify an evolutionary version of the resource based view". How does that comply with the hypotheses presented.
Good luck with your revision!
Reviewer,
25 January 2021
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
following the feedback to the article, I attach a set of changes that greatly contributed to a qualitative increase in the article.
I appreciate the contributions.
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear author(s):
Thank you for taking my comments into consideration. Although I think the article has improved, I still have several comments and suggestions that make a new revision necessary.
1.- Although I think that your new introduction has been complemented with new and interesting ideas, my current perception is that there is no adequate storyline, since there is not a proper connection of the different paragraphs and ideas. In this sense, it is necessary to delve into this issue, linking your different paragraphs and ideas in order to improve the coherence of all the content stated in this introduction.
2.- The contributions stated in the introduction are still very superficial. The different ways in which this article is expected to contribute to the literature should be explicitly indicated, and a greater effort is required by authors to achieve this identification.
3.- I think it is necessary to explicitly add in the hypotheses that the effects are being tested in the context of Holy Houses of Mercy.
4.- Hypothesis 2b), which establishes a mediation effect, needs much more justification to support said mediation. This is not justified in the current version. Moreover, I think it should be a fourth hypothesis with its own detailed justification.
5.- When were the questionnaires carried out? This should be stated in the method section.
6.- In Table 1, the composite reliability values, Cronbach's alpha ... do they refer to those initially obtained before removing the items that do not have a proper load? Or those obtained after deleting them? Please, indicate this in the paper!
Moreover, I think that the removed items should not be included in said Table 1, since it is sufficient to indicate it in the text.
7.- Figure 1 cannot be viewed in the current version of the paper.
8.- How is the mediating effect of hypothesis 2b proven to be significant?
9.- It is necessary to do a language review again, as well as to check the citation rules. There are still several mistakes.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
we appreciate the suggestions for improving the article under analysis, which allowed us to make a large number of changes.
We believe that these changes have improved the work in general, clarifying some ideas, strengthening the rationale, detailing details of the methodology and adapting the language and citations according to the guidelines.
We attached the list of these changes, in accordance with the suggestions presented.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear author(s):
I think that my suggestions and concerns stated in my previous review report have not been satisfactorily addressed. Reading this new version in detail, I think it needs a new major revision, and I hope that, in this following round, these comments may be considered, since their objective is simply to improve the quality of your article. Good luck!
1.- The main paper’s contributions are stated in lines 117 to 120 in this new version. However, this contribution is very generic and trivial, and you should make a greater effort to identify three or four contributions, for instance, that show the relevance and pertinence of your study for the literature.
2.- In line 75, are you referring to your study? In that case, I think this sentence should be in the present tense.
3.- In my last review report I indicated that: "I think it is necessary to explicitly add in the hypotheses that the effects are being tested in the context of Holy Houses of Mercy". However, when you formulate your hypotheses (see lines 215, 275, 288, and 316), nothing new has been included – despite the fact that you have indicated in your cover letter that my comment was taken into consideration.
4.- The mediation arguments to support your hypothesis 2 b) (see lines 277-287) are very also general and superfluous, and, if I am honest, I still do not see in this new version a right theoretical and empirical justification to support this mediation hypothesis.
5.- In this new version, you state in lines 365 to 368 "It should be noted that the values ​​of Cronbach's Alpha (α) presented were obtained after removal of items with a factorial load below 0.5. The removal of these items allowed a substantial increase in all the robustness measures presented in Table 1" Why is it only indicated that the Cronbach's Alpha measure is obtained after removing the items? Composite reliability and other tests shown in Table 1 should also have been indicated, I think.
6.- In line 368, the authors indicate "[...] after removing some items that [...]". This is where you should reflect which items have been removed – or include such information in a footnote. And the same should apply with the rest of variables.
7.- There are still many citation mistakes. For instance, see lines 154, 160, 166, 169... and many more. Please, once again, I ask you to check this issue.
Author Response
Dear reviewer, in the appendix we send a table containing the essentials of the changes made according to the suggestions. In the article, all changes, except those made in citations, are marked in green, for better identification. Thanks again for the contributions.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Round 4
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear author(s):
Many thanks for considering my comments and suggestions, and congratulations for this new version.
I think that your article, in its current version, can be published.
Thanks again for your effort.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your comments.
