Cultural Values and Knowledge Sharing in the Context of Sustainable Organizations

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an intersecting work with lots of potential, researchers investigated the relationship between culture and knowledge sharing in Columbia organisations through a sample of 751 workers. My major concern is lack of significant theoretical contribution. Hofstede’s cultural dimensional model is well researched, knowledge sharing is also a very developed area of research. Researchers should strengthen the discussion why is this research novel and valuable? What are the theoretical contributions? Specially, this paper needs to include hypotheses development in the discussion, clearly discuss the relationship between culture and knowledge sharing. Without appropriate hypotheses development, the data analysis with SEM can’t explain how does five dimension of culture impact on sharing of tacit or implicit knowledge. It weakened the results and discussions of this paper.

I would recommend the following improvements:

1. Rewrite the significant contribution of this research;
2. Include hypotheses development in the discussion;
3. Rewrite results and discussion, does the results support the hypotheses? Does the findings of this research validate the previous research? What is new for your research finding? ;
4. Add the practical implication for research. Does the paper bridge the gap between theory and practice? How can the research be used in practice (economic and commercial impact)?

Author Response

Reviewer 1

This is an intersecting work with lots of potential, researchers investigated the relationship between culture and knowledge sharing in Columbia organisations through a sample of 751 workers. My major concern is lack of significant theoretical contribution. Hofstede’s cultural dimensional model is well researched, knowledge sharing is also a very developed area of research. Researchers should strengthen the discussion why is this research novel and valuable? What are the theoretical contributions? Specially, this paper needs to include hypotheses development in the discussion, clearly discuss the relationship between culture and knowledge sharing. Without appropriate hypotheses development, the data analysis with SEM can’t explain how does five dimension of culture impact on sharing of tacit or implicit knowledge. It weakened the results and discussions of this paper.

Answers:

Thank you very much for the valuable feedback to improve the article.

Following your suggestion, 3 hypotheses were explicitly written in the article. The justification of hypotheses was strengthened with the inclusion of 13 new references. The validation of hypothesis 3, in particular, contributes to the theoretical development and empirical validation of a new line of research that integrates cultural studies and knowledge management, which analyzes whether cultural values differentially influence the tacit and explicit knowledge that is shared in organizations. The result of this study can be considered as a pilot study of future works.

Another reason to consider this study as novel is that it is the first time to be carried out with these variables in the context of Latin America. This justification was expanded in the article. On the topic of culture, it is highly relevant to identify how constructs behave in different countries. Unfortunately, the issue has been studied in an incipient way in Latin America.

Several analyzes were presented in the results section of the article. The exploratory analysis allowed concluding that the dimensions proposed by the instrument adjusted well to the sample of participants from Colombian organizations. The correlations between cultural dimensions and types of knowledge sharing, presented in Table 4, allowed us to identify which were statistically significant. The SEM analysis allowed evaluating the fit of the models.

Finally, as a result of the above, the discussion was expanded. Practical implications were included.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Summary

Today, knowledge is considered as one of the most important resources in industry and business organizations. While other raw materials can be obtained very easily, knowledge often has to be built up with great effort. For a sustainable mode of operation, it is therefore intrinsically necessary that the knowledge gained is not only conserved, but also shared with others. This applies to both tacit and explicit knowledge. An organized and systematic transfer of knowledge within a company is therefore a relevant success factor. However, the success of such a knowledge transfer also depends to a large extent on the (corporate) culture values.

In their paper entitled "Cultural Values and Knowledge Sharing in the Context of Sustainable Organizations", the authors therefore study the correlations between cultural values and the openness towards and success of a mutually beneficial knowledge transfer. In particular, the authors look at the situation in Latin America, using Colombia as an example. To this end, they first carry out a literature review in which they identify the correlation between knowledge management and sustainability, how knowledge sharing can be realized, and which dimensions of cultural values have an influence on a successful knowledge transfer. Based on these observations, the authors conduct a study among 751 workers in 28 companies in Colombia. They use a questionnaire to determine which of the cultural values from the literature affect knowledge transfer in Latin America. They conclude that the cultural dimensions "uncertainty avoidance", "individualism-collectivism", and "paternalism" have a significant influence on the sharing of tacit and explicit knowledge. In contrast, the dimensions "power distance" and "masculinity-femininity" do not impact knowledge transfer in Latin America.

Major strong points

• The general subject (knowledge transfer in companies) is a highly relevant topic, also in the context of sustainability.
• While there are many technical approaches to support knowledge transfer, the factor of (corporate) culture values is often overlooked in this context. Therefore, a profound study of the relationship between knowledge transfer and cultural values can have a significant impact on the success of a company.
• The authors do not merely present a theoretical view of the topic, but also assess the practical relevance of the findings from the literature with the help of a field study.
• Since the level of influence of a dimension of cultural values on knowledge transfer is highly dependent on the regional context and, according to the authors, there are no existing studies of this kind in the Latin American region, the findings obtained could have a high degree of novelty.
• The authors refer to a considerable amount of literature and related work. The majority of the regarded papers are state-of-the-art.
• The paper is largely well written and easy to read.

Major weak points

• Which problems are addressed in the paper? Why should a reader look at the paper and what benefit will he or she derive from it? Unfortunately, the authors simply present the results of the two research steps "literature review" and "field study" but forget to motivate the necessity of these studies.
• The authors do not define the contribution of their work. It rather resembles a work report, whereby the research objectives remain almost completely unclear.
• How are the sections of the paper linked to each other? For example, many of the considerations in the literature review are irrelevant to the rest of the paper. Actually, the subsequent considerations are mostly limited to the dimensions defined by Hofstede and Dorfman and Howell. The discussion at the end repeats many points of the literature review - why is this redundancy, which does not reveal any new insights, necessary?
• It is not motivated why it can be assumed that the regional context has an impact on the relevance of the dimension of cultural values. Why is the Latin American context particularly worthy of consideration - that is, to what extent is this context particularly exemplary or to what extent does it have a distinctive feature? If, as the authors point out, the regional context has a major influence on the dimension of cultural values, why can the findings from Colombia be applied to Latin America as a whole?
• The introduction is very generic and not very informative. Issues such as "research question", "methodology", "contribution", "structure of the paper" should be clearly defined and motivated here.
• In the case of the literature review, no systematic methodology is shown. In a literature review, I would expect that the analyzed corpus is clearly defined and that it is described how the selection was made and how the analytical process was carried out. However, since this is not given, it is not possible to evaluate to what extent the listed statements from literature are meaningful.
• There is no discussion of the literature. For example, the authors list only the five dimensions "uncertainty avoidance," "individualism-collectivism," "paternalism," "power distance," and "masculinity-femininity," but do not assess them. Why exactly are the selected dimensions relevant? Why are no other dimensions relevant? A lot of the remaining statements from the literature review seem to have no relevance at all for the rest of the paper.
• Section 3 begins by describing the participants - however, up to this point it has not been explained what the participants are supposed to do in the first place. What are these people participating in?
• To what extent is the selection of workers representative of Colombia and, by extension, of Latin America? If the impact of cultural values is to be studied, then the wrong selection of participants can completely bias the study. How was it ensured that this did not happen here?
• The methodology of the study is completely unclear. First of all, the authors seem to use the 29-item questionnaire from "Dimensions of National Culture and Effective Leadership Patterns: Hofstede Revisited" by Dorfman and Howell. However, I could not find the 29 questions in that paper. So where do the questions come from? And more importantly, what are the questions? In Table 2, they are only listed as Question 1 to Question 29, and even in the text, only a few questions are given as examples. In the same way, it is nowhere defined what is meant by Factor 1 to Factor 6. Thus, the results have no meaning for the reader.
• In regard to the work of Dorfman and Howell, another issue is unclear. In this paper, a study is conducted for the countries of Taiwan and Mexico. If the authors' study is based on that of Dorfman and Howell, to what extent do they conclude that there is no study for Latin America so far, if Dorfman and Howell already conducted such a study for Mexico in 1988?
• Another unclear issue concerns the evaluation of the survey. 751 people took part in the survey. The demographic data also refers to this number of participants. However, the evaluation of the questionnaire then only refers to the responses of 315 people. To what extent is the demographic information still relevant if less than half of these people completed the questionnaire? Why is there such a discrepancy between participants and answers?
• Apart from the fact that it is completely unclear to the reader how the survey was conducted, the evaluation is also questionable. Why, for example, do the authors conclude that "questions 8 and 18 did not correspond to the factors of the cultural dimensions of the instrument"? How was the evaluation carried out? What are the thresholds for a question to be relevant to one of the cultural dimensions? Table 2 does not provide any obvious explanation for the reader.
• Where do the values given in Table 3 come from? What does this table mean for the study?
• Where do the values given in Table 4 come from? What is the meaning of the asterisks? What does this table mean for the study?
• Figure 1 and Figure 2 are not very informative, and they take up a lot of space. Wouldn't a table be a much better and more concise way of presenting these data?
• The results in Tables 5 and 6 are also not explained.
• The results are not discussed. The title of Section 5 is "Discussion". However, the majority of the text refers again to literature and it is difficult to find any relevant added value compared to the explanations given in Section 2. No new findings are presented up to Line 298.
• In this "Discussion" it is stated in Line 299f that "This study is novel in the sense of evaluating whether tacit and explicit knowledge are shared in the same way depending on the cultural dimensions." This aspect has never been emphasized before. In the introduction, it was still said that the novelty lies in the fact that "Research on the relationship between knowledge sharing and cultural values is scarce, especially in the Latin American context".
• Apart from the fact that the outcomes of the study are only listed and not explained or discussed, there is also no discussion of the insights gained. How can the results of the study be used? How does it contribute to improving knowledge sharing and sustainability?

Minor comments

• In the abstract, the cultural dimensions "uncertainty avoidance", "individualism-collectivism", "paternalism", "power distance", and "masculinity-femininity" are already mentioned. However, no definition is given for these dimensions at this point. Therefore, it would be more useful to briefly describe the findings of the study instead of name-dropping these terms.
• When using "et al.", a period must be placed after the abbreviation "al".
• Since the five dimensions presented in Section 2 in Lines 55 to 69 are relevant for the rest of the paper, they should be emphasized more prominently. For instance, a table summarizing the definition as well as the most important properties would facilitate the readability and comprehension of the rest of the paper.
• The sentence in Lines 60 to 63 is not coherent. This is only one example. The rest of the text also contains a few more of such difficult-to-understand sentences.
• I assume that there were not actually 55.12 men and 43.28 women who participated in the field study. So, two percentage signs are missing (Line 180).
• In Line 214 it should be Table 2 with a capital T.
• The DOI given in [16] is incorrect and does not work / refers to a different article.

Overall decision

The paper addresses a very relevant topic, as the management and preservation of knowledge in a company, also in terms of sustainability, is nowadays a very important issue for economic success. In their paper, the authors looked at many relevant and recent research papers and also conducted a comprehensive field study.

Unfortunately, the presentation of the results is highly deficient and unconvincing. Since neither for the literature review nor for the field study the methodology is described, it is not comprehensible to the reader whether the academic soundness is ensured. In addition, the authors also do not identify research objectives or define what contribution their work is intended to provide. This is complicated by the fact that all results are only presented, but not discussed or interpreted. Thus, in its current form, there is no added value to the reader, as only results of questionnaires are presented. Since it is neither clear how exactly the survey was conducted (Why were only 50% of the participants considered in the evaluation? What is meant by Questions 1 to 29? What is Factor 1 to 6? etc.), the statistical significance of the results is completely unclear. As neither the primary objectives of the study are clearly defined nor are the results evident, the work offers little novelty in its current state. In addition, the structure of the work appears incoherent, e.g., the literature review and the field study exist almost independently of each other, and major parts of the literature review are even repeated following the field study.

Therefore, I have to come to the decision that the paper in its current form, despite the very interesting ideas and the comprehensive field study, is not beneficial to the reader and should therefore not be published. However, I think that if the aforementioned shortcomings can be resolved in the course of a major revision if these are really only presentation issues and the literature review and the field study were conducted with the necessary academic soundness.

Author Response

Answers

First of all, I want to thank you for the excellent feedback on the article. It has been one of the most complete analyses that I have received for my publications.

In the attached file you will be able to identify in red the changes we made thanks to your suggestions.

The article explicitly included the research question and purpose of the research and the motivation to carry out the study. The discussion was improved and the contribution of the article was also included.

Following your suggestion, 3 hypotheses were explicitly written in the article. The justification of hypotheses was strengthened with the inclusion of 13 new references. The validation of hypothesis 3, in particular, contributes to the theoretical development and empirical validation of a new line of research that integrates cultural studies and knowledge management, which analyzes whether cultural values differentially influence the tacit and explicit knowledge that is shared in organizations. The result of this study can be considered as a pilot study of future works.

Another reason to consider this study as novel is that it is the first time to be carried out with these variables in the context of Latin America. This justification was expanded in the article. On the topic of culture, it is highly relevant to identify how constructs behave in different countries. Unfortunately, the issue has been studied in an incipient way in Latin America.

As suggested by the reviewer, the 29 questions of the instrument were included in the article.

In the article, it was clarified what was the number of research participants, the number of questionnaires discarded due to missing data, and the samples for the exploratory and confirmatory analyses.

In the article, it was clarified the origin of data in Tables 3 and 4. Tables 5 and 6 were explained.

The definitions of the five cultural dimensions were broadened.

A period was added when using et al.

The percentages of men and women who participated in the research were clarified.

Table 2 was capitalized.

The DOI given in [16] was removed for being incorrect.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for authors efforts to the revised manuscript, I will recommend to publication. 

Author Response

Reviewer 1: Thanks for authors efforts to the revised manuscript, I will recommend to publication. 

Thank you.

Reviewer 2 Report

I think that the paper has significantly improved as a result of the revisions. The authors were able to address most of my concerns about the paper as a result. Regarding a couple of my issues, however, a bit more in-depth descriptions would have been appreciated. For instance, the methodology applied to select the literature for the literature review is still not properly explained or it could still be made more explicit how the results from the study can be used in practice. Also, the structure of the paper is not properly outlined yet. There are hardly any transitions between the sections. As a result, the various sections appear to be isolated from each other. This would further improve readability and comprehensibility.

Nevertheless, the overall presentation of the results is considerably better now.

Unfortunately, a couple of errors (typos, grammatical errors, formatting errors, inconsistencies) were added during the revision. Here is a small list of instances that I noticed:

• The sentence in Line 39f sounds a bit odd. Is the “and” correct? And are the commas correct?
• The statement in Line 197f is incorrect in my opinion. You start with “In summary”, yet the rest of the sentence is not a summary of what is said in that section. Therefore, I do not think that this is the right wording.
• In the sentence in Line 202f as well as the sentence in Line 203 there are spaces between the number and the % symbol. In the rest of the paper, you have no spaces before a % symbol. This should be harmonized.
• The formatting of the reference in Line 220 is incorrect. According to the template, it should be [83, 84].
• The formatting of the reference in Line 245 is incorrect. According to the template, it should be [85–87].

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Therefore, the paper needs to be thoroughly proofread before publication in order to eliminate such errors and inconsistencies.

Author Response

Author Response File: Author Response.docx