Ethical Leadership and Innovative Work Behavior: The Mediating Role of Individual Attributes

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors investigated how ethical leadership influences thriving at work and attitude towards performing well and the impact of thriving and attitude towards performing well on innovative behavior. Several issues need to be "fixed" before publication to improve the manuscript. 

I would suggest the authors adding some additional information to obtain a higher evaluation according to the Study Quality Assessment Tool for cross-sectional studies. In particular, I recommend: 

1) The study population should be more clearly specified and defined by stating the inclusion and exclusion criteria for being eligible for participation (apart from being a worker of a given company). 

2) Was the participation rate of eligible persons at least 50%? Indeed, non-participation is selective (i.e., non-participants are more often young men, single and from lower socio-economic groups), and this could imply a bias in the sampling. Is it possible to retrieve such information?

3) The authors should present reasons for selecting or recruiting the number of people they included or analyzed. What was your reference point to determine adequate sample size? 

4) The description of the measures is unsatisfactory. The authors should provide further information about the tools used to measure variables to be sure that those measurements are accurate and reliable before they used them. For example, have they been validated before your study? What is the reliability coefficient of each measure in other studies? 

5) Information about how to interpret the mediating effects should be provided. 

Finally, in the introduction section (or where the authors consider it more appropriate), I suggest adding a recent work that received a lot of attention regarding the relationship between Intrapreneurial Self-Capital and Sustainable Innovative Behavior (https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11020322). 

Minor points: 

• A p-value of 0.00 is deeply incorrect. The probability that the authors are incorrectly rejecting the true null hypothesis could not be zero no matter how small the p-value could be. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

• To topic of the article is interesting and important, but also difficult.
• The key problem is the definition of the main terms used in the title and next in the whole manuscript, like: ethics, ethical leadership, innovation and innovative work behavior.  Despite some definition suggestions, reading the text it's impossible to be satisfy. We don't know what doesn't mean "innovative work behavior". This term is often used interchangeably with the term "creativity at work", what is not the same. I think that the title should be though over again. More practical examples of the "creativity" and "innovative work behavior" are necessary, such as examples of "ethical leadership". According to me, the "ethical leadership" presented by authors in real is the form of the democratic leadership style, or even the synonym of it. It must be explained in detail. After that all hypothesis should be analysed again.
• In the article authors use abbreviations (for instance: IWB, EL), but not inform about it in the text. In some places full names are presented.
• The order of hypotheses isn't incomprehensible (H1, H2, H5)....
• The hypothesis no 5 is not clear. What doesn't mean "performing well" in practice. It's very subjective category. It should be particularized.
• The authors should be careful using sentences like: "Thriving individuals are more innovative than those who do not thrive". What does it mean?
• The model, presented as figure 1, is not clear and, in my opinion, not complete. How about the H4 and H1? Where is H7? It's obligatory to refine the model.
• The authors present completely unclear structure of "sub-models"- model a, model b, etc. What is it? What for?
• What does it mean: "The majority of respondents (70.2%) had at least 14 years of education"?
• In the empirical part I recommend to present the results concerning the verification of research hypotheses one by one. The conclusions must me clear.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors were able to convincingly resolving my points and now the manuscript appeared substantially improved. Congratulations.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you very much for your comment.

We appreciate your important comments and suggestions which contributed to enhancing the quality of our paper.