Entrepreneurs’ Life Satisfaction Built on Satisfaction with Job and Work–Family Balance: Embedded in Society in China, Finland, and Sweden

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The topic of the current study is interesting and the paper is well-written. 
however, a few minor things need to be improved.

1. what is GEM? please use the full name, not the abbreviation, when it is shown for the first time in the manuscript.

2. The last paragraph in the introduction seems to be the same as the conclusion section. please shorten it in the introduction and rather show the structure of the paper.

3. The author(s) should follow the layout or format for the journal :) 

4. based on the explanation, the data is collected in 2013 and 2014. The author(s) must explain or justify the use of old data. Besides, if possible, the author(s) could explain whether or not the results are the same at this moment.

5. The author(s) should strengthen or justify why those three countries were selected for the current study more explicitly.

 

Author Response

Response to the Review Comments

Dear Editor Ronda Dang and Reviewers,

Thanks very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. I really appreciate all your comments and suggestions! Please find the following detailed responses below and my revisions in the re-submitted files.

 

1) what is GEM? please use the full name, not the abbreviation, when it is shown for the first time in the manuscript.

Response: Thanks for your kind suggestions. We have used the full name for the first appearance of GEM in the abstract and content of the paper (On lines 13, page 1 and lines 102, page 3, highlighted them in blue color). To answer the question “what is GEM?”, we have explained GEM details in the data section and highlighted them in blue color (from line 417, page 9 to line 424, page 9). We also attached it below for your convenience.

“The full name of GEM is Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. The data are publicly available at GEM’s website www.gemconsortium.org. GEM began in 1999 as a joint project between Babson College (USA) and London Business School (UK). It is widely coordinated by the project center and implemented by national project teams to complete data collection and ensure high-quality information. Its comprehensive report has greatly enhanced the understanding of the phenomenon of entrepreneurship. The GEM database has been increasingly utilized in academic research, and more than 700 papers have been published based on the database (He, Bai, and Xiao, 2020).”

 

2) The last paragraph in the introduction seems to be the same as the conclusion section. please shorten it in the introduction and rather show the structure of the paper.

Response: Thanks for your constructive suggestions. We have divided the last paragraph of the introduction in the original paper into two paragraphs. The first paragraph (from line 105, page 3 to line 117, page 3) condenses this article’s theoretical and practical significance. The second paragraph (from line 118, page 3 to line 124, page 3) lists the article’s structure. We hope it will make the introduction more concise and the structure of the article clearer. We highlighted the revision part in blue color.

 

3) The author(s) should follow the layout or format for the journal :)

Response: Thanks for your kind suggestions. We have adapted the article to the format of the journal.

 

4) Based on the explanation, the data is collected in 2013 and 2014. The author(s) must explain or justify the use of old data. Besides, if possible, the author(s) could explain whether or not the results are the same at this moment.

Response: We are grateful for your questions and constructive suggestion. We have added an explanation for this question in the article (from line 428, page 9 to line 438, page 9, highlighted in blue color) and attached it below for your convenience.

“Based on Hofstede's cultural dimension theory and self-determination theory, this article concludes that cultural and income differences among countries will lead to different levels of entrepreneurial satisfaction. From the perspective of income, according to the World Economic Outlook Database from International Monetary Fund, the national income/GDP ratio of these three countries has been relatively stable in the past decade (Simionescu and Diaconescu,2020; Maksimtsev et al.,2017), and they have not experienced wars, financial crises, and other special circumstances. From the perspective of culture, national culture is relatively stable and changes slowly (Opper and Andersson，2018). Thus, we have sufficient reasons to believe that the data for 2013 and 2014 are still representative of the current situation to a certain extent. Due to the data availability, this paper tentatively used the data of 2013 and 2014 for the study, and we will continue to expand our research as new data becomes available.”

 

5) The author(s) should strengthen or justify why those three countries were selected for the current study more explicitly.

Response: Thanks for your constructive suggestion, which is highly appreciated. According to the comment, we have added the reasons for selecting these three countries for our study in the paper (from line 88, page 2 to line 99, page 3) and highlighted them in blue color. For your convenience, we have attached it below.

“Prior studies about the satisfaction of entrepreneurs mainly focused on a single country, especially the developed countries (Shir et al., 2018; Binder and Coad, 2013). However, Diener et al. (1995) pointed out that life satisfaction at the national level showed notable differences. It is thus perhaps essential to study whether the effects might be different between developed and developing countries. Finland and Sweden are both highly developed capitalist countries. Also, Finland has a highly industrialized and liberalized market economy (Laukkanen et al., 2013), and Sweden relies on its “Swedish model” of high income, high taxation, and high welfare to guarantee national economic development（Bergh, 2014）. As an emerging economy, China has a significant gap in economic development compared with them. Moreover, Finland and Sweden are typical Nordic countries with different cultures from China (Hofstede, 1984,2004). Thus, they can form a strong contrast. From the data availability, the amount of data in three countries is comparable.”

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response to the Review Comments

Dear Editor Ronda Dang and Reviewers,

Thanks very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. We appreciate all your comments and suggestions! Please find the following detailed responses below and my revisions in the re-submitted files.

 

1. The variables including life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and work-family balance satisfaction used in this study have already been defined and applied in many previous studies, as the author mentioned. Therefore, in order to use these variables in this study, you should show the evidence regarding the reliability and validity by applying confirmatory factor analysis rather than exploratory factor analysis. In other words, it is necessary to report composite reliability to verify factor-level reliability, report convergence validity such as average variance extracted, and report discriminant validity using variances and covariances between factors. However, this paper only reports Cronbach alpha. Furthermore, the reported Cronbach alpha values are 0.7 for all three factors, which raises a doubt about the accuracy.

Response: Thanks for your constructive suggestion, which is highly appreciated. We have applied confirmatory factor analysis to test the reliability and validity. Moreover, we have reported the KMO, Bartlett's test, composite reliability, and average variance extracted (from line 528, page 11 to line 544, page 12). For clarity, we also have added a table listing the data, as shown in Table 1 (page 12). For your convenience, we have attached it below. Furthermore, we highlighted them in yellow color.

“This paper uses confirmatory factor analysis to test the reliability and validity of the variables. Confirmatory factor analysis measures the internal consistency reliability, composite reliability, and average variance extracted of life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and balance satisfaction, and the results are shown in Table 1.

The KMO and Bartlett's tests were used to validate whether the chosen variables were factorable. The results showed that the value of KMO exceeded the suggested minimum of 0.700. Moreover, in Bartlett's test, all significance values were smaller than 0.001. Cronbach’s alpha was used to estimate the internal consistency reliability of the scale. These values for sub-scales ranged from 0.734 to 0.826. All values surpassed the recommended value of 0.700. Composite reliability (CR) was applied to test the internal consistency of the multi-item scales included in the model. As shown in Table 1, the CR of each construct ranged from 0.8305 to 0.8921, exceeding the suggested minimum of 0.600. The result shows that the internal consistency of the measurement model was adequate for further analysis of the model. The standardized factor loadings and the average percentage of variance extracted (AVE) were used to measure convergent validity. All loadings in the constructs were higher than the suggested value of 0.500, and all AVE estimates for each construct exceeded the suggested minimum of 0.500.”

Moreover, we have compared the square root of the AVE in each construct to the correlation coefficients between two constructs (from line 566, page 13 to line 572, page 13) and written the square root of the variable in Table 3 (page 13).

“Discriminant validity was tested by comparing the square root of the AVE in each construct to the correlation coefficients between two constructs. As shown in Table 3, the square root of AVE of each variable (life satisfaction, balance satisfaction and job satisfaction) is greater than the correlation coefficient with other variables, indicating that each variable in this study has good discriminant validity.”

At the same time, we have confirmed the Cronbach alpha values according to the data and corrected them (line 460, 475, 489, page 10) in yellow color. Due to the mistake in the submitted version, we really apologize for the previous mistake. Thanks again for your kind reminder.

 

2. Since the data of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor is cross-sectional and was surveyed at the same time every year, a common method bias can exist between measurement items. In particular, potential biases can be introduced between the three satisfaction measurement items used in this study because the life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and work-family balance satisfaction are similar kinds of constructs of satisfaction. Thus, it is necessary to show post-hoc statistical result of verification and report the existence or extent of the impact of the common method bias. And if there is more than a certain level of common method bias, you need to use a statistical model that controls the impact of this bias.

Response: Thanks for your kind suggestion. We have added Harman’s single-factor test to evaluate the common method bias (from line 547, page 12 to line 555, page 12). For your convenience, we have attached it below. Furthermore, we highlighted them in yellow color.

“Considering that life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and work-life balance satisfaction may have a common method bias (CMB), this study uses Harman’s single-factor test to evaluate the CMB. The specific method puts all the variables into an exploratory factor analysis and tests the unrotated factor analysis results. The results showed that four factors were obtained by principal component factor analysis, which explained 62.271% of the total variables. Moreover, the first factor without rotation explained the variance, accounting for 36.946% of the total variance. No single variable can explain most of the variables, suggesting that CMB may not seriously impact the validity of this paper.”

 

3. In Section 4.2, this paper tested the differences of satisfactions between countries using t-tests. However, repeated use of t-tests to verify the differences between the three countries is not appropriate in terms of degrees of freedom. Thus, it is necessary to report the significance of differences between countries, for example, using ANOVA with Bonferroni or Sidak corrections as post hoc tests.

    Response: We are grateful for your constructive suggestion. We have used ANOVA with Bonferroni corrections as post hoc tests. Moreover, we also have added the analysis results in yellow color in the paper (from line 577, page 13 to line 587, page 13).

“This paper uses ANOVA with Bonferroni corrections as post hoc tests. The results show that (1) there are significant differences in life satisfaction among the three countries, F=447.704, p<0.001. Life satisfaction in Finland is significantly higher than in China, p < 0.001; life satisfaction in Sweden is significantly higher than in China, p < 0.001; (2) in terms of job satisfaction, there are significant differences among the three countries, F=193.280, p<0. 001. Job satisfaction in Finland is significantly higher than in China, p < 0.001; job satisfaction in Sweden is significantly higher than in China, p < 0.001; (3) in terms of work-life balance satisfaction, there are significant differences among the three countries, F=173.289, p<0. 001. Balance satisfaction in Finland is significantly higher than that in China, p < 0.001; Balance satisfaction in Sweden is significantly higher than in China, p < 0.001.”

 

4. In this paper, the dummy variable for Sweden was set to 1 for Swedish nationals and 0 for not Swedish nationals. Therefore, if the interaction term between the Swedish dummy and occupation variables is significant, the difference between the Swedish and non-Swedish people is tested. In other words, it is not a test of the difference between the Swedish and the Chinese, nor the test of the difference between non-Chinese and Chinese. The same logic goes for the dummy variable for Finland. However, the hypotheses in this paper argue that entrepreneurs' satisfactions of the people of China differs from that of Sweden or Finland. In other words, the test methods to verify the hypotheses and the results from the statistical analysis do not match. Therefore, the results in Table 4 could not be used to show the evidence for your hypotheses. My recommendation for these problems is to use ANCOVA or regression analysis with interaction terms between the categorical variable for countries and the dummy variable for occupation. This method may decrease the relatively higher VIFs found in your analysis. Anyway, you should use the correct method to test the hypothesis.

Response: Thanks for your kind suggestion. We have modified this part. To test the hypotheses 1a, 2a, 3a, we have used regression analysis with interaction terms between the dummy for Finland (coded 1 for people in Finland and 0 for China) and the dummy variable for occupation in Models 1, 4, 7. To test the hypotheses 1b, 2b, 3b, we have used regression analysis with interaction terms between the dummy for Sweden (coded 1 for people in Sweden and 0 for China) and the dummy variable for occupation in Model 2, 5, 8. Considering that Finland and Sweden are similar in economic development and culture, we have used regression analysis with interaction terms between the dummy for Finland and Sweden (coded 1 for people in Finland and Sweden and 0 for China) and the dummy variable for occupation. Moreover, we also have added VIFs. According to the results of the data analysis, we have rediscussed this part and highlighted them in yellow color (from line 611, page 15 to line 654, page 15).

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

I appreciate having the opportunity to review the manuscript entitled “Entrepreneurs’ life satisfaction built on satisfaction with job and work-family balance: Embedded in society in China, Finland, and Swede” (sustainability-1687798).

 
The current paper investigated how cultural differences and income differences in countries like China, Sweden and Finland influence the satisfaction with job and work-family balance.

Although the authors have made considerable efforts to develop this paper, however, I believe that the current version of the manuscript could be slightly improved. I want to provide some suggestions for the improvement of this paper as follows:

Introduction

It is not clear why the authors chose the 3 countries for this work. What were their selection criteria or the need to choose them?

2. Theory and hypotheses

The title in section 2.1 is not very relevant. Please consider changing it, perhaps using the information below this subtitle (National Differences in Satisfaction and Hofstede's cultural dimension theory)

A subtitle should also be entered for Self-determination theory (line 192)

Subheadings 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 should be redefined. The already sounds like hypotheses, not titles.

Pay attention to the definition of working hypotheses. As they appear formulated, there are 2 working hypotheses not 1 for each H1a, H1b, H2a, H2b, etc. [H1a. The effect of occupation on job satisfaction depends on the country. – One hypothesis; In China, the satisfaction of becoming an entrepreneur will be increased more than that in Finland – Another hypothesis]

In Figure 1, where is China?

3. Methodology

3.1.1. The data used in this paper are from 2013 and 2014. They are almost 10 years old. Are they still relevant? You have to argue this very well.

For subheadings 3.2.1; 3.2.2; 3.2.3; 3.2.4 you mentioned that you used factor analysis or multivariate analysis. A table showing these results would be useful.

4. Results

At line 524, rephrase the sentence that begins with "Here we first describe the background." Also, try to present the results in a depersonalized way in the paper (avoid personal pronouns and pronominal adjectives)

Table 4 should be entered after line 559, then the results that can be seen in it should be presented. Also, what do the 7 models in the table mean? Where are they explained?

If you are going to formulate the hypotheses, you will also need to check the results section that mentions them.

5. Discussion

The discussion section should contain a presentation of the results obtained in this paper compared to other papers in the field. Also, the studies will be compared with those from other countries compared to the 3 taken into account and the related conclusions will be highlighted. This section should be developed accordingly.

6. Conclusions

This section should contain the main results of your study, without necessarily comparing with what happens in other studies (issues that need to be addressed in the discussion section)

Author Response

Response to the Review Comments

Dear Editor Ronda Dang and Reviewers,

Thanks very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. I appreciate all your comments and suggestions! Please find the following detailed responses below and my revisions in the re-submitted files.

 

1. Introduction

It is not clear why the authors chose the 3 countries for this work. What were their selection criteria or the need to choose them?

Response: Thanks for your question, which is highly appreciated. According to the comment, we have added the reasons for selecting these three countries for our study in the paper (from line 88, page 2 to line 99, page 3). For your convenience, we have attached it below. And we highlighted them in blue color.

“Prior studies about the satisfaction of entrepreneurs mainly focused on a single country, especially the developed countries (Shir et al., 2018; Binder and Coad, 2013). However, Diener et al. (1995) pointed out that life satisfaction at the national level showed notable differences. It is thus perhaps important to study whether the effects might be different between developed and developing countries. Finland and Sweden are both highly developed capitalist countries. Also, Finland has a highly industrialized and liberalized market economy (Laukkanen et al., 2013), and Sweden relies on its “Swedish model” of high income, high taxation, and high welfare to guarantee national economic development (Bergh, 2014). As an emerging economy, China has a big gap in economic development compared with them. Moreover, Finland and Sweden are typical Nordic countries with different cultures from China (Hofstede, 1984, 2004). Thus, they can form a strong contrast. From the data availability, the amount of data in three countries is comparable.”

 

2. Theory and hypotheses

1) The title in section 2.1 is not very relevant. Please consider changing it, perhaps using the information below this subtitle (National Differences in Satisfaction and Hofstede's cultural dimension theory)

Response: Thanks for your kind suggestion. As you recommended, we have changed the title in section 2.1 (line 127, page 3). And we highlight it in green color.

 

2) A subtitle should also be entered for Self-determination theory (line 192)

Response: We are grateful for your kind suggestion. We added the subtitle “National differences in satisfaction and self-determination theory” (line 183, page 4) in the article and highlighted it in green.

 

3) Subheadings 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 should be redefined. The already sounds like hypotheses, not titles.

Response: Thanks very much for your suggestion, which is highly appreciated. We have condensed Subheadings 2.3 (line 205, page 5), 2.4 (line 284, page 6), and 2.5 (line 346, page 7) and highlighted them in green color.

 

4) Pay attention to the definition of working hypotheses. As they appear formulated, there are 2 working hypotheses not 1 for each H1a, H1b, H2a, H2b, etc. [H1a. The effect of occupation on job satisfaction depends on the country. – One hypothesis; In China, the satisfaction of becoming an entrepreneur will be increased more than that in Finland – Another hypothesis]

Response: Thanks for your constructive suggestion, which is highly appreciated. We realized that the previously proposed hypothesis could be divided into two hypotheses. We have modified the hypotheses (from line 279, page 6 to line 282, page 6; from line 341, page 7 to line 344, page 7; from line 404, page 8 to line 407, page 8) and highlighted them in green.

 

5) In Figure 1, where is China?

Response: We are grateful for your question. In the article, we select one country, China, to be our reference that each other countries will be compared to it. We selected China because we expected China to differ from Finland and Sweden, whereas we do not expect Sweden and Finland to differ from one another. We have added “China” in the research framework. Moreover, we also have added “China, benchmark for Finland and Sweden “to the title of Figure 1 (line 411, page 9) and highlighted it in green color.

 

 

3. Methodology

1) 3.1.1. The data used in this paper are from 2013 and 2014. They are almost 10 years old. Are they still relevant? You have to argue this very well.

Response: We are grateful for your questions and constructive suggestion. We have added an explanation for this question in the article (from line 428, page 9 to line 438, page 9, highlighted in blue color) and attached it below for your convenience.

“Based on Hofstede's cultural dimension theory and self-determination theory, this article concludes that cultural and income differences among countries will lead to different levels of entrepreneurial satisfaction. First, according to the World Economic Outlook Database from International Monetary Fund, the national income/GDP ratio of these three countries has been relatively stable in the past decade (Simionescu and Diaconescu,2020; Maksimtsev et al.,2017). And they have not experienced wars, financial crises, and other special circumstances. Second, national culture is relatively stable and changes slowly（Opper and Andersson, 2018）. Thus, we have sufficient reasons to believe that the data for 2013 and 2014 are still representative of the current situation to a certain extent. Due to the data availability, this paper tentatively used the data of 2013 and 2014 for the study, and we will continue to expand our research as new data becomes available.”

 

2) For subheadings 3.2.1; 3.2.2; 3.2.3; 3.2.4 you mentioned that you used factor analysis or multivariate analysis. A table showing these results would be useful.

Response: Thanks for your constructive suggestion, which is highly appreciated. We have supplemented the article with the table of the factor analysis results of the variables (see Table 1 on page 12), which already covers the variables mentioned in the article. For your convenience, we have attached it below.

Table 1. Factor analysis of variable

Variable	Measurement items	Factor loading	Cronbach's α	Cumulative % of Variance	CR	AVE	KMO	Bartlett Test
								Approx. Chi-Square	Sig.
Life satisfaction	Item 1 for LS	0.832	0.826	60.216%	0.882	0.6022	0.84	9708.980	0.000
	Item 2 for LS	0.839
	Item 3 for LS	0.839
	Item 4 for LS	0.729
	Item 5 for LS	0.616
Job satisfaction	Item 1 for JS	0.796	0.734	50.051%	0.8305	0.5005	0.755	5875.424	0.000
	Item 2 for JS	0.726
	Item 3 for JS	0.561
	Item 4 for JS	0.822
	Item 5 for JS	0.593
Work-family balance Satisfaction	Item 1 for WBS	0.85	0.818	73.399%	0.8921	0.7339	0.702	5518.584	0.000
	Item 2 for WBS	0.889
	Item 3 for WBS	0.83

 

4. Results

1) At line 524, rephrase the sentence that begins with "Here we first describe the background." Also, try to present the results in a depersonalized way in the paper (avoid personal pronouns and pronominal adjectives)

Response: We are grateful for your constructive suggestion. We have modified this personalized sentence. Then, we have also changed other sentences in the paper that use personal pronouns and pronominal adjectives to present the results objectively（from line 522, page 12 to line 526, page 12）. And we highlight it in green color.

 

2) Table 4 should be entered after line 559, then the results that can be seen in it should be presented. Also, what do the 7 models in the table mean? Where are they explained?

Response: Thanks for your kind suggestion. We have moved the table below the content mentioned in the article (line 606, page 14) to facilitate the comparison between the table and the article. As mentioned in the introduction, previous studies about entrepreneurs' life satisfaction usually involved job satisfaction and work-life balance satisfaction. And it was intended that this paper further confirmed entrepreneurs' life satisfaction was significantly correlated with job satisfaction and balance satisfaction, as shown by the positive coefficients for the job satisfaction and balance satisfaction dummies. However, we have found that there were some mistakes in the process of hypothesis verification, so we have revised the model of regression analysis and deleted this model.

 

3) If you are going to formulate the hypotheses, you will also need to check the results section that mentions them.

Response: Thanks for your kind suggestion. As we have revised our assumptions in the section of “Theory and hypotheses”, we have rechecked and revised the results section (from line 611, page 15 to line 654, page 15) and highlighted them in puple color.

 

5. Discussion

The discussion section should contain a presentation of the results obtained in this paper compared to other papers in the field. Also, the studies will be compared with those from other countries compared to the 3 taken into account and the related conclusions will be highlighted. This section should be developed accordingly.

Response: Thanks very much for your suggestion, which is highly appreciated. As you suggested, we have restyled the discussion and conclusions section, and added some content (from line 657, page 16 to line 662, page 16; line 746, page 17, highlighted with green color) that we hope will make the structure of the article clearer.

 

6. Conclusions

This section should contain the main results of your study, without necessarily comparing with what happens in other studies (issues that need to be addressed in the discussion section)

Response: We are grateful for your constructive suggestion. We have readjusted the section on discussion and conclusions. At the same time, we have added some content (from line 796, page 18 to line 797, page 18, highlighted with green color), hoping to state the article’s conclusion more clearly.

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I have no further comment.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have made considerable efforts to improve this paper.They responded punctually to all the observations made for the first time and managed to address those problematic points, considerably improving the value of the paper. Thus, I consider that this research can be published in its current form.
Congratulations to the authors!