Airline Cabin Crew Members’ Ambidexterity as the Sustainable Attitude for Prosocial Passenger Service
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This study was designed to explore the intrinsic and extrinsic motivators for a cabin crew’s ambidexterity and to investigate its influence on prosocial service behavior. The research topic was interesting and worthy of investigation, but there were a few points to be revised or clarified.
In the introduction, please clarify the definition of ambidexterity, and explain how can it be applied to the individual level.
The literature review was properly written.
For the methods, please clarify the data collection period to clarify that this data was or was not collected in the middle of the pandemic.
Results were properly presented.
Lastly, an explanation of the reason why some paths were not significant in explaining ambidexterity would be very helpful in terms of theoretical and empirical contribution.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We are very thankful for your comments and suggestions for this manuscript. We have given serious thought to all the points that you made and believe that those comments have definitely helped to improve the quality of the paper. Below, you will find revisions and replies to the comments made in response to the manuscript. We assigned numbers to the comments (in Italic) to make sure we appropriately addressed and cross-referenced each specific issue/comment/question. Within the manuscript and response letter, changes are in red. We hope the changes we made are satisfactory to you.
Reviewer #1: This study was designed to explore the intrinsic and extrinsic motivators for a cabin crew’s ambidexterity and to investigate its influence on prosocial service behavior. The research topic was interesting and worthy of investigation, but there were a few points to be revised or clarified.
Response: Thank you for the comments and feedback. We are grateful for the opportunity to revise this manuscript for Sustainability and feel that responding to your comments has made the paper stronger.
Comment 1:
In the introduction, please clarify the definition of ambidexterity, and explain how can it be applied to the individual level.
Response: This is a fair point. In lines 51–61, the term, ambidexterity, has been defined as well as its application to the individual level has also been addressed. The revised passage now reads:
“Individual ambidexterity refers to an individual’s ability to simultaneously perform work-related activities of both exploration and exploitation [14,15]. Exploration is about innovation/taking the initiative, which captures the activities related to discovery, adaptability, variability, and innovation, while exploitation is about servicing customers in organizationally consistent ways, highlighting activities related to efficiency, alignment, selection, and reliability [9]. Therefore, individual ambidexterity can be explained as a multilevel phenomenon driven by individuals as they deal with dynamic environments due to the variations in explorative or exploitative behaviors over time [11,13]. Seen in this way, individual ambidexterity encompasses divergent thinking (exploration), focused attention (exploitation), and cognitive flexibility (alternating exploration and exploitation) [11].”
Comment 2:
The literature review was properly written.
Response: We appreciate you found our literature review properly written.
Comment 3:
For the methods, please clarify the data collection period to clarify that this data was or was not collected in the middle of the pandemic.
Response: Thank you very much for your constructive feedback. Data were collected from May 5th to July 22nd. During this period, all the airline services in South Korea were regularly provided because the government social distance policy had been disbanded. As you commented, we added the specific times for collecting data period to the revised manuscript. The data collection period now reads in lines 266–267:
“The survey was conducted from May 5th to July 22nd, 2022.”
Comment 4:
Results were properly presented.
Response: We do appreciate your praise.
Comment 5:
Lastly, an explanation of the reason why some paths were not significant in explaining ambidexterity would be very helpful in terms of theoretical and empirical contribution.
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We cautiously think you may miss to read the discussion section. Our initial version of the manuscript clearly provided the explanations of the reason why some hypotheses had been rejected. For your convenience, we colored the discussion parts for the rejected hypotheses. Please refer to lines 455–466 and 471–481. The passages read:
“However, interestingly, the enjoyment of the work itself does not have a significant influence on the cabin crew members’ ambidexterity, which is consistent with Leung et al.'s [33] finding. They argued that the enjoyment of work may not be the essential motivation factor for cabin crew members’ ambidexterity because enjoyment of work focuses on self-expression and self-entertainment rather than on the process of tackling challenges and problems encountered. However, enjoyment may positively affect the cabin crew members’ job satisfaction or career satisfaction because the opportunities to travel overseas during layovers in a destination are a critical factor of employee attrition [75]. It is also plausible that a cabin crew member’ passenger service is not, in itself, very enjoyable work, but rather a task which necessarily prioritizes passengers' safety. Hence, the authors conclude that enjoyment of work is not a good motivator for cabin crew members’ ambidexterity.”
And
“In contrast to the previous study [15], the findings of this study demonstrate that compensation is not an effective extrinsic motivator to encourage cabin crew members’ ambidexterity. This null effect of compensation on ambidexterity can be supported by self-determination theory [44]. Not only Deci and his colleagues' studies [32,44] but also his earlier research [30] have consistently argued that providing employees monetary rewards as extrinsic motivation tends to weaken their intrinsic motivation and distorts the nature of the state in which they were internally motivated to accomplish tasks autonomously. In the same vein, the two-factor theory [43] also addressed that a lack of extrinsic motivators, so called hygiene factors, such as salary and job security, may cause employees to be dissatisfied with their jobs, but that strong extrinsic motivators do not necessarily make them strongly motivated.”
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
The paper addresses an important and original topic of personal ambidexterity in the context of hospitality industry. However, it requires major corrections, below I enclose my remarks:
1. Please explain widely what is the relation of the research with sustainable concept.
2. Please expand the literature review considering the current publications (from the last 5 years).
3. The paper lacks of the final measurement model presenting the verified hypothesis. Please, add it in the main body.
4. The paper lacks of the questionnaire with items. Please, add it in the main body or as an appendix. Please explain if the new measurement scale was validated.
5. Please explain if the research sample is representative considering Korea, and what was the general population in order to formulate the general conclusions.
6. In 3.1. Sample and data collection section, add the information about the date of collecting the questionnaire.
7. Please add the figures into the main body of paper.
8. There should not be „e.g.” in citing the literature for example: [10,e.g., 17], but precise sources, so please check and correct in the whole paper.
9. Line 86 – instead of ‘Mom and his colleagues’ please use ‘Mom et al.’ and the source should be transfer to the end of sentence.
10. Line 133, 180-184 - please correct citation, the source should be added at the end of sentence.
11. The paper requires technical corrections (many typos, wrong citation), so I recommend to revise all text.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We are very thankful for your comments and suggestions for this manuscript. We have given serious thought to all the points that you made and believe that those comments have definitely helped to improve the quality of the paper. Below, you will find revisions and replies to the comments made in response to the manuscript. We assigned numbers to the comments (in Italic) to make sure we appropriately addressed and cross-referenced each specific issue/comment/question. Within the manuscript and response letter, changes are in red. We hope the changes we made are satisfactory to you.
Reviewer #2: The paper addresses an important and original topic of personal ambidexterity in the context of hospitality industry. However, it requires major corrections, below I enclose my remarks:
Response: We appreciate you found unique contributions in our manuscript. We also improve the manuscript with amendments according to your comments. Please find our responses to your requests.
Comment 1:
Please explain widely what is the relation of the research with sustainable concept.
Response: Thank you for your careful reading. Sustainability is a broad concept that traditionally covers environment, economic, and social aspects. Contemporary sustainability literature has expanded the concept to institutional, cultural, technical, and innovative phenomena. With this point of view, we added several sentences to justify individual ambidexterity is related to sustainability. Please refer to the sentences in lines 64–68, and the added sentences now read:
“However, individual ambidexterity can enhance prosocial service behavior, which contributes to sustainability in an organization from the social and economic perspectives because the concept of ambidexterity involves the two aspects capable of facilitating innovation and engagement in business, similar to the sustainability concept [16].”
Comment 2:
Please expand the literature review considering the current publications (from the last 5 years).
Response: Your point is well-taken. We have updated citations and references throughout the article. In the revised manuscript, 36% of the references are within the last five years, and 51% of the references are within the last seven years. However, we cannot delete the references which are important citations that reflect the theoretical foundation and pioneering of the concepts as well as the traditional measures of the construct.
Comment 3:
The paper lacks of the final measurement model presenting the verified hypothesis. Please, add it in the main body.
Response: Thanks for this constructive comment. We have added the final measurement model including those item descriptions. The additional Table 1 can be found in the main body, particularly in pages 9–11.
Comment 4:
The paper lacks of the questionnaire with items. Please, add it in the main body or as an appendix. Please explain if the new measurement scale was validated.
Response: Thanks for this thoughtful comment. As we responded to the Comment 3, the measurement items have been included in Table 1. Please see page 9–11.
Comment 5:
Please explain if the research sample is representative considering Korea, and what was the general population in order to formulate the general conclusions.
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. Additional information about the two surveyed carriers has been provided in the revised manuscript. We believe these two full-service carriers can be representative because they occupy approximately half of the aviation market in South Korea. In lines 251–252, it reads:
“These two full-service carriers occupy the majority of the aviation market focusing on passenger travels in South Korea [67].”
Comment 6:
In 3.1. Sample and data collection section, add the information about the date of collecting the questionnaire.
Response: This is a great point. We provided the exact period of the survey in lines 266–267. It now reads:
“The survey was conducted from May 5th to July 22nd, 2022.”
Comment 7:
Please add the figures into the main body of paper.
Response: Thank you for the comment. We moved all the Tables and Figures into the main body. You can now find the Tables and Figures throughout the revised manuscript.
Comment 8:
There should not be „e.g.” in citing the literature for example: [10,e.g., 17], but precise sources, so please check and correct in the whole paper.
Response: Thank you for your detailed comments. It was the technical errors of Zotero, one of the software programs for reference management. We fixed the error throughout the revised papers. The corrections are in lines 89 and 92.
Comment 9:
Line 86 – instead of ‘Mom and his colleagues’ please use ‘Mom et al.’ and the source should be transfer to the end of sentence.
Response: Thanks for this suggestion. Per your request, we amended the sentence and citation style. In lines 97–98 it now reads:
“Mom et al. fueled the need for studies on individual ambidexterity by exploring the predictors of managerial ambidexterity [23,25].”
Comment 10:
Line 133, 180-184 - please correct citation, the source should be added at the end of sentence.
Response: We agree with the reviewer’s comment and revised the sentences in lines 179–181 and 193–196 as follows:
“Caniëls et al. highlighted the finding that employees' ambidexterity is strongly related to a supportive organizational culture [42].”
And
“Prosocial behavior was coined as "voluntary actions that are intended to help or benefit another individual or group of individuals" [58 p. 3]. Scholars in service management expanded the term to prosocial service behavior with specific reference to the role of service employees [59,60].”
Comment 11:
The paper requires technical corrections (many typos, wrong citation), so I recommend to revise all text.
Response: Thank you for the comment. One of the authors is highly educated native-born speaker. He has proofread the manuscript several times and typos and citations have been fixed throughout the document. In addition, a hired professional editor in English has also proofread and edited the remaining typos and grammatical errors. Now, we believe the revised manuscript is free from those technical errors.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
thank you for considering my remarks in revised article. Now, in my opinion, the paper is much more interesting and well prepared.
Good luck and congratulations!
