Quality of Work Life as a Precursor to Work–Life Balance: Collegiality and Job Security as Moderators and Job Satisfaction as a Mediator

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I have enjoyed reading this interesting paper about the relationships between Quality of Work Life (QWL), Work Life Balance (WLB), Job Satisfaction (JS), and the moderating effect of Collegiality (Co) and Job security (JSe).

My overall impression from the paper is that it contains a theoretically sound and methodologically rigorous piece of empirical research. The relations between QWL and WLB have already been discussed in the literature and this article confirms the results of previous research; but the article also presents novelties, mainly in the incorporation of collegiality and job security as RHS variables. The area in which the research is carried out, which is the construction sector in India, is also new, according to the author/authors. I have also found interesting the use of a structural model through the macros by Professor Hayes for SPSS, which constitutes a highly valuable tool, although —shockingly—less used than others associated with structural equation models.

The only thing I can blame the author/authors for is that, in my opinion, their model, which includes up to two levels of moderation variables, is excessively convoluted to me.

Consequently, I only suggest some minor changes to the text:

1. I suggest the author(s) to provide more information on the design of the questionnaire. The text only states that the authors have carefully designed it (lines 267-8), but does not even indicate references used in the design of the scales (lines 300-301) or how they have been modified to adapt to the particular circumstances of the sector. In this sense, I have to point out that I was surprised by the wording of some items on the WLB scale in which reference is made to home work, a modality that I understand does not make much sense in the construction sector (except, perhaps, in the case of some administrative work).

2. The reader is scarcely informed about the decisions regarding the selection of the sample. The article refers to this point with a laconic “we used convenience sampling” (lines 278-9). This sentence informs, in any case, how the sample was not selected, but it says nothing at all about the decisions that the researchers did adopt with respect to that selection.

3. Nor is it specified how the questionnaires were distributed. Was it through a personal interview or were the questionnaires simply distributed for workers to fill out on their own and return? Taking into account the foreseeable educational level of the employees surveyed, the way in which the responses were obtained is not trivial. It is not reported whether there was a second or successive response requests. And, if there were not, the comparison between the first 100 and the last 100 responses received does not provide much information about possible biases derived from non-response. In fact, no information is provided in the article on response rates. .

4. In short, my recommendation to the author/authors is that they should complete the information on the methods used in the design and execution of their empirical research.

5. In the section describing the variables in the research, the references related to collegiality (lines 129-133) may not be the most appropriate: reference number 53 does not explicitly or implicitly address the issue of collegiality in organizations. The remaining two coin and develop the concept of organizational citizenship behavior, but do not refer explicitly to collegiality. Both, collegiality and organizational citizenship behavior, are related concepts, although collegiality probably designates a broader phenomenon, especially when used in the context that is most natural to it: educational institutions. In this context, the term colegiality goes beyond the tendency to mutual help between co-workers, and has to do with a special type of relationships between peers and also between academics at different levels of the academic career. In an even broader sense, the term collegiality can refer to certain aspects of the organization of work and the distribution of authority in educational institutions. Therefore, I believe that the authors should add in this section references to research that explicitly uses the concept of collegiality, such as those by Miles et al. (2015), Olaskoaga-Larrauri et al. (2019) and, especially, Su and Baird (2017) and Su, Baird and Tung (2022). This last paper may be particularly interesting for the authors, since it deals with the mediating effect of collegiality in a non-academic environment.

Miles, M.P., Shepherd, C.D., Rose, J.M. & Dibben, M. (2015). Collegiality in business schools. International Journal of Educational Management, 29 (3), 322-333. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEM-02-2014-0022

Olaskoaga-Larrauri, J., González-Laskibar, X. & Díaz-De-Basurto-Uraga, P. (2019). Spanish University Reforms and Job Satisfaction: Is There only One Way Out? Educational Policy, 33(2), 291-318. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904817691839

Su, S. & Baird, K. (2017). The impact of collegiality amongst Australian accounting academics on work-related attitudes and academic performance. Studies in Higher Education, 42 (3), 411-427. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1049142.

Su, S., Baird, K., & Tung, A. (2022). Controls and performance: assessing the mediating role of creativity and collegiality. Journal of Management Control, 33: 449-482. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00187-022-00344-9. 

6. The conceptual problems with the variable collegiality extend to its operationalization. The scale used by the author(s) includes items on the relationship between employees and supervisors that are not present in previous scales (as in Miles et al., 2015; or in Sha, 2011, 2012) and that are not justified by the definition of collegiality provided by the author(s): “collegiality among the employees (…) refers to positive interpersonal interactions and a friendly approach at work” (lines 210-1).

Shah, M. (2011). The dimensionality of teacher collegiality and the development of teacher collegiality scale. International Journal of Education, 3 (2), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.5296/ije.v3i2.958

Shah, M. (2012). The impact of teachers’ collegiality on their organizational commitment in high- and low-achieving secondary schools in Islamabad, Pakistan. Journal of Studies in Education, 2(2), 130-156. http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/jse.v2i2.1493

7. Finally, I suggest the author/authors to review the following details:

-In line 43 a reference to the primary source of the data you use —which I understand to be the ILO— would be preferable.

- In line 123, the use of the term tremendously is, in my opinion, unnecessarily imprecise and subjective.

- Composite reliability is named CR in the text and in table 1, but CI in table 2.

- Some of the information in Table 2 is also present in Table 1.

- In the findings section there are several type errors on lines 310, 311, 323 and 350.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer (Professor):

We are highly thankful to your constructive suggestions. We have incorporated all your suggestions and prepared a point-by-point explanation of how we addressed your concerns. 

The paper has been reviewed by two other reviewers and since some comments are common, we prepared answers to all the concerns in one document so that all the reviewers can see all the comments and responses. 

We are attaching a word document of the responses and the revised document wherein we highlighted the changes. 

The suggestions from all the reviewers have improved the quality of the manuscript. 

Thanks once again.

Regards. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

the study was conducted appropriately and well written. 

the only concern I have is the occasional use of superlative terms, which are difficult, to impossible, to support such as in line 7 'A carefully crafted' and line 89 'The literature review on QWL, WLB, and job satisfaction is exhaustive' (it only takes one person to find one more study and it is no longer exhaustive). Editing for clarity will improve the document.

Lines 30-32 imply that the topics were the only topics studied. I doubt you meant to say that. Editing to limit the scope to the specific topics would clarify the meaning.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer (Professor):

We are highly thankful to your constructive suggestions. We have incorporated all your suggestions and prepared a point-by-point explanation of how we addressed your concerns. 

The paper has been reviewed by two other reviewers and since some comments are common, we prepared answers to all the concerns in one document so that all the reviewers can see all the comments and responses. 

We are attaching a word document of the responses and the revised document wherein we highlighted the changes. 

The suggestions from all the reviewers have improved the quality of the manuscript. 

Thanks once again.

Regards. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Please find attached file. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer (Professor):

We are highly thankful to your constructive suggestions. We have incorporated all your suggestions and prepared a point-by-point explanation of how we addressed your concerns. 

The paper has been reviewed by two other reviewers and since some comments are common, we prepared answers to all the concerns in one document so that all the reviewers can see all the comments and responses. 

We are attaching a word document of the responses and the revised document wherein we highlighted the changes. 

The suggestions from all the reviewers have improved the quality of the manuscript. 

Thanks once again.

Regards. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx