Designing a Roadmap for Human Resource Management in the Banking 4.0

Reviewer’s comments

References to review

Reviewer 1

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The presented article reflects the needs of today's world and meets all the attributes of the article for publishing.
The formal and presentation level is at a good level.
The opponent considers the submitted work to be methodically and content-wise successful.

The article needs standardized formatting to be consistent with the journal template. Minor language errors should also be eliminated. These minor comments do not affect the overall grade of the article.

The authors subjected the article text to standardized formatting to conform to the journal template. The text was proofread to eliminate language errors.

Reviewer 2

The submitted paper has low scientific quality. It contains well-known statements, widely known from the literature and practice. The paper is popular one and can be submitted to non-scientific popular banking journal as dissemination of knowledge known from somewhere else.

There are statements about need to enhance human capital in banks, but there is no indication about potential effect of different obvious activities.

The authors improved quality of the paper by presenting effects of enhance human capital on bank performance.

The methodology used by Authors is not described in detail, therefore one cannot evaluate the quality and the reliability of the research. 

The methodology of the study is described in Section 3 Data and methods (p.7). The authors believe that the level of detail in the description is adequate to the size of the text.

The Authors state three contributions to science (in the conclusions), but:

1. Extending human resource management to the context of Banking 4.0, as described in the paper, is widely known.
2. Paper claims that it provides a comprehensive view of challenges shaping human resources management, but there is no evaluation how much particular challenges affect banks, statements are general and no thoroughly supported.
3. There is not verification of the hypothesis, that "holistic" view mitigates challenges, in addition the Authors used the word "holistic" without justification what they mean.

The review states that “Extending human resource management to the context of Banking 4.0, as described in the paper, is widely known”.

The authors made an effort to search for sources that present the extension of human resource management to the context of banking 4.0. The authors use bibliometric  analysis of the citations and publications. Authors choose two scientific platform (Scopus and WoS) because they cover a relevant and extensive collection of scientific publication and have available various of tools for scientific data mining. VOSviewer (version 1.6.17) was used to analyze Co-occurrence. Results enables to mapping the expansion of knowledge on human resources in Banking 4.0, and clearly stress that this connection is not strong explored in contrast to general formula “human resources in banking”.

Instead of using the term "holistic" view, the authors used the term “coherent approach” after Boxall and Purcell.

The paper gives some recommendations at to the enhancing human capital , which maybe useful (albeit known) for banks, but there is no reference to the theory, which makes the paper suitable for popular (rather than scientific) journal.

HRM scholars regularly draw from multiple disciplinary fields, just a two of these here:

•          Economic theory and HRM  explores individual decisions regarding what investments to make in the development of their skills, knowledge and experience and the implications at the macro level (e.g., based in human capital theory: Wright & McMahan, 2011). Applying general economic theory to the discipline can also provide alternative insights into the decisions that firms are making regarding the management of their human resources (Kaufman, 2015).

•          Strategic management theory and HRM  explores the alignment between HRM practices/systems and organisational strategy, with the common goal of improving performance and demonstrating the added value of HRM to organisations (Boxall, 2018; Guest, 2017; Paauwe, 2009). Theories explored here include the resource-based view of the firm (Barney, 1991), contingency theory (Galbraith, 1973), resource dependence theory (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978) and strategic contingencies theory (Hickson, Hinings, Lee, Schneck, & Pennings, 1971), among many others.

The review of the literature is very selective - it is related just to few not developed countries. Part of the literature is old.

Authors improved literature review.

Figures 1,2,3 may be suitable for the presentation in the banks, but do not bring added value in the scientific paper.

The authors decided to remove two of the three figures denied by the reviewer, admitting that they do not add sufficient value. Figure 2 (now 1), in the authors' opinion, should stay because it synthesizes information about the most valuable and sought-after positions in modern banking.

Table 1 - the is no evaluation how strong is the influence of the particular activities

Table 1 presents the results of the review of good practices in European banks. The weakness of the taxonomic analysis is the inability to examine the impact of individual actions on management or human resource management. The examination of the opinions on the relevance or importance of these practices in the process of dealing with challenges in banking took place in the next stage, based on the Delphi analysis.

There is a number of statements referring to some publications as well as to the local internal projects, without arguments what was the methodology and what was the validity of the obtained results (representativeness, used methods etc.)

Authors adopt referring in more adequate way.

The roadmap does not contain time line. It is just the list of well-known activities, without evaluation of the impact of these activities.

Authors proposed new Roadmap contain more information.

Reviewer 3

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Designing a Roadmap for Human Resource Management in the 2
Banking 4.0 is an interesting topic and related to a sector that nowadays is ia way of redefinition of its commercial structure, particularly in retail banking, and the closure of branches, together with the changes in internal processes due to the application of new technologies deserve to be studied and analysed.

The authors thank you for supporting the timeliness of the topic discussed and highlighting the multifaceted nature of the changes taking place.

Reviewer’s comments

References to review

Reviewer 1

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The presented article reflects the needs of today's world and meets all the attributes of the article for publishing.
The formal and presentation level is at a good level.
The opponent considers the submitted work to be methodically and content-wise successful.

The article needs standardized formatting to be consistent with the journal template. Minor language errors should also be eliminated. These minor comments do not affect the overall grade of the article.

The authors subjected the article text to standardized formatting to conform to the journal template. The text was proofread to eliminate language errors.

Reviewer 2

The submitted paper has low scientific quality. It contains well-known statements, widely known from the literature and practice. The paper is popular one and can be submitted to non-scientific popular banking journal as dissemination of knowledge known from somewhere else.

There are statements about need to enhance human capital in banks, but there is no indication about potential effect of different obvious activities.

The authors improved quality of the paper by presenting effects of enhance human capital on bank performance.

The methodology used by Authors is not described in detail, therefore one cannot evaluate the quality and the reliability of the research. 

The methodology of the study is described in Section 3 Data and methods (p.7). The authors believe that the level of detail in the description is adequate to the size of the text.

The Authors state three contributions to science (in the conclusions), but:

1. Extending human resource management to the context of Banking 4.0, as described in the paper, is widely known.
2. Paper claims that it provides a comprehensive view of challenges shaping human resources management, but there is no evaluation how much particular challenges affect banks, statements are general and no thoroughly supported.
3. There is not verification of the hypothesis, that "holistic" view mitigates challenges, in addition the Authors used the word "holistic" without justification what they mean.

The review states that “Extending human resource management to the context of Banking 4.0, as described in the paper, is widely known”.

The authors made an effort to search for sources that present the extension of human resource management to the context of banking 4.0. The authors use bibliometric  analysis of the citations and publications. Authors choose two scientific platform (Scopus and WoS) because they cover a relevant and extensive collection of scientific publication and have available various of tools for scientific data mining. VOSviewer (version 1.6.17) was used to analyze Co-occurrence. Results enables to mapping the expansion of knowledge on human resources in Banking 4.0, and clearly stress that this connection is not strong explored in contrast to general formula “human resources in banking”.

Instead of using the term "holistic" view, the authors used the term “coherent approach” after Boxall and Purcell.

The paper gives some recommendations at to the enhancing human capital , which maybe useful (albeit known) for banks, but there is no reference to the theory, which makes the paper suitable for popular (rather than scientific) journal.

HRM scholars regularly draw from multiple disciplinary fields, just a two of these here:

•          Economic theory and HRM  explores individual decisions regarding what investments to make in the development of their skills, knowledge and experience and the implications at the macro level (e.g., based in human capital theory: Wright & McMahan, 2011). Applying general economic theory to the discipline can also provide alternative insights into the decisions that firms are making regarding the management of their human resources (Kaufman, 2015).

•          Strategic management theory and HRM  explores the alignment between HRM practices/systems and organisational strategy, with the common goal of improving performance and demonstrating the added value of HRM to organisations (Boxall, 2018; Guest, 2017; Paauwe, 2009). Theories explored here include the resource-based view of the firm (Barney, 1991), contingency theory (Galbraith, 1973), resource dependence theory (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978) and strategic contingencies theory (Hickson, Hinings, Lee, Schneck, & Pennings, 1971), among many others.

The review of the literature is very selective - it is related just to few not developed countries. Part of the literature is old.

Authors improved literature review.

Figures 1,2,3 may be suitable for the presentation in the banks, but do not bring added value in the scientific paper.

The authors decided to remove two of the three figures denied by the reviewer, admitting that they do not add sufficient value. Figure 2 (now 1), in the authors' opinion, should stay because it synthesizes information about the most valuable and sought-after positions in modern banking.

Table 1 - the is no evaluation how strong is the influence of the particular activities

Table 1 presents the results of the review of good practices in European banks. The weakness of the taxonomic analysis is the inability to examine the impact of individual actions on management or human resource management. The examination of the opinions on the relevance or importance of these practices in the process of dealing with challenges in banking took place in the next stage, based on the Delphi analysis.

There is a number of statements referring to some publications as well as to the local internal projects, without arguments what was the methodology and what was the validity of the obtained results (representativeness, used methods etc.)

Authors adopt referring in more adequate way.

The roadmap does not contain time line. It is just the list of well-known activities, without evaluation of the impact of these activities.

Authors proposed new Roadmap contain more information.

Reviewer 3

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Designing a Roadmap for Human Resource Management in the 2
Banking 4.0 is an interesting topic and related to a sector that nowadays is ia way of redefinition of its commercial structure, particularly in retail banking, and the closure of branches, together with the changes in internal processes due to the application of new technologies deserve to be studied and analysed.

The authors thank you for supporting the timeliness of the topic discussed and highlighting the multifaceted nature of the changes taking place.

Reviewer’s comments

References to review

Reviewer 1

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The presented article reflects the needs of today's world and meets all the attributes of the article for publishing.
The formal and presentation level is at a good level.
The opponent considers the submitted work to be methodically and content-wise successful.

The article needs standardized formatting to be consistent with the journal template. Minor language errors should also be eliminated. These minor comments do not affect the overall grade of the article.

The authors subjected the article text to standardized formatting to conform to the journal template. The text was proofread to eliminate language errors.

Reviewer 2

The submitted paper has low scientific quality. It contains well-known statements, widely known from the literature and practice. The paper is popular one and can be submitted to non-scientific popular banking journal as dissemination of knowledge known from somewhere else.

There are statements about need to enhance human capital in banks, but there is no indication about potential effect of different obvious activities.

The authors improved quality of the paper by presenting effects of enhance human capital on bank performance.

The methodology used by Authors is not described in detail, therefore one cannot evaluate the quality and the reliability of the research. 

The methodology of the study is described in Section 3 Data and methods (p.7). The authors believe that the level of detail in the description is adequate to the size of the text.

The Authors state three contributions to science (in the conclusions), but:

1. Extending human resource management to the context of Banking 4.0, as described in the paper, is widely known.
2. Paper claims that it provides a comprehensive view of challenges shaping human resources management, but there is no evaluation how much particular challenges affect banks, statements are general and no thoroughly supported.
3. There is not verification of the hypothesis, that "holistic" view mitigates challenges, in addition the Authors used the word "holistic" without justification what they mean.

The review states that “Extending human resource management to the context of Banking 4.0, as described in the paper, is widely known”.

The authors made an effort to search for sources that present the extension of human resource management to the context of banking 4.0. The authors use bibliometric  analysis of the citations and publications. Authors choose two scientific platform (Scopus and WoS) because they cover a relevant and extensive collection of scientific publication and have available various of tools for scientific data mining. VOSviewer (version 1.6.17) was used to analyze Co-occurrence. Results enables to mapping the expansion of knowledge on human resources in Banking 4.0, and clearly stress that this connection is not strong explored in contrast to general formula “human resources in banking”.

Instead of using the term "holistic" view, the authors used the term “coherent approach” after Boxall and Purcell.

The paper gives some recommendations at to the enhancing human capital , which maybe useful (albeit known) for banks, but there is no reference to the theory, which makes the paper suitable for popular (rather than scientific) journal.

HRM scholars regularly draw from multiple disciplinary fields, just a two of these here:

•          Economic theory and HRM  explores individual decisions regarding what investments to make in the development of their skills, knowledge and experience and the implications at the macro level (e.g., based in human capital theory: Wright & McMahan, 2011). Applying general economic theory to the discipline can also provide alternative insights into the decisions that firms are making regarding the management of their human resources (Kaufman, 2015).

•          Strategic management theory and HRM  explores the alignment between HRM practices/systems and organisational strategy, with the common goal of improving performance and demonstrating the added value of HRM to organisations (Boxall, 2018; Guest, 2017; Paauwe, 2009). Theories explored here include the resource-based view of the firm (Barney, 1991), contingency theory (Galbraith, 1973), resource dependence theory (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978) and strategic contingencies theory (Hickson, Hinings, Lee, Schneck, & Pennings, 1971), among many others.

The review of the literature is very selective - it is related just to few not developed countries. Part of the literature is old.

Authors improved literature review.

Figures 1,2,3 may be suitable for the presentation in the banks, but do not bring added value in the scientific paper.

The authors decided to remove two of the three figures denied by the reviewer, admitting that they do not add sufficient value. Figure 2 (now 1), in the authors' opinion, should stay because it synthesizes information about the most valuable and sought-after positions in modern banking.

Table 1 - the is no evaluation how strong is the influence of the particular activities

Table 1 presents the results of the review of good practices in European banks. The weakness of the taxonomic analysis is the inability to examine the impact of individual actions on management or human resource management. The examination of the opinions on the relevance or importance of these practices in the process of dealing with challenges in banking took place in the next stage, based on the Delphi analysis.

There is a number of statements referring to some publications as well as to the local internal projects, without arguments what was the methodology and what was the validity of the obtained results (representativeness, used methods etc.)

Authors adopt referring in more adequate way.

The roadmap does not contain time line. It is just the list of well-known activities, without evaluation of the impact of these activities.

Authors proposed new Roadmap contain more information.

Reviewer 3

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Designing a Roadmap for Human Resource Management in the 2
Banking 4.0 is an interesting topic and related to a sector that nowadays is ia way of redefinition of its commercial structure, particularly in retail banking, and the closure of branches, together with the changes in internal processes due to the application of new technologies deserve to be studied and analysed.

The authors thank you for supporting the timeliness of the topic discussed and highlighting the multifaceted nature of the changes taking place.