Challenges Presented in the Implementation of Sustainable Energy Management via ISO 50001:2011

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Your paper is a valuable contribution to practitioners, energy organizations, and sustainability scientists. It does a good job of identifying commonalities in research on challenges to implementation of ISO 50001.

Overall, the narrative is transparent and is well organized.  However, the writing style is hard to follow because the sentence structure is repetitive and excessively wordy.  For example, filler words at the start of every sentence are excessive such as: Additionally, This is especially, Among these, it can be seen that, in this sense, etc.  Recommend a wholesale edit of grammar to trim down the use of filler words at the start of sentences.

Line 67, you should define the ISO acronym the first time you use it.  The acronym is defined in your paper, but not until page 5 (line 170).  It seems out of place on page 5.

Line 150, when you say "national and local policies" it is confusing as to whether you mean globally here too, or just have some examples of national and local in specific nations.

Line 168, when you refer to ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, it would be helpful to the reader if you give context on what those cover and how they relate to ISO 50001. Particularly in light of some of the challenges you identify in this very paper, organizations reading your paper may not be familiar with those ISOs.

Line 217, when you infer that few articles shows the lack of research, this is a biased conclusion. You should specify that this shows a lack of peer reviewed and published research. In your methods section you explained that you removed proceedings and book chapters, but those can be research as well.  There also may be a bias worth exploring on what gets published. You don't have any information on the number of articles rejected from journals, and that research still did happen. Your point is valid, though, if research is not published in an accessible way then how does it get to the practitioner?

Line 218, your suggestion that more studies should be done could also be expanded to the idea that more journals should call for and accept work on this important topic.

Line 237, you state that Table 1 is analysis of the articles, but that table is not analysis. Rather, it is a visualization of the data. Recommend you change "analysis" to "visualization of the data from the selected articles..."

Line 261, the last sentence in this paragraph has confusing grammar and it is unclear what the point is.

Lines 290 and 294-295, some minor grammar issues could be fixed to make complete sentences.

Lines 306-318, this entire paragraph should be deleted. It is strange to restate your methods after they appear twice already in the paper (in the abstract and in the methods section).  If deleting the paragraph, then the start of the paragraph at line 319 should be adjusted to flow better, like "All of the identified challenges are addressed..."

Line 335, you bring up ISO 90001 again, but still have not given context for the reader if they aren't familiar with other ISOs.

Line 335, why cite #50 instead of the actual ISO publication as you did with #33?

Author Response

Please see attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Revision Report

Paper: Challenges presented in the implementation of sustainable energy management via ISO 50001:2011

Brief Summary

This paper aims to identify the challenges found by organizations during the implementation of ISO 50001:2011 based on  a systematic search and revision of the existing literature.

Broad Comments

I do believe that the paper is properly structured, that the authors adopted a suitable scientific language (English is quite good) and that the research method is relevant considering the research goals intended. Furthermore, the literature review is grounded in solid and recent papers (more than 90% of the referenced papers were published throughout the last 5 years) although some recent contributions seem to be missing (namely those related to previous studies examining conducting the same research typology but addressing different meta-standards such as ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and Integrated management systems). I do feel that the authors should address deeply the MSs integration since (as the authors point out) the majority of the implemented ISO 50001 standards operate in companies with other ISO standards implemented.  The conclusions seem to be supported by the results. Nevertheless, I do find that the paper can be improved. Please find below some comments and suggestions.

1- Abstract

- Ok

2- Keywords

- Authors could consider to introduce "barriers" and "obstacles" as key words.

3- Introduction

- Authors may consider to address similar research that was performed focusind different management standards such as the ISO 9001, the ISO 14001, integrated management systems (ISO 9001+ISO 14001+ISO45001/OHSAS 18001). Authors may considera also to address the benefits of the certification process. There is a great deal of published studies addressing the obstacles faced by companies when implementing other meta-standards or an integrated management system. Some recent examples (for indicative purposes only):

- Fonseca, L.M.; Domingues, J.P.; Machado, P.B.; Calderón, M. Management System Certification Benefits: Where Do We Stand? J. Ind. Eng. Manag. 2017, 10, 476–494, doi:10.3926/jiem.2350.

- Domingues, J.P.T.; Sampaio, P.; Arezes, P.M. Analysis of integrated management systems from different perspectives. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence 2015, 26(11-12), 1311–1334, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14783363.2014.931064.

- Hernandez-Vivanco, A., Domingues, P., Sampaio, P., Bernardo, M., Cruz-Cázares, C. (2019) “Do multiple certifications leverage firm performance? A dynamic approach”, International Journal of Production Economics, 218, pp. 386-399.

- Zimon, D. & Zimon, G. (2019). The impact of implementation of standardized quality management systems on management of liabilities in group purchasing organizations. Quality Innovation Prosperity, 23(1), 60-73.

...

4- Theoretical Background

- In line with the previous comment, authors could introduce a 2.3 Subsection "Barriers and Obstacles in the implementation of ISO meta-standards" dissecting and pointing out the obstacles faced by companies when implementing other meta-standards.

5- Method

- Figure 2 present some results, hence it should be introduced in the "Results" section.

6- Results

- Authors could compare the findings with those reported by other studies addressing the obstacles when implementing other MSs standards.

- Authors could summarize the results considering other grouping variables than the publication year.

7- Conclusions

- Conclusions are in line with the results presented.

Author Response

Please see attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The aim of the article “Challenges presented in the implementation of sustainable energy management via ISO 50001:2011” is to identify the challenges found by organizations during the implementation of ISO 50001:2011, according to the literature. To address this objective, a systematic search was conducted.

I think the article is interesting but has an important limitation: the sample. The fact that only 17 articles were found in the literature review has a fairly large bias.  It is true that it is an underexplored topic but perhaps it should be better complemented or given a broader view with other articles that talk about energy management of other management systems and then compared with what has been done by commenting whether or not it resembles...

Apart from this issue I think there are some concepts that can improve or change:

At the end of the introduction I would add the explanation of the following chapters. The subsection 2.1 energy and society does not make sense in section 2. this information would be more appropriate to place in the introduction after citing "...Considering this issue, United Nations [4,5] released in 2015 the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in which Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were established in order to guide countries in the search for sustainable development. Among them, the seventh goal focuses on energy issues: “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all”.

I also think that there is a lot of inability to renewables and the reasons for their implementation when the objective of the paper is different.

Figure 1 cannot be read correctly. It must be corrected so that it is not blurred. It should be justified why the chosen search words were chosen within the methodology. In the results: As the authors comment, it is an underexplored topic and therefore, the n of the searches (the analyzed articles) is very small, that can have an important bias. That is why, in table 1 and consequently in the text, to refer to a % of references of the articles cited... it's not very relevant. I think you should replace the percentage and say for example in the first case (Lack of resources) that 10/17 states...

I think the article is interesting and if the article adds a comparison of the challenges of ISO 50001 with the challenges of other energy management systems to avoid the current bias, the article would have much more impact and would be publishable.

Author Response

Please see attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors addressed properly the issues raised in the previous revision.
I congratulate the authors for disseminating the research. The authors should proceed with a final revision of the paper in order to assure that it complies with the formatting guideline of the journal "Sustainability". 

Reviewer 3 Report

I think that the paper is better than before although I still think that a comparison with other works of other Energy Management Systems would give a plus to the paper. In that sense, I disagree with the authors that the scope is different since it would give relevance to several conclusions. In spite of this, if other reviewers and the editor believe that the sample is representative given that there are few certifications to date, I give my OK for it to be accepted.